Dream of a Glorious Season (Sweet Treat Novellas #12)
Chapter One
Miss Elizabeth Gillerford counted amongst her most notable realizations one she had at the very wise age of eight and three-quarters.
She came to the irrefutable understanding that her heart would forever belong to the twelve-year-old boy to whom her sister had already pledged a life of devotion: their neighbor, Julian Broadwood.
Falling desperately in love was painful enough for any eight-year-old girl, but having a heart so fickle as to devote itself to the object of the deepest longing of one’s sister added another layer of acute discomfort.
Thus Elizabeth spent the next eleven years in various stages of misery and heartbreak.
Mary, her older sister, had made her first bows to Society two years earlier, and, seeing as Julian had made very few appearances, Mary remained unhappily unattached but determined to wring a proposal out of Julian.
Unfortunately, their parents were sticklers for the strictest versions of social etiquette, so until Mary wed, Elizabeth simply had to wait for her own debut in Society.
At nearly twenty, she was quickly growing embarrassingly old to have not made her bows.
“Society doesn’t entirely forbid a younger sister from being out before her older sister is married,” Elizabeth argued to her parents a week before the Season was set to truly begin once more.
“Especially if the older sister doesn’t seem to be making progress and the younger sister is more than old enough to have a Season. ”
Her father was already shaking his head, the movement setting his jowls flopping about. “Some may be willing to flout expectations willy-nilly, but the Gillerfords are stalwart. We do not bend to—”
“—the fickle winds of ever-changing opinion,” Elizabeth said under her breath in perfect unison with her father’s declaration.
She had long ago gained a thorough awareness of his opposition to fickle winds; he mentioned them far too often for his opinion to be unknown to her.
In full voice once more, she argued, “I am nearly twenty years old, Father, and will soon be so firmly lodged on the shelf that I may as well be a book in the darkest corners of a lending library.”
Mother chose that exact moment to wander inside. “Oh, dear. You haven’t been frequenting the lending library, have you? People will begin to form the wrong idea of you.”
“They might think I read?” Elizabeth asked dryly.
“Precisely.” Mother emphasized the declaration with a widening of her eyes and a desperate nod of her head.
“A girl should read, of course; she simply shouldn’t make a point of doing so.
The ladies will think you a touch too blue for their company, and the gentlemen will think you a vast deal too educated for theirs. ”
This was an old argument that Elizabeth knew far too well. “Gregory does not think me too educated for his company.”
Mother waved that off. “Brothers are supposed to overlook their sisters’ faults.”
Faults. What a motherly sentiment.
“What of Julian Broadwood?” Elizabeth asked. “He has never shown any disgust at my refusal to hide my literacy.”
Mother had no immediate answer. Father filled in the gap.
“He is meant for Mary,” he said. “No doubt he already views you quite as his own sister, and therefore has joined Gregory in turning a blind eye to your oddities.”
“Has he at last declared his intention to court Mary, then?” She tried to ask the question casually. But how does one lackadaisically ask if one’s heart is about to be crushed to a fine powder and sent adrift on, as her father would have called it, the fickle winds of change?
“Our family and the Broadwoods have always understood that young Julian and our dear Mary would make a match of it,” Father said in a tone of scolding. “He needn’t come to make a formal declaration.”
“Well, if he means to marry her, I wish he would hurry and do so.” Oddly enough, she very nearly meant it. “If she were engaged, I could make my bows and find myself a husband, since no one in the neighborhood bothered to conveniently produce a son for me to marry.”
She refused to admit to anyone that, as far as she was concerned, Julian fit that description. She preferred to do her suffering in secret.
Mother dropped onto her chaise longue, pressing her fingers elegantly to her temples. “You do give me such headaches with all of your nonsense, Elizabeth.”
“I know, Mother. I know.” She left her parents in the sitting room and walked out of sight down the corridor before sighing aloud in frustration.
A girl should read, of course, she simply shouldn’t make a point of doing so.
She had endured such ridiculousness for nearly twenty years. She couldn’t do so much longer. Heaven help her, if she was left on the shelf and had to live out her life in her parents’ house, she would go mad.