The Marquess’s Wagered Wife (The Unconventional Oliver Sisters #2)

Chapter One

‘And I keep telling you, she’ll be here any moment!’ Calliope pushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes and tried to look as certain as she sounded.

It certainly wasn’t as certain as she felt. Her mother had never been on time. Even after Calliope’s new brother-in-law, the Duke of Glanyrafon, had bought her mother that exquisite pocket-watch, she had promptly declared she could not tell the time and lost the watch.

The footman, provided by her sister and the Duke of Glanyrafon to escort Calliope on the journey, frowned. ‘But, Miss Oliver—’

‘I told you, my mother promised she would be here to greet me just outside the Assembly Rooms and here we are,’ Calliope said firmly, gesturing at the tall building behind them and tugging her shawl as it was caught by an ocean breeze. ‘You may depart with the stagecoach.’

Calliope knew her sister would not like it, but the poor man had already travelled with her all the way from Brexley, and Brighton was a long way away. The sooner he returned to that wife of his, the better.

‘Besides,’ she added, trying not to smile at the clear eagerness on the man’s face to depart, ‘your lady wife may even now be welcoming your little one into the world.’

And that did it.

The footman grinned and picked up his trunk. ‘Any day now, they said when we left—’

‘And it’s only right you return to her side,’ said Calliope with a fond smile.

It had been difficult not to be endeared to the man, so evidently devoted to his wife and the imminent birth of their longed-for first child.

‘Please, I shall be quite well here. All I need do is wait another minute or so—’

‘And you truly do not mind?’

Calliope beamed brightly—or at least, as brightly as she could manage, with the fatigue of the road tugging at her eyes and the bright sunshine threatening to overheat her. ‘I do not mind. Be off with you!’

The footman did not require any additional encouragement.

Bowing to the lady he had promised to escort all the way to her mother’s waiting arms, he turned and ran down the road.

With any luck, Calliope mused, he would make the stagecoach back to London.

From there, a stagecoach to Brexley, where her sister had made her home only a few months ago. And in the meantime…

Calliope breathed in deeply. Brighton. It was a place she had heard much about, in the letters from her mother as she stayed with her sister, Calliope’s aunt.

A place of excellent light, shimmering waves, and truly—her mother had said—some of the best scenery for painting that dear England could offer.

Which was all to the good. Calliope glanced at the heavy box by her side and tried not to think about how she and her mother were going to get it to Aunt Louise’s home.

Thalia had warned her, of course. The baby of the family was always right.

‘You don’t need to take that many canvases—eight and all your paints too? You think Brighton doesn’t sell paint?’

It did feel a bit foolish, now Calliope came to think of it.

After all, Brighton was a picture of colour and movement, her attention caught this way and that by the spectacle of so many elegantly dressed people milling about and passing by.

Surely a town this popular would have a shop for such purchases?

Her gaze slipped back to the packing boxes.

Well, she and her mother would simply have to hire a young man to carry them.

She was hardly going to leave them here.

No, Calliope had come all this way for her art, for inspiration, for the splendour of the coast, and she wasn’t going to let anything stop—

‘Miss Oliver?’

Calliope blinked. There was a young woman a few yards from her.

In fact, now she came to look at her, the term could hardly be applied accurately. She was a girl, really, barely out of childhood.

‘Miss Oliver?’

The girl was not speaking to her, but another young lady about ten feet away. The questioned woman shook her head and the girl’s shoulder’s slumped, evidently tired in her quest.

‘Miss Oliver?’ The girl tried an older woman this time, stepping away from Calliope instead of towards her.

Most strange. To be sure her aunt would have maids, but why on earth would a maid be sent to the Assembly Rooms to find her when Calliope’s own mother had promised to meet her here?

A dull, sinking feeling slid into her where it made its unwelcome home in her stomach. Unless…

‘Miss Oliver?’ The girl had now approached a woman surely old enough to be her grandmother. Perhaps her great-grandmother.

Well, Calliope thought dully, there was only one way to ascertain whether her theory was correct. ‘I am Miss Oliver.’

The girl turned and flushed, scampering away from the elderly woman she had just accosted and towards her charge. ‘You are Miss Oliver? Miss Calliope Oliver?’

‘I am.’ Calliope held her head high. It was an unusual name. All her sisters had been named in such a manner and they had grown accustomed to the stares.

