The death of the baronet had revealed the worst secret a member of thetoncould harbor. The Wethersbys had run out of money. Sir Francis Wethersby had mismanaged his fortune, leaving his wife, his son and heir, and Catherine, who the Wethersbys had taken in when she was eleven after the death of her father, in seriously straitened circumstances. Their estate, Wethersby Park, had had to be rented to pay down their enormous debts. Since the late baronet’s death, the three of them had subsisted on a small annuity from Ariel’s great-aunt and Catherine’s income from her history writing. Catherine wrote short articles for different newspapers on English ruins and landmarks. In the past three years, she had carved out this specialty, using pieces of a book she had been writing since she was sixteen.
Many would argue that women couldn’t have academic expertise, but, luckily, no one in the newspaper world knew she was female, so she had managed thus far to avoid that pitfall. Readers loved her little folk histories, so editors kept asking for more and none had any idea that C.M. Forster, who wrote like a sprightly gentry gentleman of vigor and knowledge, was Miss Catherine Mary Forster, of the ruined Forster family and the disgraced Wethersbys, eking out a meager existence at dingy 21 Halston Place.
Unfortunately, she had almost run out of material. She had visited only so many ruins and collected only so much local folklore. And she didn’t have the funds to travel to any new sites. She knew she could fabricate the histories, using her imagination and published travel diaries. But she loved her authentic little reports, made up of her descriptions of natural settings, regional myth, and conversation with real locals. The idea of cheapening her work pained her.
But they desperately needed the money. Last month, calamity had struck. Ariel’s great-aunt had died, ending the annuity, and she had left no inheritance in its place as they had long hoped she would. Then, the duns had started to appear. They were unable to pay the bills that had maintained their bare gentility up until that point and which had been accrued back when they thought they still had the annuity. Now, they were forced to subsist only on Catherine’s writing and her efforts had been…insufficient to say the least.
Catherine knew she had to keep trying. Elena would never say it, but part of the reason that Lady Wethersby and Ariel had it so hard was because of her. Many people had disagreed with Sir Francis’s decision to take in the scandal-orphaned Catherine Forster, who looked, everyone said, so much like the woman who had unleashed it in the first place, her aunt, Miss Mary Forster. The scandal had ruined one of the oldest families in Britain, the Forsters, and the second involved, the Breminsters, had only hung on to societal acceptance by virtue of their vast fortune and high rank.
Sir Francis had insisted upon taking Catherine in, calling it a matter of honor. She was a child, an innocent, she had heard him say on multiple occasions, and her father had been his best friend. Therefore, when the Wethersby fortune was lost, fewer people tried to help Elena and Ariel than would have otherwise. Half thetonregarded their adoption of Catherine as an early sign of the Wethersbys’ foolishness and the other half simply did not want to be associated with such total ruin in any way at all.
“Shall I put on the kettle?” Lady Wethersby said, raking away her tears and starting to smile.
Ariel rolled his eyes at his mother again and shook his head at Catherine. Elena often broke into tears of despair and then, with little warning, snapped back into her usual sunniness.
“Allow me to make you a cup, Catherine,” Lady Wethersby pressed. “You deserve it—for all you do for us. Never thinking of yourself.”
Ariel guffawed at his mother’s mawkishness and Catherine laughed at his dismay, but, at the same time, she felt real gratitude for Lady Wethersby’s kind words.
Because once, despite what Lady Wethersby said, Catherinehadthought of herself. She had been one-and-twenty, well into marriageable age, and she had been so weary of how the Wethersbys’ friends and acquaintances looked her over with pity. Catherine had wanted, for one night, to be someone other than the girl whose illustrious family had turned to ash and blown away. So she had convinced Marisa Plinty, who had been her best friend at school, to let her visit. She had begged Marisa to tell her Hampshire neighbors, all unknown to Catherine, that she was her cousin, Miss Musgrave. Her friend had obliged, letting her love of mischief overtake any shred of prudence she had left.
Back then, after the death of her strict middle-aged husband, Marisa had been newly and unexpectedly free—and thus more than a bit wild. Her friend had understood, intuitively, without her having to explain, that Catherine had sought a little of that wildness for herself. Not long after that night, Marisa had run off with a linen draper and was now, to hear her tell it, quite happy, even if her relations had been horrified that she had remarried beneath her station.
But that night had taught Catherine that, for her, wanting pleasure, wanting freedom, wanting anything outside of her life with the Wethersbys, led only to danger and heartbreak. That night, she had led herself to the edge of ruin in more ways than one and nearly reignited the very scandal she had sought to escape. Her first foray into freedom had led her to the exact place she should not have been, alone with the exact man she should not have been with. It had been the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to her.
