Chapter 2
Near Porthleven, Cornwall
“Truly, Marguerite? You don’t want to go to London?”
Marguerite Easton lengthened her determined stride along the cliff, while her fifteen-year-old sister, Linette, hurried to keep up with her.
The stiff wind blew their cloaks behind them like billowing sails, the cool spring air tinged with salt spray from the pounding surf below. Marguerite’s blunt “No!” to Linette was all but drowned out by the near-deafening roar of the sea.
“But it’s going to be so lovely now that Lindsay has returned home to England!” Linette persisted as she looped her arm through Marguerite’s and strode with her away from the stunning view of Mount’s Bay. “She’s invited all of us to her and Lord Dovercourt’s London town house…you, me, even Estelle. Her letter said they would be residing there until renovations were completed at Dovercourt Manor in West Sussex, so it’s the perfect time to visit—Marguerite?”
Marguerite had disengaged herself from her sister and walked faster, dodging large, lichen-covered rocks even as Linette hastened to catch up with her.
She wished she’d done a better job of pinning her hair, her long auburn tresses whipping around her face and nearly blinding her. So much so that she didn’t see the rock half-buried in the thick grass until she struck the toe of her walking boot against it, crying out as she lost her balance. In the next moment she lay sprawled upon the ground staring up at the steel-gray sky, her dignity the worse injury as Linette sank into the grass by her side.
“Oh, Marguerite, are you all right?”
“Yes, Linette, yes…and if you’ll please stop tormenting me about London! It’s a horrid place and I had a horrid time there at last year’s Season, and I wish to never see it again!”
Instantly Marguerite regretted her sharp words as tears welled in Linette’s lovely brown eyes.
Usually so serious and more interested in reading books, Linette was clearly blossoming into a young lady that she would be so enamored by the thought of traveling to London. Just turned nineteen, Marguerite suddenly felt so old and jaded next to her…when last year she had been so eager to experience her first Season.
Romantic, starry-eyed, her head filled with dreams of glittering balls and handsome suitors.
That is, until as a lowly vicar’s daughter she’d been shunned by thetonand plagued by the most despicable sort of men interested only in the modest fortune left to each of the Easton girls by their French-born mother. A cache of jewelry that her elder sister, Corisande, had sold for what three years ago had seemed an immense sum, but when divided four ways and apportioned annually hadn’t been enough to interest but the most impecunious of fortune hunters.
Even the fact that Corie’s husband and Marguerite’s brother-in-law, Lord Donovan, was the younger brother of the Duke of Arundale hadn’t eased her path among the nobility. The sumptuously dressed women had been the worst with their polite fixed smiles upon introduction, only to snipe cruelly behind their fluttering fans as soon as Marguerite walked away.
Shuddering at the memory, Marguerite accepted Linette’s help in sitting up, both of them brushing damp bits of grass from her mauve merino wool walking dress. “I’m sorry for sounding so harsh, Linette, but there’s no need to feel downcast. You and Estelle must go with Corie and Donovan, and I’ll stay here to look after Papa. That town house will be full to bursting with all of you and little Paloma and the twins—”
“Oh, but it wouldn’t be the same without you there as well!” Linette protested as Marguerite rose to her feet. “Perhaps this Season will be different! Perhaps he will be there this time and you’ll meet him and dance with him—”
“He?”
For an instant Linette stared at Marguerite with surprise and then burst out, “The man of your dreams, of course! Don’t you remember Lindsay’s letter after she arrived with Lord Dovercourt in Boston…how happy she was, though she missed us terribly, and how you, Estelle, and I must not wed anyone less than the man of our dreams just as she and Corie had sworn to do?”
Marguerite didn’t readily answer, but set off with renewed frustration as Linette hastened again to catch up with her.
Oh yes, she remembered that lengthy letter and how she and her younger sisters had all gathered around with great excitement while Corie had read every line.
Corie had revealed then the secret pact she and Lindsay had made after clambering atop one of these very rocks, shouting the words at the top of their lungs. And how Lindsay had insisted then that she and Corie pretend the man of their dreams was standing right in front of them as they imagined him to be…a handsome and bold adventurer for Lindsay while for Corie, an honorable man as passionate as she about righting wrongs and easing the lives of those around them.
They couldn’t have described Jared Giles, the Earl of Dovercourt, and Lord Donovan more accurately, but Marguerite hadn’t met anyone close to the man of her dreams last year in London.
The man of her dreams…
