Chapter Three
“I know Sir Jansen is a decorated war hero,” said Serendipity, the eldest of the Broadmere flock of sisters, “but that does not mean he is suitable to be your husband.” She sat taller as her maid worked to remove the evening’s jewelry from around her neck.
“And do not accuse me of prejudice just because he is landed gentry and not nobility. I simply feel you could do better.”
“I did not ask your opinion of Sir Jansen; I merely told you I had agreed to court him and needed a way out of that agreement. Did you miss that part, or are you simply not listening?” Joy paced the perimeter of the sisters’ large, shared dressing room, ready to pinch Serendipity if she didn’t get down off her high horse and offer some useful advice.
She paused in her pacing long enough to pin her sister with a narrow-eyed glare.
“And anyone who says, Do not accuse me of prejudice usually reeks of it.”
“Here.” Felicity, next to the youngest and ever the peacemaker, who believed that either tea or food fixed any situation, held out a cup and a small platter of biscuits. “My newest recipe. They’re perfect for nighttime relaxation and calming sleep.”
“Laced them with laudanum, did you?” asked Merry, the youngest Abarough sister.
Felicity rolled her eyes and ignored her sibling’s teasing. She shoved the tea and biscuits into Joy’s hands. “There is no laudanum. I promise. Only lemon and lavender in the biscuits and chamomile tea.”
“Have we no brandy?” Joy asked. “This is truly an evening for brandy—or possibly whisky.”
“How did this arrangement come to pass?” Serendipity rose from the dressing table chair and bore down on Joy. “What sort of bet did you finally lose? I missed that part, you were talking so fast. How many times have I warned you that your gambling would someday be your demise?”
“I am far from dead.”
“Maybe so,” Serendipity said, “but from where I stand, your freedom appears to be toddling on its last legs.” She frowned while tipping her head to one side. “Or do you love him? I have seen you eyeing Sir Jansen whenever he’s on the dance floor with another.”
“I do not love him.” At least, Joy didn’t think she did.
Maybe she was talking with the wrong sisters.
Blessing, Fortuity, and Grace had more experience in these catastrophic matters than Serendipity, Felicity, and Merry.
Joy bit into a cookie, cringed at the cloyingly sweet—yet acidic—flavor, then spat the bite into her teacup.
“Oh, Felicity. I am sorry, but this is not one of your better efforts.”
Her sister gave a sympathetic nod. “I know. But I didn’t want to waste them by throwing them out, so I thought to try them on you rather than the servants. It seemed unkind to force them on the help.”
“Thank you ever so much.” Joy glared at her sister, whom she knew could usually bake better than any cook alive. “I shall remember your kindness when next we find ourselves in the country close to a pond filled with frogs.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Blessing taught me well.” Joy envisioned Felicity stripping back the covers of her bed and discovering it filled with slimy green visitors. “Now, could one of you please tell me how I can extricate myself from this situation?”
“Tell him no,” Merry said. “He is a knight. He won’t force his attentions on you.”
“I cannot do that, remember? He said he would tell everyone about our compromising card game in the library and force me into a marriage of convenience.”
“I warned you about gambling,” Serendipity said in an annoyingly singsong way. “You cannot win at every hand of cards or roll of the dice and shouldn’t be foolish enough to expect to. You usually play for money. What on earth possessed you to play for the right to be courted?”
“I didn’t play for the right to be courted. I played for the right to be kissed.”
All three sisters stared at her with their mouths agape. Serendipity was the first to recover. “You didn’t.”
“I always pay my debts.”
“How was it?” Felicity whispered, inching closer with excited anticipation.
“Oh my, did he embrace you against that broad chest of his? Crush your bosoms against his rock-hard muscles?” Merry folded her hands and closed her eyes, lost in her fantasy.
“Merry!” Serendipity scolded. “No more of Fortuity’s books for you!”
Merry opened her eyes and wrinkled her nose at her sister. “Do not be a hypocrite. I know where you hide your scandalous books, remember?”
“Do any of you possess any useful suggestions at all? Or have I wasted this confessional?” Joy shook her head.
“I should have saved it for Blessing or Fortuity, since Gracie’s in the country.
” Thoroughly frustrated and on the verge of panic, she threw up her hands.