And for her that was quite the statement. After her first London season, her bar for total humiliation was really quite high. When she had been eighteen, Lady Wethersby had insisted that she debut, albeit in a quiet way, and she had even prevailed upon her husband to provide Catherine with a small dowry. Nevertheless, it had been a disaster. With her family history and lack of significant fortune, she was asked to dance only a handful of times. Any dreams she might have had for herself once—a husband, a family, a life that didn’t revolve around her broken past—vanished.
There had been a great irony to her encountering John Breminster that night at Tremberley. Back then, she had heard reports from other members of thetonabout the young marquess and his titled friends, who had all just finished school and come down to London for good. At that point, she had been sitting ignored in ballrooms for three years and the news that the heir of the Duke of Edington was beginning to make his rounds attonparties had depressed her. She had begun to avoid the larger functions where she was likely to encounter him, dreading the possibility of being in the same room as the powerful young man who had every reason to loathe her. When they had both been children in Edington, she had only glimpsed him a few times and they had never met formally. She had feared that he would say or do something to embarrass her if their paths crossed.
Of course, now she saw how foolish she had been. If she had known what he looked like, if she had seen him from across a ballroom, she wouldn’t have been tricked by his false name and handsome face.
And then he wouldn’t haunt her dreams. Because the humiliation didn’t stop her from dreaming about that night—even seven years later. She dreamt of his touch, his mouth, his words in her ear.God, you’re perfect.
She hadn’t seen the marquess since that night. In the years before his death, Sir Francis had forgone a London season due to the illness that eventually killed him, although Catherine now saw that this evasion had also been a clever way to cover his dwindling coin. That said, she hadn’t minded their absence from Mayfair at the time. She hadn’t wanted to encounter the marquess after what had transpired between them.
The Marquess of Forster. How wrong that they shared a name when they were enemies. Her father had always resented the Breminsters for that very title because it had once belonged to their family. During the Civil War, the Forsters had supported Cromwell and, when Charles II came back into power, he had stripped titles from the aristocratic families that had been disloyal and rewarded those who had fought for the Crown. The Breminster family became the Dukes of Edington at this time and the king had given them the Forsters’ title too, as a bitter punishment to their neighbors. Her father had always explained his disdain for the Duke of Edington with this bit of history. And then the scandal had happened and explanations of enmity were no longer needed.
Catherine had turned the scandal over thousands of times in her head. Part of her couldn’t believe that society remained so fevered about it. Versions of the same thing happen every day among theton. And yet she knew the shame was in the details. And in the publicity.
The year Catherine was ten, the Duke of Edington and his wife had had their annual garden party at their estate, Edington Hall. All of the genteel families of the region and many aristocrats from London had been in attendance. At this party, her aunt, Mary, and the Duke of Edington had been discoveredin flagranteby a gaggle of society ladies, including the Duchess of Edington herself. The duchess had flown into a rage with the entire party as witness. Afterwards, her aunt disappeared, leaving no hint of where she had gone.
Then her father had done the worst thing of all. He had pursued a disastrous breach of promise suit against the duke. It had amplified the scandal, already well known to high society, across England. That had been the true stroke of financial and social ruin for her family. This move had absolutely appalled the aristocracy, who were used to infidelity but not notoriety so pervasive that it became widely known among commoners. The court case and thus the affair had been splashed in all the papers and society letters, making it one of the best-known scandals in England, not just by the aristocracy, but by, well,everyone.
The legal suit had lost her father his fortune and estate, Forster House. Days after his steward informed him that he had bankrupted himself, her father was found dead from an apoplexy on his bedroom floor. These days, Catherine tried not to think about her father or her aunt or Forster House itself. When she did, the pain was acute and physical. Like one of her organs was being removed from her body with a hacksaw.
The scandal had made her notorious by association. Decisions she had never made, rules she had never broken, passions she had never experienced—they had all determined her fate.
That was what she had been trying to escape that night at Tremberley. She had hoped to dance, to be admired, to have a little bit of the maidenhood that had been lost to her. And she had hoped to glimpse the Tremberley Ruins, so difficult to see with the viscount disallowing visitors and which she had wanted to study for her book. She had thought she was being so clever combining research and pleasure when she asked the handsome vicar if he would take her to the gardens.
She would never forget how the marquess dismissed her when he found out her identity.Get them off the grounds, Trem.Like she was nothing.
Her eyes flew open, the thought running through her.
Tremberley.
Catherine had an idea.
She had been running out of material but she had not written about those ruins. She did not like to think of them as ruins, ashistory, because of that night.
