Behind me, Mathilde has won her battle, and a pretty pile of curls sits atop my head. She directs me toward the bedpost while she fetches my stays.
“It will fade,” I assure Lizzie, though heaven knows why I’m still indulging her. “And everyone knows you will make the best match this year. Even if you are not dubbed the Favourite.”
“The title is no guarantee. Who was that woman last year?” Lizzie taps her lip. “The woman who was declared Favourite, but didn’t receive a single offer. What was her name?”
“Jane. Jane?—”
“Spencer!” Lizzie finishes before I can.
Yes, I remember Jane Spencer quite well. The petty comfort I’d taken in her humiliation. To be declared the King’s Favourite and still end up alone? I was just as sorry for her as I was grateful; she replaced me as the butt of every between-Season joke.
“I’m not surprised.” Lizzie licks her pinky, then traces the tip along her eyebrow. “She’s quite plain.”
“Lizzie!”
“What?” she asks, the portrait of innocence. “She is. Not even her father’s money can make up for that face.”
“You’re terrible,” I scold.
It’s not true—Jane is lovely. In the right light. I will say, the peerage were shocked when she was chosen. Rumours abound to this day that Lord Spencer paid for his daughter’s title.
“I’ll be surprised if she shows up tonight,” Lizzie prattles. “Though no one seems to want to miss this one. Mother said she’d received more requests for attendance than ever.”
“Why?”
“People are whispering that George Somersby plans to open the Season with a proposal. I tried to pry the information from William, but he’s been stubbornly tight-lipped.”
I suppose if anyone were privy to George’s plans, it would be Lizzie’s brother William. Their relationship is the reason that George and I met, after all. Precisely one year ago, when we were both guests for the Season here at Stillwater Hall.
George’s father, the Earl of Westershire, funds Harbridge University’s biology department, of which William is the head. George, eager to plunge into the family business, had come down for the summer to shore up the department’s future curriculum.
I myself had recently arrived for my annual visit, an even more solemn affair than usual since Granny Maggie had passed that winter.
Losing my guardian, my constant companion—the woman who’d raised me—plunged me into the greatest loneliness I’d ever experienced. It had an unexpected effect, coaxing me away from the wallflower I’d been in previous Seasons. Emboldening me to try to make a connection with someone. Anyone. After all, with Granny Maggie gone, what else did I have to lose?
I started making eyes at George every time I passed him in the gardens. Lustful glances over the peony bushes. Coquettish lash-fluttering through the fountains. A half-orchestrated tumble over a wheelbarrow that resulted in George accompanying me on my daily drawing session in the woods beyond the estate.
He accompanied me every single day after that. And by the fourth or fifth session, I was doing very little drawing and much more … well …George.
By the end of summer, we were quite infatuated with each other. He hired me to provide the illustrations for William’s scientific articles, a clever ruse to stay in each other’s orbit. Even if it hasn’t given us an excuse to meet more than once or twice a month.
Still, it’s been so refreshing to have found a man willing to overlook the debits in my ledger. To everyone else in Breton, I am Lord Edward Fitzroy’s undesirable niece—parent-less, penniless, and problematic. Six times overlooked on the marriage market due to a paltry dowry and a barbaric (Aunt Teddy’s words, not mine) upbringing in the southlands. It is a role I have no desire to play again.
And based on what Lizzie’s divulged, I won’t have to.
There goes that joyous fizzing again. Mathilde contains it by roughly cinching my stays. Otherwise, I might blurt out the secret George and I have kept from William, from Lizzie, fromeveryonefor the past twelve months. They’ll all know soon enough.
Mathilde helps me into my powder-blue gown as Lizzie chatters away, listing her rivals for Favourite along with a point-by-point comparison of her strengths to their weaknesses.
I nod along, throwing in a supportive comment every now and then, but I’m not really listening. My mind races forward, tripping over itself as I plan for my new future.
I wonder where George will want to get married and could I convince him to do it here, or no, maybe in the wild woods where our love was forged, how wonderful wouldthatbe, and of course I’ll have to ask him if I can spruce up Granny Maggie’s cottage, in fact maybe he’d even do it as a wedding gift to me, it would make the perfect artist’s retreat and I?—
The clock on the wall chimes six o’clock. The official start of the ball. And with it, the Season.
For the first time ever, I am ready to walk into that room with my head held high.
This year, I will finally be chosen.
