Rejected (Rakes and Ruin #2)

one

“Every I love will leave me.”

Josephine St.

Claire, daughter of a viscount, sister of too many a person to name, and friend of a complete idiot, was watching her older sister dance with her new husband of barely a few hours.

And, as her mother would say, she was sulking.

But she was not sulking, at least not on purpose.

That was the natural expression on her face.

It might be true that she was internally dying, but she was not as immature as to show it. Or am I?

With her back firmly planted against the ballroom’s wallpaper, Josephine St.

Claire observed her two sisters, trying to compare her conduct to theirs, and thus judge whether she was, indeed, still a child or not.

The comparison did not prove favorable to her.

Margaret was radiant, having changed from her modest wedding muslin into a silver, sparkling taffeta gown, and appeared to be the most beautiful woman in the room, as she danced in her husband’s arms.

She and Josephine were of the build: tall and willowy, with wisps of tawny hair forever escaping their chignons.

But that was where their similarities ended.

While Margaret was the soul of poise, wisdom and grace, Josephine was wild, untamed and defying convention.

At the other side of the enormous, even by London’s standards, ballroom, Josephine’s younger sister, Amy, was absolutely enchanting.

Amy, two years younger than Josephine, was already looking much more the proper lady than Josephine ever would.

Her golden curls were swept up in a perfect halo around her beautiful face, and she had gathered a crowd of admirers already, young men of various titles and fortunes, hanging onto her every word.

She looked like a fairy—as if she were not of this world.

She was that beautiful.

It was a bad idea to compare myself to Amy, Josephine thought morosely.

I look frumpy next to her in the garden, but here? I must look a positive goblin.

The last St.

Claire sibling, the viscount’s heir himself, was competing with his younger sister in both popularity and good looks.

Justin St.

Claire, the firstborn of the family, was elegance and charm itself.

The way he spoke and moved enchanted every single female in the room, and they were all vying for his attention.

His blonde locks were darker than Amy’s but lighter than Josephine and Margaret’s, and he had put on his fake smile that did not betray his black, st-cold heart.

Yes, I am definitely not ready for a crowd of this magnitude.

Josephine shrunk further into the wall, trying to blend in with the chapers.

Margaret’s new husband was tolerable, she supposed, even though he was an Honorable.

It had been a love match, otherwise Josephine would never have allowed her sister to leave her.

She tried her best not to think of the empty house that awaited her with both her sisters g.

Or her third sister, who was there, as always, but invisible. The angel who watched over them. The loss that had marked their lives permanently, irrevocably.

Do not think of such things on such a joyous day. ‘Tis bad luck.

That sounded horrible. Like something a silly heroine of a book would say before becoming a tragic heroine.

Oh, I should write this down. I should have smuggled a quill in my pocket, no matter what Amy says.

According to their Aunt March, a never-married duke’s daughter, who had been living happily for over sixty years in the company of her cats, a myriad of books and a small circle of friends, Jo was ‘still a child’.

Well, at nineteen years old, if every saw Josephine as a child still, then it made perfect sense why they kept moving on and leaving her behind.

Like her older sister Margaret had, by getting married.

Like her younger sister Amy had, by taking off to Europe with said maiden aunt on the pretext of pursuing her painting, but with the actual purpose of eventually finding a husband.

Josephine herself had not been invited, even though she was two years older, and unmarried.

Every knew she was beyond hope in that regard.

Like her brother Justin had, by going to Oxford.

He was four years older than her, and had once been her hero, but she had barely seen him after he’d been sent away to boarding school, as befit a boy who would day be Viscount Vidal in the place of her father.

But what about the plays they had put up at Christmas, her and her siblings?

What about all the hours they’d spent sword-playing together, and it not mattering that she was a ‘girl’, because her brother had thought she was as good as any boy? Better, even.

But those days were long g.

She had hoped she and her siblings would remain friends well into adulthood and beyond, but apparently that was not ‘d’.

Josephine did not understand it.

They were family.

They were not supposed to fling themselves as far away from each other as they possibly could, in pursuit of more diverting company.

Apparently, family did not equal ‘friendship’. Every was in such a darned hurry to leave. And she only wanted to stay. So where did that leave her?

Behind.

It left her behind.

“Every I love will leave me,”

Josephine whispered to herself again. She should say it more often. Try to get used to the idea.

“Wrong again,”

an annoying voice said behind her ear.

“I won’t leave you.”

She turned around to behold the beautiful yet immensely irritating face of her best friend in the whole world.

“You don’t count, Teddy, you’re my best frie—wait, is your mouth full?”

“Indeed it is,”

Theodore Augustus Lawrence, Lord Lowry, or simply ‘Laurie’ to his long-suffering friends said behind her shoulder, spitting crumbs of wedding cake.

“And, may I ask, why do I not count?”

“Why did you say ‘wrong again’?”

