Chapter One
Dorset, six months later…
Apersistent buzzing sound filled the air.
From her recumbent position, Florence lifted a hand to swat the side of her head, where some kind of winged insect was making a nuisance of itself, hovering right beside her ear. Although…on second thoughts, the buzzing was actually louder than that, as if the noise was coming frominsideher head. She had a sudden, horrifying mental image of a large, fluffy bee crawling inside her ear and flying about inside her skull, but that was impossible, surely? Bees didn’t just go crawling up ear canals. There was no pollen there. Ergo no point. And even if there were, theoretically yet horrifyingly, a bee inside her head, she would be able to feel it crawling around, wouldn’t she? Whereas all she felt right now was tired.
Sovery tired…
She gave a wide yawn, about to bury her face in her pillow and let herself drift back to sleep when she remembered the date. The twelfth of June! She didn’t have the luxury of lying in bed, not today of all days. The Wadlows’ ball was tonight and there was no time to waste, certainly none to spend thinking about bees and ears. Amabel, her dearest friend, neighbour and confidante since childhood, needed her!
It was thanks to Amabel that she was in London at all, since her parents, though eminently respectable, were a long way from being members of theton. Left to themselves, they would never have dreamt of sending her any further afield than the assembly rooms in Carlisle. Amabel, however, had somehow convinced her own parents, Lord and Lady Wadlow, that, as such a ‘dreadfully ancient’ debutante—her entrance into Society having been delayed, first by an outbreak of scarlet fever, then by the demise of, and subsequent mourning period for, her paternal grandfather—it was imperative that she bring a companion for the Season. And who better than Florence, who was so capable and good-natured, not to mention perfectly content to wear the same gown on half a dozen occasions? If anyone was loyal and level-headed enough to help Amabel negotiate the back-stabbing world of theton, not to mention identify eligible suitors, it was her!
And so Florence had travelled with the Wadlow family all the way from Cumberland to Mayfair, a fellow ‘dreadfully ancient’ twenty-one-year-old, to enjoy all of the balls and picnics and soirees the great Marriage Mart had to offer, albeit largely from the sidelines since her own lack of dowry rendered her effectively invisible. All things considered, it had been an eye-opening and entertaining experience, yet somewhat fraught over the past fortnight, ever since the tall, dark and glowering Marquess of Rainton had arrived on the scene and begun paying special attention to Amabel.
Naturally, the Wadlows had been over the moon at this development, scrambling to organise a ball that would provide the perfect opportunity for a proposal. And today was the day! It was going to be a most splendid occasion, one of the finest and most lavish events of the Season, and Florence’s role, as outlined in somewhat exhaustive detail by Lady Wadlow theprevious evening, was to keep Amabel calm, composed and in the correct frame of mind to say yes.
A betrothal announcement was expected before midnight.
As requested, Florence had their activities for the day all planned out. First, they would enjoy a leisurely breakfast of tea and buttered muffins, then they would visit the modiste to select some fabric for a new day gown for Amabel, followed by Hatchard’s bookshop for a copy of Fanny Burney’s new novel,The Wanderer, for Florence. Then, after attending to any correspondence (her mother, in particular, would be thrilled to learn about Amabel and the marquess), they would have luncheon, do some reading and piano practice, take a walk in Hyde Park, and then finally return to Grosvenor Square to eat a small dinner prior to the ball. At some point, they would also need to bathe, have their hair styled and dress in their ballgowns, but she would leave that part for Lady Wadlow to worry about.
In order to do any of that, however, she needed to rouse herself sufficiently to get out of bed. Which she wanted to. Very much. Only actually doing so appeared to be more of a challenge than usual. How late had she gone to sleep? She honestly couldn’t recall. Instead, she was struck with the strangest sensation of having lain in one position for a long time.
