This is Not a Romance (Ladies’ Revenge Club #6)

Prologue

Victoria Beck was eleven years old when she learned to lie.

“Where did you get this dress?” her older brother Teddy was asking, frowning as he held up the frilly frock to the window of the vicarage office, light catching on the purple and yellow ribbons in its sleeves.

It looked ridiculous in his grip, like a doll’s dress, all soft lace and flounces against his big, scarred hands and dirty sleeves. “Where did it come from?”

“Where do you think?” Roland Reed answered from his spot on the corner of the desk, lifting a single golden brow at the question. “It’s a whore’s. She said we could borrow it.”

Teddy frowned. “It’s a child’s dress.”

Roland shrugged, popping a chestnut into his mouth and chewing. “Yes.”

“Oh, charming,” the third boy in the room said with a sigh.

Matthew Everly was the vicar’s son, and he was seated behind the desk like he himself ran the church, bent over a document he was halfway through filling out with a smudged-up quill. “Vix, don’t mention anything about the dress’s origins to your assessor, okay, love?”

“I won’t,” she said softly, looking from one boy to the next in queasy discomfort. “Can I still wear it?”

Teddy, her brother, sighed heavily, tossing the frock on a nearby chair. He was obviously disgusted, but he was tired too. He looked so very tired.

“Yes,” he said, meeting her eye with a flat expression of resignation. “Yes, you can wear it. You need something better than what you’ve got on.”

She chewed her lip, looking down at her dress. It wasn’t an ugly dress or a bad one. It was just too small and starting to pill in a lot of places. The sleeves were sitting too high on her wrists now. The collar was very thin.

Her mother had picked this dress out. She had liked the flowers on the skirt.

“Foxgloves,” she’d told Vix when she showed her the fabric. “To poison. To heal. Or just to decorate. Like a woman.”

Vix fisted the flowers in her hands so that she couldn’t see them anymore and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to rise.

Her mother was gone now. It wouldn’t do to remember it.

She looked at her brother instead.

Teddy always looked tired lately, worse by the day since their mother had died. He had bags under his dark eyes, and even though his shoulders were broad and his arms were strong, his own clothes were hanging off him.

The other night, when they’d come to the vicarage for dinner, Vix had heard the parson’s wife say that at fifteen, a lad like Teddy should be growing, not shrinking. He’d still given Vix his dinner roll, though. He always did.

“Do you want to practice again?” Roland asked her, his voice soft in a way that it only ever got when he knew she was upset. “We can practice one more time before they get here.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “No. I know it. I memorized everything.”

“It couldn’t hurt, Vix,” Teddy said gently. “We only get one chance to get this right.”

“We need to fix her hair,” Matthew said absently from his quill-scratching. “It’s too frizzy.”

Vix turned to him with an outraged little scoff, her eyes flying immediately to his own mop of unruly curls. “How very dare!” she snapped, making him look up at her and chuckle.

“The accent is good now, though,” he said with a self-congratulatory little smirk. “This is going to be fine. You’re all worrying over nothing.”

“We’re worrying over Vix,” Roland corrected, reaching forward to slap the side of Matthew’s head, upsetting his already rumpled curls. “This is important.”

“I know it is,” Matthew retorted, batting away the assault with an outraged little grimace. “Look at all the work I’m doing. You couldn’t afford forgery this fine without me! I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t important.”

“Enough,” said Teddy, softly enough that they obeyed without argument. “She says she’s ready.”

“I am,” Vix said.

The first lie.

She walked past her brother and took the dress without looking at any of them. She held it to her chest and went to the screen to put it on, folding the old one carefully into the corner. She pulled the laces tight and smoothed the skirt.

It fit like it was made for her.

It was the first thing that had in a long time, and when she walked back out, all three boys looked a little stunned by it.

“Well,” said Matthew. “Good.”

Teddy was still frowning.

“Do you have pomade?” Roland was already asking, hopping off the desk and craning his neck from side to side, his own hair, long and curling and golden, looking perfectly styled in the morning light. “I can pin it up, but I need something to make it neat.”

“Can’t you just use water?” Teddy asked impatiently, making Roland turn and stare at him for such a long time that her brother actually blushed.

“Pomade,” said Matthew absently. “Father keeps some in the washroom.”

“Do you have any pins, Vix?” Roland asked kindly, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her toward the washroom. “I only need a couple.”