Josephine raised her eyebrow. He was towering over her, which she found most unnerving. Why could they not have stayed the same height? “When have I ever been wrong in my life?”

“I haven’t known you all your life,”

Laurie protested, stuffing more cake into his mouth. Wait, why am I looking at his mouth? “Met you when you were two.”

“And you were barely three.”

“An infinitely more mature age. And, might I add, a better .”

“You might not, you insufferable oaf,”

Josephine said, taking the cake out of his gloved hands with disgust. Their fingers brushed in the process, and even through the gloves, his skin felt burning-hot for some unfathomable reason. A shiver traveled down her spine. Stop it, spine. Right now.

“Being three years old when you met me is nothing to brag about. Besides, I turned three later that same year.”

“Ah, always slightly behind,”

Laurie smiled.

Just to irk her.

He was wearing his cravat in the latest fashion style—it looked like a frothy, white waterfall.

Utterly ridiculous. Utterly delicious. Drew the eye to the way his Adam’s apple jutted out and bobbed as he talked, and the hard line of his jaw, and those dimples—

What am I thinking?

“Do you want to get out of this parlor and have your nose broken?”

Josephine said, “because I’ll do it.”

“I have made you angry, my dear, I apologize,”

Laurie observed, not sounding at all sorry.

“But you are no longer despondent, I see.”

He was proud of himself.

Josephine opened her mouth to tell him just how odious he sounded, when he raised a finger in the air to stop her. He might be an insufferable, conceited idiot, but he was an insufferable, conceited idiot who knew her too well.

“The night might yet improve, m’ dear,”

he said in that obnoxious way of his that she loved.

“You’ll see.”

And with that cryptic remark, Theodore Lawrence took his perfect cheekbs, his perfect wavy black hair and his perfect sugar-dusted red lips and disappeared among the throng of adoring debutantes who squealed as he approached.

All the ladies present were dressed in pastel silks and feathers and Josephine, even though, for once, she was dressed like them, she stood out in her awful frown. As usual.

The ladies surrounded Laurie immediately, hiding him from sight, and those who did not approach him, on account of being too old, kept whispering ‘what good shoulders’ he had.

Josephine rolled her eyes at them, not that they were paying her any mind.

They were right, of course.

He did have the most spectacular shoulders.

Jo herself could barely take her eyes off them, especially back at home, when he only wore his shirtsleeves to tend to his beloved horse, and—

Look what London has d to me.

Turned me into of those simpering females who think about men’s shoulders.

She was not like that.

Always on the fringes of society, never quite fitting in.

She preferred it that way.

She pushed her back into the wall, going back to blending in with the wallpaper.

The suffocating crowd of young ladies parted for him to pass, and she was afforded a rare view of Lord Lowry’s back muscles rippling gracefully beneath his immaculately-fitted waistcoat, as if he were clenching his fist with the force of a violent emotion.

What does he have to be angry about? Josephine wondered idly.

Even from the back, he looked like a Greek statue, deuce take him. And, despite his reassurances to the opposite, he, too, had left her.

Good riddance.

Dear Beth,

In the middle of spring, I find myself missing Christmas. Our Christmas.

Here in London the Season is in full swing—the furthest thing from the kind of cozy family affair that December used to be in our house.

Perhaps that’s why I keep thinking of Christmas.

I miss it.

I miss you.

I miss us.

I shall miss having sisters.

I am tired of being angry all the time.

I want to wake up on Christmas morning to the sound of your pianoforte playing those baroque melodies.

For last time, I want to stomp down the stairs in my bare feet and my nightgown, mumbling grumpily because you woke me up just as I had gotten to sleep after staying up all night writing.

For more time, I want to go back in time and tell myself to enjoy the candles, the oranges, the off-key singing, the badly-sewn costumes for a ridiculous play I had written and forced you all to act in.

For last time, I want to see the expression on Laurie’s face whenever we made him play the damsel in distress because no of us girls wanted to play her, not even you, who were the most agreeable, timid little thing.

But he always did it, because he wanted to make us happy, and our own brother was always away on Christmas, invited to some marquis’ manor or other, and it hurt so much to miss him we could barely breathe.

I want to go back in time and understand that there was no time enough to hear your beautiful playing and I had to drink it in as much as I could, even if I hated waking up so early in the morning.

Ten years ago, Papa brought the pianoforte into your room, because you were so sick you couldn’t get out of her bed, but you still wanted to play it.

Three months ago, the servants covered it with silk sheets because we were leaving, and the house would be empty for months, and it would collect dust.

But we never put a silk sheet over that last Christmas when we were all together for the last time.

Because we didn’t know it would be the last Christmas.

Our last Christmas with you, our last Christmas with Mama, and now our last Christmas with Meg.

What else is going to be taken from me before the next winter rolls by?

One thing is becoming increasing clear: everything changes and every leaves.

And I will never make my peace with that.

Eternally,

Your sister