“I have to think of something before Chance gets wind of this and has the banns read! He’ll have me married off before the month is out. ”
Serendipity puckered a thoughtful frown. “Maybe not. He wants you married, but I am sure he’d prefer nobility. You know he was never too keen on Thorne until he got to know him.”
“Thorne is a baron. That is nobility, and Blessing loves him. Chance didn’t like him because Thorne was an unrepentant rake before he fell in love.
” Joy rubbed her forehead, wishing the pounding ache would cease.
The entire evening had been a terrible disaster.
She’d lost at a hand of cards, lost a kiss, and very possibly lost her heart, and could lose so much more because of it.
She wasn’t one of those swooning debutantes with an empty head, a marriage-minded mama, and aspirations of gaining Society’s envy.
She didn’t want anyone’s envy. She wanted her freedom, her personal gambling hell, and eventually marriage and all the responsibilities that went with it. At a later date—much later.
Someone tapped on the bedchamber door, then called out loud enough to be heard in the dressing room. “My ladies.” It was Mrs. Flackney, the housekeeper. “His Grace wishes to see you before you retire for the evening.”
“We are already retired,” Joy lied. She was not in the mood to deal with Chance.
“His Grace gave his word that the meeting would be brief.”
“His Grace is a liar,” Joy said. “Tell him the flock declines his invitation.”
“We are coming,” Serendipity called out as she grabbed Joy by the wrist and dragged her along. “Ignore Joy. She is in a mood. Tell His Grace the flock will be with him shortly.”
“Tell His Grace to kiss a frog,” Joy muttered.
“What is it with you and frogs this evening?” Serendipity tugged harder, picking up the pace. “Come along, Merry and Felicity. You are to come too. You heard Mrs. Flackney. Dear brother requested the entire flock.”
A pair of groans echoed behind them. Merry and Felicity disliked Chance’s meetings after every soiree as much as Joy did.
By the time they reached the smaller of their townhouse’s two parlors, Joy felt in rare form and was ready. Depending on what Chance had seen, heard, and surmised, this meeting was destined to be rocky from the outset, and she would make him regret not waiting until another time.
He stood in his usual place in front of the hearth and had already lined up four chairs as if preparing to deliver a sermon.
Joy fixed him with her most ferocious glare. He can deliver his sermon straight to the devil.
He glared right back at her, his usually dark-blue eyes already flashing to a deep amethyst—a sure sign that he’d gotten wind of her escapades this evening and was not at all pleased. Well, good on him. She wasn’t pleased either.
“Do you have something you wish to share, Joy?” he asked.
“No.”
“No?”
She huffed. “You do know what the word means, do you not, brother?”
He resettled his stance, shifting his large frame in place as if hunkering down for battle.
He’d always done that as a child as well, but it had never worked.
The sisters still managed to band together, and either pushed him out of trees or into ponds to pay him back for whatever mischief he’d wreaked upon them.
But there were only four sisters to wage war against him now.
As each sister was married off, the odds turned in Chance’s favor.
“I forbid you to court Sir Jansen Winterstone.”
Joy laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I am of age, darling brother. You cannot forbid me anything.” Why had she said that?
Chance forbidding her was the escape clause she needed.
After all, as a dutiful, loving sister, she could never in good conscience marry without his blessing.
Of course, Sir Jansen could still counter with the scandalous library tête-à-tête and force the need for a marriage of convenience.
Merry nudged her in the ribs and whispered, “I thought you wanted out of this?”
“Do you have something to share with the rest of us, Merry?” Chance asked.
“Stop trying to guilt us like our French tutor. It makes you even more ridiculous.” Merry jutted her chin higher, a silent challenge for a solo battle with her brother. Joy had never loved her youngest sister more.
Chance rolled his eyes, then turned his attention back to Joy. “Legal age of consent or not, I shall not give my blessing to a union with a member of the gentry. You deserve better.”
She deserved to be left alone so she could figure a way out of this herself, and Chance’s forbidding her to do something simply made her wish to do it even more. Anything daring and forbidden always tempted her and always would.
“And I have heard rumblings about your book club,” he said, but his expression betrayed that he didn’t know anything at all. Chance was bluffing, fishing for information.
“Have you now?” She shrugged. “We meet every Tuesday afternoon at Bankerton’s Books and Bibelots to discuss the week’s most scandalous selection we chose to read.”
“Perhaps I should drop in sometime.”