Chapter One
Florence, Italy
March 1820
“All we needto do is behave,” said Lady Amelia Windermere for the thousandth time to her sister Delilah and cousin Juliet.
Speaking of misbehaving… Amelia turned her head this way and that and still couldn’t understand precisely why the pomegranate set so prettily beneath a window refused to flow from her brush and settle onto paper like a good little watercolor.
“It’s only for a little while longer,” she added.
It was too much to ask that the Windermere brood behave for an indefinite amount of time. Still, she could sense eyes rolling toward the high, airy ceiling. It may have been spring in Italy, but their rented three-story palazzo held the perfect temperature, allowing gentle breezes to drift through at will. While not much was superior to her homeland England, she might have to consider that the Italian weather was. Most of England would’ve been soggy and cold on a late-March day like today.
“Shall we behave like Archie is behaving with his opera singer in Naples?” asked Delilah, reclining lazily across a plush velvet settee the rich hue of sunburnt earth, mischief in each syllable. Amelia didn’t need to look at her sister to see it in her eyes, too.
“What happens in Naples…” Amelia wasn’t quite sure where she was heading with that sentence. It was the red, she decided. The pomegranate red wasn’t quite pink enough. She added a dollop of water to the paint mix.
“Stays in Naples?” added Juliet, ever a wit with wordplay and seated near the open doors that led onto the terrace. She’d positioned herself so as to better catch the afternoon light for the book she was reading.
Juliet had come to live with them after her parents had perished in a tragic carriage accident when she was but aged two years. Though a second cousin once removed, she was as a sibling and was treated as such.
“I cannot behave, Amelia,” proclaimed Delilah. “You might as well toss me into the Arno now.”
“Delilah,” began Amelia, sensing one of her sister’s dramatic moods coming on.
“What’s the point of being alive if you can’t trulybe alive?”
“Delilah—”
“One’s soul shrivels into nothingness.”
While Juliet might have a way with creating words, Delilah had a way with speaking them. One felt perched in the palm of her hand until she’d finished. It had been so since the moment she’d strung a two-word sentence together in her baby cradle.
Still, as the elder sister by five years, Amelia knew when to put her foot down. “Delilah, I forbid you from throwing yourself into the Arno.”
Her sister stared moodily out the window overlooking said river. Delilah—like all Windermeres—didn’t have the natural mien for brooding, with her crystalline blue eyes and blond curls that streaked platinum in the summer sun. “My soul might demand such a cleanse.” Byronic the Windermeres weren’t, but Delilah was giving it her best impression.
Ever the pragmatic one, Amelia felt it her obligation to point out one important fact—themostimportant fact. “We shall never be received into polite society again.”
“It would be the leap too far,” said Juliet, provoking a giggle from Delilah and a reluctant smile from Amelia.
“But wearereceived in polite society,” continued Juliet. Where the Windermere siblings were all curly blond hair and blue eyes, their cousin Juliet had straight black hair and clear green eyes so direct they could see into one’s soul, or so it was suspected by all who met her. She had, however, inherited the famous Windermere height. They were tall to a one.
“Oh, dearest Juliet, have you learned nothing from this past year?” asked Delilah, wide-eyed and innocent. “You are speaking of politeItaliansociety, and Amelia isn’t. She’s speaking of the only society that matters to the English.” She allowed a laden beat of time to lope past. “PoliteEnglishsociety.”
“Well, I think the Italians are very nice.” Juliet shrugged one shoulder and returned her attention to the book on her lap. She always had a book on her person. She even had a special necklace with a notepad attached. Juliet was serious about her words.
“Delilah,” said Amelia, her brush only now making headway with this baffling pomegranate. It was the blasted texture of the thing that was trickiest to convey with a watercolor brush. “You aren’t being fair to the English, or the Italians, or me. I would like to return to London and be invited to all the balls and soirées. Is that so wrong?” She glanced up. “Has the post arrived yet?”
Delilah and Juliet gave each other a sly look that said they knew exactly why Amelia had asked for the third time today. “I don’t believe so,” said Juliet.
The thing was Amelia had a plan to rehabilitate the Windermere reputation and slip back into the good graces of society before their parents, the Earl and Countess of Cumberland, returned from their two-year archeological journey to Samarkand. Mama and Papa need never know that their children had fled England with scandal nipping at their heels, rather than for a simple holiday.
By Amelia’s calculations, that left them another year; but if all went to her plan, she and her siblings would be enjoying the highest society of thehaute tonwithin three months. The plan was simple: secure an invitation to the Marchioness of Sutton’s ball that marked the end of the season in early June. A cousin had assured Amelia the invitation would be arriving by post any day now. But Amelia wouldn’t believe it until she held it in her hands.
And now Delilah was threatening to throw herself into the Arno.
Being the only sensible Windermere wasn’t the easiest lot.
