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Chapter One

“Goodness gracious, Juliet, what in the world is going on?” the Dowager Marchioness of Worthington gasped as she entered her parlor.

Juliet Gainsborough was still clad in Lord Penhurst’s wedding dress—chosen to announce his wealth rather than flatter his bride—its bodice stiffened with beading and its skirt wide enough to block a doorway. The hem was caked with mud and dried leaves from the road.

Now, she stood shaking like a leaf and looked her grandmother right in the eye before she said, “I…I ran away from my wedding, Grandmama.”

Her face was completely bleached of color, and her hands gripped the fabric of her wedding dress tightly at either side.

In truth, Juliet was terrified.

And her grandmother, the dowager marchioness, could see it. Lady Worthington could not believe her eyes, and her shock was written all across her face.

“A wedding? What are you…” Then, as if realizing herself, she pivoted. “Come in, come in, before someone sees you!”

The elderly woman fussed, closing the negligible distance between them to pull Juliet close with one regal arm around her shoulder.

It was still dawn, the morning sun still stretching its arms across the sky, but Juliet didn’t care whether anyone had seen her, if she were being honest. All she cared about was that she’d escaped the wedding before her father could find her to take her to the cathedral.

At her touch, Juliet felt the stiff set of her spine relax just a tiny fraction…even though the terror still held her, body and soul, in its vice-like grip. Her shoulders still shivered, despite the drawing room fire already burning long enough to warm the air inside the mansion properly.

“I…I am sorry, but I cannot marry him, Grandmama,” she murmured.

Lady Worthington steered Juliet towards the fireplace, though her ruined shoes left their mark on the rug. “What on earth are you going on about, my dear girl?” she asked, her tone soft but worried. “What is this about marrying anyone? Were you even engaged?”

Now, Juliet’s teeth were chattering. “I…Father announced my wedding barely a week ago…to…to Lord Penhurst.”

The Viscount of Penhurst, Godfrey Brantham, was a fifty-year-old widower who had consistently had his eye on Juliet ever since her debut. Even now, remembering the way his eyes had practically undressed her every time she made an appearance at dances made her shudder all over again.

“What nonsense is this?” Lady Worthington sounded rightfully incensed, torn between letting out her sudden rage and gathering her granddaughter into her arms. “Penhurst? How dare Matthew feed you to such a rotten, old dog? And he never even wrote to inform me of this disaster of an arrangement, yet he had the audacity to force this union upon you?”

Juliet was crying loudly now, her cries muffled against her grandmother’s shoulder.

“Oh, you poor thing,” her grandmother murmured, stopping to pull her into a tight hug, her hands patting Juliet's back as one would comfort a crying baby. “I am so sorry that I could not help you out of such a dastardly match, my dear girl.”

Juliet shook her head, and her tears soaked the fabric of her grandmother’s blouse. “It…I know it is not your fault, grandmama,” she said, her words coming out muffled because she did not have it in her to remove herself from the older woman’s embrace just yet. “You did not know.”

“No, I did not.” The dowager marchioness’s voice was hard, edged with razors. “That foolish father of yours has long tested my patience, treating both you and your mother as though you are mere chattel, and now he thinks he can marry you off to some rotting, old man?”

Juliet pressed the back of her wrist hard against her eyes. “He…he said the terms had already been agreed, and before I knew it, I found out that Penhurst had obtained a special license and there was barely a week to beg him to stop it!”

“A special license, you say?” Lady Worthington’s voice shook with a rage Juliet knew would not subside until she had avenged both herself and her granddaughter for this insult. “What a greedy old man! His wife is barely one month in the ground, God rest her poor soul, and he is already looking to marry a woman who is more than half his age?”

“Would you like me to brew some tea, my lady?” Mrs. Agnes, the housekeeper of the mansion, appeared in the doorway, her face molded in worry.

Lady Worthington nodded absently. “Please,” she replied, without looking away from Juliet.

Juliet shuddered, even though the early-morning draft had long since been shut out when the doors closed. No, this chill was rooted deep at the base of her spine and did not come from the weather.

“Oh, Grandmama, Penhurst is far more than rotting!” she wailed, her face already utterly soaked with her tears. “He is a disgusting old man who has watched me ever since my debut! He never tried to hide the way he watched me at every dance! He followed me everywhere, Grandmama!

“He…he looks at me as though I am not a person, and I always feel his eyes on me at every function. Oh, he makes my skin crawl, Grandmama! Whenever I complained to Father, he never listened to me, saying that I was being hysterical, and that Penhurst had made an exceptionally generous offer to me.”

Lady Worthington sighed, her eyes squeezed shut against the assault of words against her ears. “That utter disgrace of a son-in-law,” she griped, her tone as stern as her expression. “How dare he sell you off like some common…” she trailed off, unable to finish the words, but their weight settled between them nonetheless.

“He offered us shares in a shipping venture, apparently,” Juliet sniffled. “Father was ecstatic. I begged him…I begged him to refuse, but he called me insolent! He told me that I was lucky that a man of Penhurst’s standing still considered me worth the trouble.”

The rage in her blood was continuing to bubble, and she truly wanted to scream. So what if she had not managed to find a suitable husband two Seasons after her debut? She did not think she had turned into an old crone all of a sudden because of that!