Chapter 2
A Sennight later
The afternoon light filtered weakly through the drawing room windows, illuminating threadbare patches in the Turkish carpet.
When she was a child, she used to trace the carpet’s medallion with her slippers.
Victoria had only noticed the carpets wear during the past sennight of confinement.
She sat rigidly on the settee, its blue damask rough beneath her palms, while her mother paced before the cold hearth with the restless energy of a caged bird.
Each turn of her mother’s skirts stirred dust motes that danced in the pale sunshine, and Victoria found herself counting them to avoid meeting her mother’s increasingly frantic gaze.
“Lady Pemberton crossed the street yesterday rather than acknowledge me,” her mother said, her voice high with distress. “Crossed the street, Victoria! As if I carried some contagion. Twenty years of friendship, and she looked through me as though I were air.”
Victoria’s fingers tightened on the worn fabric. She wanted to protest, to rage against the injustice of it all, but what use were words? They had already proven useless against the tide of gossip that had swept through London society.
“And this morning,” her mother continued, wringing her hands until the knuckles turned white, “I received a note from Mrs. Ashford, who claimed to witness your encounter, along with her daughter. She had the audacity to suggest that perhaps dear Margaret and Anne would benefit from a trip to the country. Indefinitely. As if my younger daughters should be punished for—” She broke off, pressing a handkerchief to her lips.
“Mama, please.” Victoria’s voice emerged rough from disuse. She had barely spoken for the past few days, finding words inadequate to express the enormity of her situation.
“Your father tried, you know.” Her mother sank into the chair opposite, its springs creaking.
“He went to Lord Sterling’s father, demanded satisfaction, demanded that boy marry you.
The Earl laughed…actually laughed…and said his son would never stoop to marry a girl who had thrown herself at him so desperately.
He said you had torn your own dress for attention, that you had begged Lord Sterling for his kisses. That you set out to trap him.”
Heat flooded Victoria’s cheeks, shame and fury battling within her. “That is not what happened. I have told you.”
“I know what you have told me.” Her mother’s eyes, so like Victoria’s own, held sadness.
“But it does not matter what truly occurred in that garden, does it? Lord Sterling’s version is the one being repeated in every drawing room in London.
They say you pursued him relentlessly, that you engineered the entire scene.
Some even whisper that you have done this before. ”
Victoria shot to her feet, unable to remain still any longer.
She moved to the window, staring out at the street where a few carriages rolled past, their occupants safe in their unblemished reputations.
Not long ago, she might have been in one of those carriages, calling on friends, planning her future. Now that future had crumbled.
“There is one possibility,” her mother whispered.
Victoria turned, noting how her mother’s gaze darted to the door as if fearful of being overheard. “What do you mean?”
“I have heard whispers about a woman called Mrs. Dove-Lyon. She runs an establishment called the Lyon’s Den. Ostensibly a gambling house, but there are rumors of another service she provides. A matchmaking service of sorts. For women in desperate circumstances.”
“Matchmaking?” Victoria felt her stomach turn. “You mean—”
“I mean that she has ways of encouraging suitable gentlemen to offer marriage. Discreet ways. Binding ways.” Her mother twisted her wedding ring around her finger, a nervous habit that had worsened.
“Lady Fairmont’s cousin found herself in difficulties last year.
Not as severe as yours, but significant.
She visited Mrs. Dove-Lyon, and within a month, she was married to a wealthy merchant. ”
“Mother, you cannot be suggesting I—”
“What else would you have us do?” The words burst from her mother. “The ton has a short memory for small infractions, but this? This will define you forever. Define us all. Margaret is seventeen, Anne fifteen. What chances will they have with a ruined sister? What chances will any of us have?”
Victoria closed her eyes, feeling the weight of her family’s future pressing down on her. She thought of her sisters’ bright faces, their innocent excitement about their eventual debuts. And she’d have destroyed all of it because she had been foolish enough to believe a forged note.
“How would I even—”
“The blue house on Cleveland Row. Number forty-seven.” Her mother spoke quickly, as if afraid she might lose her nerve. “You would need to go veiled, of course. This evening, while your father is at his club.”
