Chapter 1
The Season is only just underway and already our sources have revealed a shocking match soon to be announced. Everyone knows that the lady in question has a father who has been shopping her virtue, and her dowry, for some time. Perhaps that is not entirely uncommon in the Upper Ten Thousand, but the uncouth way he has gone about it has stained the young woman’s reputation. Once a diamond of the first water, she will now seemingly have no choice but to surrender to the marriage contract this so-called father is said to be signing within days. One might suppose that this would put her in a better position, but who in the world has he chosen to match her with? That is the question.
Hannah Blankenship stared at the words before her, her vision swimming with each and every one.The Scandal Sheet, a weekly gossip rag that came only to the finest families in London, had only been delivered that very morning. And now she stared at it and her heart sank.
The item was blind, as all the items in the paper were. And yet none of them were difficult to decipher. She’d been waiting for the one that would point the eyes of Society toward her, dreading it with each passing year that her father’s boorish behavior slashed and destroyed her tenuous reputation. Now it was here.
“Oh God, I could vomit,” she whispered, and shoved away her breakfast untouched.
It wasn’t just the humiliation of the words before her. It was the shock of them. Yes, her father had been fishing with her virtue and her fortune as bait for a very long time. And yet she hadn’t realized that he was close to landing his trophy. But the paper said days. The paper was never wrong.
She placed her elbows on the table and placed her head in her hands as tears stung her eyes. There was only one man her father had been “courting” on her behalf as of late. One horrible, awful man: Viscount Hiram Gordon. He was ten years older than her father. He smelled of dust, like he was folded away with the coats at night and not well kept. And he leered. He leered quite openly, his lips pulling away from his rotten teeth every time she walked by.
Her breakfast lifted in her throat, and she leapt to her feet and fought to keep herself calm. As her father entered the room, she caught up theScandal Sheetand neatly folded it, shoving it in her pelisse pocket and forcing a smile for the man she had come to mistrust and even despise over the years.
“Good morning, Hannah,” he said, his tone bright. Perhaps not suspiciously so, but now she had to eye everything he did and said with doubt.
“Papa,” she said with a nod. “You look pleased this morning.”
He shrugged and poured himself coffee as he perused the breakfast selections. “I suppose there is much to be pleased with in this world.” He arched a brow at her. “You were putting something in your pocket when I came in. What was it?”
She forced another smile. She didn’t want him to know about the paper, for then he would tell her about the match and that might be the end of it. As long as he didn’t know she knew what his plans were, she might still be able to thwart them. Somehow.
Oh God, somehow!
“A letter from Sophie,” she lied without looking away from him. “She would like me to join her in an hour. She’s fascinated with this hat from the milliner on—”
He lifted a hand to stop her, just as she’d known he would. “Enough, spare me the details. Well, you have a full day then. I will see you at supper, I suppose?”
“I’m sure,” she said. “I’ll send word if anything changes or if Sophie and Rowan wish me to join them for supper.”
He waved her off, already consumed with his breakfast as he took to the head of the table. She slipped from the room, her hands shaking. Well, that was one escape made, it seemed.
And it wasn’t entirely a lie. She did want to speak to Sophie. She needed to talk to someone, and her best friend was the perfect choice. At least she’d have a friendly ear. At best perhaps they’d come up with a way out of this mess. Before Hannah ended up trapped with a man who turned her stomach.
* * *
“Please stop pacing,” Sophie said an hour later as she watched Hannah go back and forth across her parlor.
Hannah shot her a glance and sighed. She saw the worry in her friend’s gaze and the pity in Sophie’s husband’s. Somehow that made this all worse. A year ago, Sophie had made her own appearance in the pages of theScandal Sheet. That had led her to her very joyful marriage to Rowan Sinclair.
Hannah was happy for Sophie, of course. No one deserved contentment and love and passion as much as her beloved friend. But being in the same room as the couple, seeing the way Rowan’s eyes lit up when he looked at his wife, the way her cheeks brightened when he touched her…
God, it just brought focus onto the desperate situation Hannah found herself in.
“I’m sorry,” she burst out, trying to find her breath when it had been all but stolen from her lungs. “I know I brought myself here without an invitation, and now I’m stumbling about like a mad woman. I’m just…”
Tears filled her eyes, and although Sophie leapt up, it was Rowan who actually crossed the room to Hannah. He caught her shoulders gently. “Hannah, we are here for you.”
She nodded as she looked up into his face. “I-I know.”
“I’m going to leave you with Sophie so you can speak to her in private. But whatever is going on, whatever you’re facing, it is not alone. I will doeverythingin my power to help you.”
Some of the terror left Hannah at that statement. She was not friendless, after all. And certainly she and Sophie would come up with some solution if they put their heads together.
Rowan squeezed her arms gently, then released her and turned to his wife. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, they spoke quietly for a moment, and then he left the room, shutting the door behind himself.
Hannah lifted her cold hands to her hot cheeks. “He will regret that offer. I’m sure he must think me a ninny.”
