Part I
“Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.”
~ Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis
In hindsight, it was the stairs’ fault. Had they not creaked when they did, Olivia would have likely been able to sneak out the front door without anyone - especially her mother - being the wiser. But it had been a wet spring, followed by two months of dry summer heat, and on that momentous morning in August, the third step from the bottom gave a loud, betraying groan when she lightly pressed her bare toes upon it.
Clenching her jaw at the sound, Olivia froze, praying no one had noticed, and she could either make a mad dash for the door or retreat to the attic for the entirety of her parent’s annual house party, an exhausting three-week event filled with dinners, socializing, and pianoforte recitals.
Somany pianoforte recitals.
An absurd amount, really.
If she could just quietly - but no, it was too late.
She had been seen.
“Thereyou are,” the Duchess of Abercorn exclaimed, her blue eyes - shared by her two oldest daughters, Jane and Bethany, but not Olivia, who had inherited her father’s green - lighting with a combination of relief and consternation.
Relief and consternation.
That was Olivia in a nutshell.
To start, she’d been born a month before the midwife told the duchess to expect her. Tiny, pink, and squalling, her arrival in the middle of a blizzard had sent the entire household into an uproar.
Then, when she was seven, she fell out of a tree in front of their Grosvenor Square manor and broke her arm… the day before Jane was to be presented to the royal court.
At the grand age of ten, she announced to anyone who would listen that she was taking her pony - Muffins - and they were running away to join a traveling circus or a gypsy caravan or a herd of elephants. She hadn’t quite figured out the exact details. All shedidknow was that she didn’t fit in. Not with her perfect, graceful mother. Not with her polished, beautiful sisters. So she’d packed up a satchel with extra carrots for her best friend in the whole world and made it all the way to the Fernhill Estate three miles down the road before Muffins unceremoniously dumped her in a puddle and trotted back tohisbest friends - May and Martha, two palomino mares - as fast as his little legs would carry him.
Their relationship was never the same after that.
When Olivia had returned home - wet, hungry, and smelling of horse - her mother was wearing a strikingly similar expression to the one she had now. Relief that her youngest daughter wasn’t hurt or worse. Followed by consternation that she’d had to worryin the first place. But such was the bane of having a willful child. A child that had always struggled to follow the rules that came so naturally to her other two daughters. A child that detested dance lessons, sneered at anything to do with stitching, and would rather romp in a field filled with wildflowers than waltz through a ballroom filled with eligible bachelors.
“Olivia,” the Duchess of Abercorn began in a rather ominous tone that her youngest daughter recognized all too well. “You weren’t sneaking out of the house before our guests' arrival, were you?”
“No.” Olivia crossed her fingers behind her back. “Of course not.”
“That’s good, because your presencewillbe expected in the receiving line. After that, we’re having tea on the front lawn followed by-”
“Jane’s pianoforte recital in the music room,” Olivia sighed. “I read the itinerary, Mother. Just as you requested.”
The duchess’s brow rose as her gaze traveled from her daughter’s auburn curls, sloppily pinned to the top of her head, all the way down to her bare toes peeking out beneath the hem of an old morning dress with grass stains at the knees. “I seem to recallalsorequesting that you make yourself presentable. This is not just a house party, Olivia. It is an opportunity. The best opportunity you will have all summer to find a husband.”
“I’d rather go looking for toads behind the garden shed,” she mumbled.
“I know you would,” said the duchess, not unkindly. “But that is a child’s errand, my dear. And you are no longer a child, but a young woman. A young woman whom I should like to see happily settled with a family of her own.”
“Bethany isn’t married,” Olivia quickly pointed out.
“Bethany is engaged to be wed to Lord Markhaven, as you are well aware. Whereas you have rejected every single suitor thathas made an attempt to court you.” The duchess pinched the bridge of her nose. “England’s list of eligible bachelors is not endless.”
Was it not?
Because it seemed that way to Olivia.
By her twentieth birthday in March, she’d had a seemingly infinite number of men paraded in front of her. Earls, viscounts, barons. Even a duke or two. Then a most terrible thing had happened. Lady Annalise Buttercream, a wallflower if ever there was one, had been swept off her feet by the Duke of Tennyson, and the entiretonhad lost its collective mind.
Including Olivia’s mother.
