Almost as determined as Eloise was to become a spinster.
There were far worse things in life, she reasoned, than becoming the eccentric aunt who lived in the attic and conversed with ravens on a regular basis. If she had no man to appease or answer to, then she couldtrulybe free. In a way that her sisters, for as much as they loved their husbands, were not.
The law, as terrible and one-sided as it was, remained clear and unwavering. Once a woman was married, she became the property of her husband. As if she were a chair, or a horse, or a bottle of scotch. But the only person Eloise intended to belong to was herself. No man would ever own her, no matter how charming or handsome or wealthy he happened to be. She wished that she could make that clear to Lenora, but whenever she attempted to explain her way of viewing the world, her sister would wave her hand and look at her in that half amused/half exasperated way thateveryonelooked at her whenever she said something that they considered to be completely absurd.
“You simply haven’t met the right gentleman yet,” Lenora would chide. “I was of a similar opinion until I fell in love with Perth. Your time will come, Eloise.”
But Eloise didn’twanther time to come.
If it were a clock, she’d have already smashed the bloody thing to bits. Too bad the patriarchal system designed to keep women subservient and reliant on the opposite sex wasn’t as easy to destroy.
“I’m done with chess,” she announced, shoving back from the table and leaping to her feet in a desperate burst of energy. Her hair whipped around her shoulders; a riotous bouquet of vibrant red curls that defied even the strongest of pins. “I want to go for a walk before we’re cooped up in a carriage for six hours.”
“That is a good idea, actually.” Unable to abide leaving a mess, even when she had a houseful of servants at her beck and call, Lenora began to carefully return the chess pieces to their box. “If you give me a minute, I will be happy to join–”
“Can’t wait!” Bouncing across the room as if she had springs attached to the bottom of her shoes (something shehadcontemplated doing), Eloise was into the foyer and out the front door before Lenora was able to call her back.
2
The Devil in a Blue Frock Coat
Comprised of 350-acres, Hyde Park was the largest park in Central London. Originally, it had been the private hunting ground of King Henry the eighth before it was opened to the public 100-years after his death. With Kensington Palace on the far end and Mayfair on the near, it made for the perfect recreational thoroughfare for those of wealth and prestige who wanted to show themselves off in all their jewels and finery.
On any given day, carriages were abundant, clattering up and down the stone lanes in a parade of curricles and phaetons. Hordes of giggling young ladies under the watchful eye of their chaperones walked along the shores of the Serpentine, fluttering their fans in a vain attempt to gain the attention of the young men who had cast their boats into the placid water. Married couples languidly watched the nanny chase after their children from the comfort of their picnic blankets, while the older adolescents threw pebbles at the ducks swimming near the shallows in hopes of being thrown a crust of bread.
“How would you like it if I threw a rock atyourhead?” Eloise asked a particularly aggressive boy after she observed his pebble plop into the water a few scant inches from a smaller, defenseless duck with shiny blue feathers on its wings.
“You wouldn’t dare,” said the boy, puffing out his chest.
“Wouldn’t I?” She picked up a rock and snickered under her breath when the boy’s face turned red and he scampered off, as most bullies did when they were confronted by someone that was not cowed by their boorish behavior.
Reaching into the pocket of her long-sleeved coat, she fished out a handful of dried corn kernels and tossed them into the water, her lips curving when the ducks converged with a chorus of happy quacks. Soon enough they would be joined by fluffy yellow ducklings, but by then she would be sixty miles away at Clarenmore Park.
A rambling old estate formerly on the brink of disrepair, the Rosewood family manor had recently undergone a complete renovation courtesy of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Monmouth. No one, not even Lenora, had seen their country home since the construction was completed, and Eloise was both excited and loathe to observe what had been done. While she was happy that the roof would no longer leak and the floors wouldn’t slant, she hoped that the charm remained. She neededsomethingto stay the same. Over the past twelve months, her family had undergone more changes than Annabel at a house party.
Following a series of whirlwind courtships, Lenora was now a duchess. Bridget was a viscountess. And as soon as she married the Earl of Whitmore this summer, Annabel would become a countess. Only Eloise had kept her head through the madness. Whatever disease had spread through her sisters and caused them all to turn into simpering, love-stricken ninnies, wasn’t going to infecther. She was inoculated against affection, lust, and love in all of its varied forms. There was no man that could put her under his spell. No man that could catch her off guard. No man that could–
“Oomph,” she exclaimed as she walked straight into a wall. Or rather, thewallwalked intoher. Except there weren’t any walls in this part of the park. There were, however, tall, dark-haired strangers who didn’t have enough common sense to look where they were going!
“Excuse me,” she called out, outraged when he kept walking. “Excuse me. I SAID EXCUSE ME!”
He finally stopped and turned when she raised her voice to shout, as did everyone else within a ten-foot vicinity, but Eloise found her attention captured entirely by the man who had so rudely stepped into her path and not even bothered to apologize for it.
His hair was dark as the wing of a raven, neatly shorn and held back from his temples with a dash of pomade that glinted in the light. He had broad, muscular shoulders that tapered to a lean waist and firm thighs enclosed in fawn-colored trousers. But while her gaze could have slowly wandered across his body for an inappropriate length of time, his face was too bold to ignore.
The angles of it had to have been carved from granite, for how else were his cheekbones as sharp as the fine edge of a blade? Prominent eyebrows, as black as his hair, were furrowed low over cold gray eyes. His nose was straight, his chin square, his jaw taut and clean shaven. Every single inch of him exuded hard, unapologetic masculinity. He practicallypulsedwith it. In a way that the gentlemen of theton, in their foppish hats and comically long sideburns and wedged shoes, did not.
When he raked his frigid gaze across her, studying her just as intently as she was studying him–two feral dogs searching for potential weaknesses before they attacked–his mouth bent in a cruel, callous smirk, and even though the sun was hot against the nape of her neck, she felt a chill race down the middle of her spine.
Eloise was not a religious person by nature. She attended church service when it was required of her, and tried not to take the Lord’s name in vain too often. But she’d never given much additional thought to God or the devil…until this very moment, for surely it was the devil that was standing in front of her.
The devil in a blue frock coat.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a short, clipped accent that she recognized immediately as American. That in part explained his rudeness (Americans were notoriously ill-tempered), but was not an excuse for it. Nor did it explain why his mere presence had caused her tongue to stick to the roof of her mouth or her palms to sweat inside of the sheer cotton gloves she was wearing.
The surrounding crowd drew a collective breath when Eloise ignored every warning bell ringing in her head and marched straight up to the stranger, lifted her perspiring finger, and drilled it right into the middle of his chest.