The words hung between them, an invitation to a path Victoria had never imagined taking.
She looked around the room, seeing all the small economies they practiced—the paintings sold last year, the gaps on the mantel where silver candlesticks once stood.
They were genteel poor, maintaining appearances through careful management.
But without decent marriages for the girls, even this modest comfort would eventually disappear.
“I will go,” she heard herself say, though the words seemed to come from far away.
***
Four hours later, Victoria stood before a narrow blue door on Cleveland Row, her face hidden beneath a heavy mourning veil she had borrowed from her mother’s wardrobe.
Her gloved hands trembled as she raised them to knock, the sound echoing down the quiet street.
The door opened immediately, as if someone had been watching for her arrival.
A footman in dark livery, his face carefully expressionless, led her through a dimly lit hallway that smelled of beeswax and something else, perhaps incense, or some exotic perfume.
He showed her into a small parlor decorated in shades of black and deep purple, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun.
She did not wait long. The door opened, and Mrs. Bessie Dove-Lyon entered with the grace of a queen granting an audience.
Victoria had expected someone garish or obviously mercenary.
Instead, the woman before her was draped in expensive mourning clothes, her face obscured by black lace that revealed only the pale curve of her jaw and the red slash of her lips.
“Lady Victoria Richmond.” The voice was cultured and smooth. “I wondered when you might arrive.”
“You know who I am?”
“I make it my business to know about all of society’s little disasters.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon settled into a chair, her movements precise. “Your situation has been thoroughly discussed. Lord Sterling has been most vocal about his version of events.”
Victoria’s jaw clenched. “Then you know I was the victim, not the instigator.”
“What I know and what society believes are often at odds.” The widow tilted her head, studying Victoria through her veil. “But I am not in the business of judgment. I am in the business of solutions. You require a husband. Immediately. Someone of sufficient standing to restore your reputation.”
“Yes.” The single word felt like surrender.
“My fee is one thousand pounds, plus ten percent of any marriage settlement. Everything you possess, I believe?”
Victoria’s breath caught. It was everything—her dowry and the small inheritance from her mother’s aunt. “How did you—”
“As I said, I make it my business to know.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon leaned forward slightly. “The gentleman I have in mind will participate in what I call the Riddle Challenge. Three riddles, traditional stakes. If he answers correctly, he wins five thousand pounds.”
“And if he fails, he must marry me.” Victoria’s stomach churned. “You are proposing to trap an innocent gentleman into marriage.”
“I am proposing to save your entire family from social ruin.” The widow’s voice held no sympathy, only cold practicality.
“The game is completely fair. If the gentleman is clever enough, he wins a fortune. If not, he gains a beautiful, accomplished wife who will be so grateful for salvation that she will make him an exemplary partner. Where is the harm?”
Victoria thought of her sisters, of her mother’s tears, of the sneers that followed her even veiled and hidden. “Who is the gentleman?”
“That remains to be seen. I have several candidates in mind. All men of good fortune but perhaps lacking in caution. The type who might accept a challenge after sufficient wine and in the spirit of competition.” She produced a document from a drawer. “If you agree to my terms, sign here.”
The contract was dense with legal language, but the essentials were clear. Victoria would pay everything she had for Mrs. Dove-Lyon to secure her a husband through whatever means necessary. Her hand shook as she took the pen.
“One thing troubles me,” she said, hesitating above the signature line. “What if I am condemning some good man to a life of misery? What if he never forgives me?”
“My dear girl,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s lips curved in what might have been a smile beneath her veil, “in my experience, men who gamble away their freedom rarely deserve much pity. Besides, would you rather preserve the freedom of a stranger or save your sisters from spinsterhood and poverty?”
The pen scratched across the paper, Victoria’s signature binding her to this desperate course.
As she set down the pen, something shifted inside her, innocence transforming into something harder, more calculating.
She had been forced into this position by a cruel man’s whim.
Now another man would pay the price for her salvation.
The guilt of it would haunt her, but guilt was a luxury she could no longer afford.