Prising her eyelids open only made matters worse, since the world appeared to be a great deal brighter than usual—dazzling, in fact. Meanwhile, her vision was so blurry, it was like looking at the world through opaque glass. She had to blink a few times just to focus. Now she could see more clearly and yet everything around her was wrong…and right. Which was to say, the bedchamber in which she found herself was more luxurious than any she’d ever slept in before—elegantly decorated in shades of pale blue and yellow, with a selection of curved walnut furniture, all embellished with carvings of feathers,and the most exquisite goldfinch-and-cornflower-patterned wallpaper she’d ever seen—but unless the Wadlows had decided to redecorate during the night and not told her, which seemed distinctly unlikely, she’d never seen it before in her life.
Where was she?
Her heart thumped with alarm as a woman’s face poked its way into the edge of her vision. Thankfully, it didn’t look particularly threatening. On the contrary, its hazel eyes were somewhat anxious-looking, but she didn’t recognise it either. She didn’t recognise anything! A flurry of questions burst into her mind. Who was it? What were they doing there?What was going on?
Fortunately, it didn’t take her long to guess the truth. It was a dream! Thank goodness. Of course she was dreaming. It was an odd dream and frankly, she didn’t have time for it, but she supposed it could be worse. There were no snakes or lizards to frighten her. And now that she understood the problem, the solution was obvious. She needed to wake up, that was all, simply wake up.
Wake up, she ordered herself.Wake up. Wake—
‘Can you hear me?’
Her heart thumped again, even harder this time, like a hammer blow against the side of her ribcage. The voice sounded real. Much more real than she would have expected for a figment of her imagination, speaking in an unfamiliar accent too. It seemed curious that a person could talk with such clarity, not to mention in an entirely new accent, in a dream, but perhaps her imagination was more vivid than she’d previously given herself credit for?
Wake up!she told herself more sternly, wishing that something outlandish might happen, like a unicorn falling down the chimney or an elephant bursting through the ceiling,anything to reassure herself that this really was a dream, because what if…?
‘My lady?’ The voice was also persistent. ‘Shall I fetch the doctor?’
My lady?
The words took a couple of seconds to penetrate her consciousness and when they did she almost laughed aloud with relief. Well, she’d wished for something outlandish and there it was. The idea of anyone calling her, plain Miss Florence Lowrie, ‘my lady’ was laughable! Ha!
Only, for a dream, everything still looked alarmingly real… Ha?
‘I’ll fetch the doctor.’ The woman edged towards the door. ‘Hopefully he hasn’t left yet. Don’t move, my lady. I won’t be long!’
Please, please, please wake up, Florence pleaded with herself, squeezing her eyes shut and counting to ten before opening them again to find the room…exactly as it had been before. As if it was, in fact…actually…real.
A cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck, sending a shiver straight down her spine. How was this happening? If it was real then she was lying in a strange bed in a strange room being watched over by a strange woman who was now on her way to fetch a strange doctor. Was she sick? Injured? She didn’t remember any kind of illness or injury, although, now that she thought about it, her nose was blocked, her throat was scratchy, and her head was filled with a strange kind of grey fog, in which blurry images and silhouettes seemed to float like phantoms, fading away whenever she tried to focus, as if they were deliberately taunting her. Her body felt unusually sluggish too, but she couldn’t let that hold her back. She had to get up, had to find out what was going on…
Summoning all her energy, she flung the counterpane aside and heaved her stiff legs over the edge of the bed, intending to stride to the door. No sooner had her feet touched the floor, however, than she gave a powerful sneeze, followed by a short, sharp yelp of alarm as her ankles crumpled and she plummeted downwards.
‘Ow!’ She glared resentfully at the carpet, as if it were somehow responsible for her position, then braced her hands and knees against it, crawling the short distance to a nearby dressing-table to heave her protesting body, with yet another gargantuan effort, up onto a stool.
The face she saw reflected in the gilded mirror before her gave a violent jolt and then opened its mouth wide with an expression of shock and horror. In most respects, she looked just as she always had. Her shoulder-length, light brown hair was twisted into its usual night-time braid and her eyes were still a summer-sky shade of blue, but her cheeks had a feverish glow and her nose was a positively startling shade of red. More shockingly, there was a jagged gash, surrounded by a purple and yellow patch on her forehead, half hidden in her hairline.