She nodded. The top half of her hair was pulled back in a loose coil to keep it off her face. She knew it was not done very well, but it was all she knew how to do herself, without her mother to stand behind her with a comb and help.

Teddy was helpless about it, of course.

Roland knew how to do a woman’s hair because he lived in the bawd house with his parents.

He knew how to use curling wands and ribbons and pins.

He’d shown her how to do the little half twist she was wearing today, though of course the job she’d done of it made her wonder if she was doomed to be a bad student after all.

“Ugh, it smells like turpentine,” Roland commented upon finding the pomade. “We’ll only use a little. No wonder Matthew refuses to use any at all.”

She sat on the little stool and let him comb through her hair, pulling the frizzy stack of her brushed-out natural curls into order. He had told her to stop using the horsehair brush, but she was always losing the comb.

She was glad he did not chide her about it today. Perhaps it was because he knew she was nervous.

The pomade did indeed smell terrible, but she thought it looked very nice once he’d worked some into her dark tresses. It made the strands shine prettily, like polished wood.

“How far away is Bath-Spa?” she asked him, holding the pins up in the palm of her hand. “Will I be able to visit?”

He met her eye in the mirror as he twisted her hair into a glossy rope. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never left London. I suppose you can write if it is very far away, though.”

“I can, that is true,” she said with a frown. “None of you will write me back, though.”

“Matthew will,” Roland answered, plucking up two of the pins and wiggling them into her scalp. “He loves writing things.”

She pressed her thumbnail into her palms, watching herself in the mirror. “It is all right,” she said, studying her reflection to see if the lie would show, “I don’t need letters.”

“There,” Roland said, pushing the last pin into place. “Look at me for a moment.”

She turned, raising her dark eyes to meet his as he reached up above her ears and worked two little strands of hair out of the pinned coil, twisting them around his fingers with the remnants of the pomade until they held the artificial curl.

He released them gently and gave her a little half smile. “Perfect,” he said. “No more frizz.”

“Perfect,” she repeated, and glanced back at herself.

Or whoever it was, there, in the mirror.

“They’re here,” came Matthew’s voice as soon as they emerged. He sounded harried, scattering drying powder all over his father’s desk with manic haste. “They’re early!”

Teddy was frowning, running his big hands over his hair. “Should I—”

“No!” Matthew said, glancing up with his eyes wild. “Not you. Reed.”

“Fine,” said Roland, squeezing Vix’s shoulders and spinning away to meet the assessors at the church door.

Teddy was frowning again.

Matthew sighed, leaning down to blow the powder off the sheets of paper he’d been writing with a thin stream of air from his lips. “Nothing personal,” he said to Teddy. “You just don’t look the part. Reed does.”

“I’m aware,” Teddy answered, glancing out the window as their compatriot emerged to greet the pair of assessors before they could cross the churchyard to the entrance. “You’re right.”

It was a man and a woman, Vix saw, both severe, tall, and dressed all in black.

The woman was scarier somehow, her hair twisted into a tight knot on the top of her head and pinned under a black net.

She glanced right at the window where Vix was watching and frowned, making all three of the children inside jump away.

“Blast!” Matthew said shrilly, giving a nervous little giggle. “Ah, we’re terrible criminals.”

Teddy glanced at him. “You are.”

This time Matthew was the one who blushed.

“Will I meet them here in the office?” Vix asked impatiently, shifting foot to foot, “or in the sanctuary?”

“Neither,” said Matthew. “Come with me. I want you to sit out in the garden with the fig tree. It’s idyllic and will charm them. Tod. Just … just stay here.”

Her brother glared. He put his hands in his pockets. But he did not move to follow.

“Teddy …” said Vix.

He only shook his head. “Go on,” he whispered. “You’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

She did not know if it was a lie. She supposed it did not matter.

Matthew held the stack of documents loosely against his chest as he steered her out into the churchyard.

“Good morning!” he called to the adults. “I see you’ve met our junior deacon, Mr. Reed!”

Reed gave a tight smile in response, the kind that promised a slap later, his freckles stretching around the curve of his lips.

“Good morrow,” the woman said, lowering her gaze to Matthew. “I was expecting Reverend Everly. Is he attending?”

“I am Matthew Everly, the good reverend’s son,” Matthew said with a slight bow and a cheeky grin. “My father has asked me to attend you today, as he was called away on urgent business. Death-beds, you know.”