Aphrodite had decided long ago to go by Ditty, though she was the Duchess of Glanyrafon now. Thalia went by Thomas in correspondence—it was so much easier, she had assured Calliope, to be treated well when one’s writing partner thought one was a gentleman—but Calliope had always been Calliope.

Even if she had to spend her life correcting the spelling of her name.

‘I have a note for you, Miss,’ said the girl before her.

It was all Calliope could do not to allow her heart to sink any further. She knew precisely what would be within the note. At least, she had read so many variations of it in her time she could almost quote it word for word.

But for one moment, when she had stepped out of the carriage, had she hoped things would be different. Allowing herself more optimism felt foolish. After all, the woman hadn’t even attended Ditty’s wedding…

As Calliope unfolded the unsealed note, she tried not to smile when she saw precisely what she had predicted.

Calliope,

Adventure calls me onwards! Apologies for not meeting you in Brighton, I know you were looking forward to it, but I leave you the sea and sky and sand, all perfect for your expert paintbrush.

I’ve gone on to Weymouth, don’t ask me why, all to be revealed, and I wish you joy of my sister Louise, who is greatly trying and doesn’t allow me to eat all I like.

Give her my love, but keep some for yourself—

Your darling Mama

Calliope sighed. I leave you the sea and sky and sand.

It was so like her mother to move on without forward planning. To dance off into the distance without even waiting for her daughter to catch up.

The disappointment that perhaps another would have felt did not arrive. In a way, Calliope thought with a wry smile as she folded the letter back up, she should have expected it.

She always expected it. The disappointment, the knowledge that she was never enough for her mother to linger for. The expectation that something more exciting would distract her.

Calliope knew her mother did love her.

But not enough.

‘Is it bad news, Miss?’ The young girl looked curiously at the folded paper, hands twisting before her.

So, she hadn’t read it, then. Or perhaps, Calliope mused, the girl couldn’t read at all. Well, it wasn’t that unusual.

‘No,’ Calliope said aloud with a wry smile. ‘Are you part of my aunt’s household—Mrs Louise Gower?’

The girl nodded.

Well, that was all to the good. She looked spry. Even if she couldn’t lift the heavy box on her own, perhaps Calliope could put her trunk upon the box and the two of them could—

‘Hey—wait there!’

It was too late. The girl, obviously considering her work done, had slipped into the crowd promenading past the Assembly Rooms and disappeared.

Calliope opened her mouth to yell but realised there was no point as the girl would never hear her and it probably wasn’t appropriate to yell across a street.

She closed her mouth. Then she looked at her luggage.

Botheration.

Her sisters had warned her it would be too much and she had thought nothing of it.

But now, finding herself in the warm sunshine of a summery day in Brighton, with no servants to assist and no mother, evidently, in residence in the town, the amount of art supplies that Calliope had been determined she could not live without appeared rather numerous.

Well, there was nothing for it. She would have to hail a hansom cab and hope the driver was of a helpful persuasion.

This appeared to be easier thought than achieved.

‘Excuse me—’

A gentleman and a lady stepped past Calliope and into the hansom cab whose driver she had been attempting to speak to. The carriage rattled off without a second thought.

Calliope lowered her hand. Fine. She would just wait for another one to stop here.

That appeared less and less likely as the minutes ticked by. It was hot, growing hotter with every few minutes, the midday sun pouring its heat down and her stays somehow growing tighter as it did so.

Her irritation with her mother specifically, and Brighton in general, only increased.

Honestly! Her aunt might have sent a man to meet her!

Her mother might have waited a few days so they could spend time together.

That fourth hansom cab might have waited more than five seconds before rattling off—she had a fare to give him!

It was therefore with a great amount of anger, and not nearly so much equanimity as she might have hoped, that she strode angrily towards a hansom cab that had just allowed its passengers to alight onto the pavement.

‘You!’ Calliope snapped at the astonished driver. ‘Do you know Clarendon Road?’

‘Yes, I—’

‘Maple Avenue, driver,’ said a gentleman smoothly as he stepped past Calliope, through the door she had just opened, and hopped inside the carriage—just as though she had been opening the door for him.

And that was the last straw.

‘You absolute blaggard—get out of my hansom cab!’