Chapter 1
“The Wedding of the Century, uniting Miss Calliope Hart and Lord Edward Chase, the Earl of Hayward, in holy matrimony, is to be held one week from today in Hampshire.
The bridesmaids will include Miss Daphne North; Miss Philomina March; Miss Lenore Hastings; and Miss Rose Carrington.
The groom’s attendants will be comprised of the Duke of Tanley, Everett Lockwood; the Viscount of Whitford, Nicholas Carlisle; Mr. Charles Drummond, of the New York-based Drummond Publishing House; and the Marquess of Holbrook, August Shaw, who is purported to have been chosen as the groom’s best man.
The wedding festivities will begin today with a week-long celebration at Lord Hayward’s estate, culminating in a ceremony on Tuesday, the twenty-second of September, at the newly fashionable time of two o’clock in the afternoon at St. Mary’s Church.
Details on the flowers, bridesmaid dresses, church, dinner menu, and Miss Hart’s trousseau will be reported in this week’s forthcoming issues.”
-The London Ladies’ Journal (September 15, 1908)
1
Whitefawn Manor
Hampshire, England
When Rose Carrington was five years old, she made a list.
This list contained the essential qualities she would look for in a husband. Of course, being only five, her conditions were simple; namely, that the boy in question would be kind and smell good.
The list had grown considerably in the years since, but she felt that her most recent compilation—penned in the middle of the Atlantic last February, when her parents had sent her to England to find a husband among the country’s aristocracy—catalogued every virtue necessary in a good and proper husband, and in a very neat and tidy manner besides.
The list read as follows:
Her future husband would be—
1. Kind: Always seeking the good of others.
2. Humble: Never indulging in vanity or undue pride.
3. Reliable: Always following through on his promises.
4. Loyal: Only ever having eyes for her.
5. Studious: Always in pursuit of knowledge.
6. Diligent: A hard worker who takes on all tasks without complaint.
7. Supportive: Always agreeing with her, for they would be of one mind.
8. Honest: Incapable of telling a lie.
9. Patient: Never growing frustrated or angry.
10. Self-controlled: Never becoming overly passionate about anything, for he would understand that undue passion only serves to muddle the senses.
She consulted her list after every ball, dinner party, and charity event wherein she met countless titled gentlemen looking for American wives—not because they believed American wives to be of any nobler virtue or superior character (in fact, it seemed most were annoyed at the waves of American heiresses flooding their shores), but because they needed the money such wives could provide.
The truth was, there were very few members of the landed gentry who still possessed the necessary capital to ensure the survival of their grand estates.
Times were changing and, for various reasons, marrying the daughters of American titans was the only hope left to them if they wanted to continue their extravagant lifestyles.
The funny thing was, Rose still had a hard time remembering that she was one of those daughters now.
The money her father was making in the advertising industry continued to shock and amaze her.
She didn’t know the exact number her father was worth—it would be terribly rude of her to ask—but it was enough for her family to move out of their Connecticut farmhouse and take up residence in a mansion that spanned the length of one whole city block in Hartford; enough to hire a bevy of servants to see to the running of the house, as well as valets for her father and brother and a lady’s maid each for Rose and her mother; enough to line her wardrobe with gowns created by designers she never dreamed she’d see in real life, let alone own; and enough to fill her jewelry box with diamond necklaces, sapphire bracelets, and rose-gold tiaras.
To be honest, she felt rather unworthy of it all, especially when compared to those heiresses who had been raised in million-dollar homes on Fifth Avenue.
They’d no doubt spent their childhoods walking with books on their heads, conversing fluently in the main romance languages, and painting watercolors that could hang in the Louvre, while she had spent her days milking cows and feeding pigs and racing the neighboring children to swim in the creek.
It was a beautiful childhood, one she wouldn’t trade for the whole world, even if it did make her feel inferior to the other heiresses searching for English husbands.
She combated this inferiority by doing everything in her power to learn the right and proper way of behaving in British society.
She took seriously everything she learned at L’Académie Culturelle de la Grande-Bretagne—the school for American girls taught by the formidable Madame Dupré that combined etiquette lessons with an extensive foray into British history—as she was determined that no potential suitor be put off by a lack of effort or understanding on her part.
Likewise, she believed the right man would not be put off by her upbringing but would appreciate the lessons of hard work, self-reliance, and inner fortitude she’d taken from it.
But whether that right man would be found in England remained to be seen.
Most of her encounters thus far had been disappointing.
Unlike her fellow heiresses, she wasn’t willing to take any man with a title who happened to look her way.
In fact, her parents had made it very clear that they were sending her to England for the adventure of it all, so that she could see a bit of the world she’d only read about in books.
Whether she came home with a husband or not was entirely up to her.
Her good friends and fellow bridesmaids, Daphne North and Mina March, often teased her about it, saying no gentleman on earth could possibly reach as high of a bar as she’d set with her list, but she didn’t care.
She wanted a good man. Someone heroically admirable, like the knights she’d read about in the Arthurian legends.
Someone who would want to build a beautiful home with her, who would help her make a good, calm, sensible life, full of good, calm, sensible decisions.
There was something in her that yearned to make sure she spent her time on this earth wisely, without a single wrong decision or a single day wasted.
She took advantage of every opportunity to better herself for the life she dreamed of, and she wanted a husband who did the same.
She could see herself growing old with such a man, spending their time and money trying to leave the world a better place than they’d found it, and she wouldn’t settle for anything less.
Which was why she had set her sights on Everett Lockwood, the Duke of Tanley.
She’d met him only once before, at an auction raising money for a London orphanage, but once was all she’d needed.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with a tapered waist that spoke of an intentionally-curated athleticism, he cut a dashing figure, but it was his manner that appealed to her most of all.
He was humble, refusing to take any compliment and always turning the direction of the conversation away from himself.
He was studious, as evidenced by how easily he quoted Socrates and John Henry Newman in the same sentence.
And he was refreshingly kind, with a sincerity in his gaze and a smile on his lips that told her he agreed with everything she said, even though she couldn’t actually remember if she’d said anything worthwhile in their short time together.
She did not yet know if the duke met the rest of her criteria, but she’d seen nothing in his manner to make her doubt he would rank highly in those considerations as well, giving her abundant hope that Everett Lockwood might be the man she’d been searching for.
Suffice it to say, it had caused Rose no small pleasure when her good friend (and bride-to-be) Calliope Hart had informed her that the duke had not only been invited to the wedding, but he would also act as one of Edward’s attendants and participate in the weeklong house party leading up to the blessed event.
Which meant Rose would have ample time to make it clear to the duke (who did not need American money but who did need to marry soon due to an unusual clause in his late father’s will) that she was exactly the type of bride he was searching for.
It was to that end that Rose found herself distractedly scanning Whitefawn’s newly updated conservatory, only hearing every third word of the conversation between Daphne and Mina as she searched for the duke.
Where was he?
Rose knew from Calliope’s letters the extent of restoration that Whitefawn had undergone since she’d accepted the earl’s proposal, including the repair of twenty-six bedrooms on the second and third floors, an update in appliances and worktables in the kitchens, the replacement of broken roof tiles, a fresh coat of paint in every room of the house, and the enlarging of the enclosure in which they now stood.
It was costing the Harts a fortune, especially since they’d hired hundreds of workers to ensure the work would be done in time for the wedding, but it was barely a drop in the bucket for them, and Calliope had admitted on more than one occasion that she was thankful for how busy the projects had kept her mother, allowing the bride to make most of the decisions for the wedding herself.