Chapter One
“That it should come to this.” Madame Moisenay heaved a dramatic sigh, lifting the back of a pale, ladylike hand to her pale, powdered forehead.
“That my daughter, at the advanced age of twenty-two, should have no offers for her hand! Not one suitor who has come up to the mark, in three years of my most concerted efforts.”
Madelina Moisenay, the object of this reproof, continued with her Yuletide decorations, tucking tiny pinecones and mistletoe berries among the boughs that twined the marble mantelpiece.
She had heard this lament many times before—twice already this day, in fact—and was accustomed to being a disappointment to her parent.
“I am only twenty-one, Maman. So there may yet be time,” she said mildly.
Maman had born Modestine Millford of Woughton on the Green, but in marrying a French émigré had affected many French ways, like how she instructed her children to address her.
“I confess I am eager to catch sight of the new Lord Warin,” said Madelina’s aunt, who had been bred from birth with all the French graces that Madame Moisenay strove to mimic. “They say he makes quite an impression.”
Madame frowned. “Victoire, he is a complete and qualified roué. You cannot imagine the trouble Agnes has had with him. He would be a handful for the most dashing of women, which you must admit our Madelina is not.”
Madelina felt the eyes of the others—her mother, her two aunts, and her younger sister—resting on her in evaluation. It stung, though she would not let this show.
“I am too plain to interest a connoisseur,” she agreed, keeping her voice even.
“Hair: brown.” Though she quite liked her shade, the color of black walnuts, and her locks were moreover thick and glossy without the help of Aunt Hermione’s oils.
“Eyes, a blue-gray that cannot make up its mind,” she went on.
“Complexion: prone to pink in the sun. Manner…” She paused.
Maman raised her finely arched eyebrows. “Insolent?”
“Independent.” Tante Victoire shook her head.
“I think Lina is quite handsome,” her younger sister, Georgette, said loyally.
“But that posture.” Aunt Hermione sniffed. “You certainly were looking to Warin house, sister, when you came on the market all those years ago.”
“I was only a handful of years older than Bartholomew.” Maman nodded without shame. “He would have benefited from my guiding hand. And had I married an English peer, I’ve no doubt you would have put on more airs than I did, Hermionie.”
“Sister, no one puts on more airs than you,” Aunt Hermione said. “Two more pinecones on the far end, child, to be symmetrical. I do adore that scent.”
“I am glad you didn’t marry Barty. Saved me having to challenge him to a duel to steal you away. What a scandal that would have been, non?”
Madelina’s papa, étienne de Moisenay, the Vicomte Vallon, strode into the parlor in his Christmas finery, a splendid satin waistcoat embroidered in silver and a black ribbon in the queue of his small white wig.
He crossed the room to drop a kiss on his wife’s upturned cheek.
“Better that your families remained friends, I think?”
“Yes, so she could marry a French vicomte and still order Barty’s life,” Hermione remarked.
“You are not still thinking he would have married you, Hermione,” Maman scoffed. “Men are beguiled by grace and beauty. I suppose that is why Madelina cannot seem to interest anyone.”
With a sour look, Aunt Hermione set her ear trumpet beside her, indication she intended to ignore the conversation for the nonce. Madelina paused to let the barb fall from her, then continued with her task.
“You did invite him to our dinner, my love?” Madame de Moisenay implored her husband.
“The new Lord Warin, I mean. Of course he is in mourning, but it is only our little party, and he will wish to be welcomed home after so much time on the Continent.” She cast a meaningful glance at her elder daughter.
“Best to begin airing the local maidens on a small scale.” Madelina nodded. “Before his lordship stumbles into the full force of the Season and becomes overwhelmed.”
She was surprised how much it would hurt to speak blithely of Garrick courting, or marrying, another. She sat and busied herself twisting ivy about the kissing bough.
“That lad oughtn’t be allowed near maidens, from what I’ve heard,” Papa said. “Must I read you the lecture, louloutte?”
“No need, Papa. I have done well enough frightening off suitors these past three years, I believe I can be trusted to drive away one impudent rogue.”
Maman threw her hands into the air. “You see how she plagues me! I must have the patience of a saint.”
“It is a bit unfeeling, don’t you think?” Madelina concentrated on tucking mistletoe into the kissing bough without dislodging the apples tied to the wooden frame. “Barty has barely been gone two months and now Garrick is Warin in his stead, replacing him as if he never existed.”
Her mother frowned. “It is the way things are done, Madelina.”
“He is carrying on the line, louloutte, which is what your brother should be doing,” her father said.
“Yes,” Madelina said with the bleakness that accompanied any mention of her brother. “Constantin should be here.”
And he wasn’t.
The door knocker sounded, and all the ladies came to strict attention, heads swiveling toward the open portal as if their guest might materialize within it.
Madelina realized she was crushing the clutch of mistletoe and forced her hands to relax before she left red stains everywhere.
She wondered he would recognize her, now fully a woman.
Five years of age lay between them, years that were an epoch between a boy of twelve, enrolled at the Royal Latin School, and a curious girl of seven, who thought him the most interesting person in the parish and followed him about everywhere.
Garrick Lockram, back in Woughton on the Green, had been an untidy boy with the most unruly thick black hair, a dark slash of eyebrows, and a gangly form, his bones too big for his body and not always obedient to his will.
Most of all Madelina remembered the odd sort of whoosh in her head when his large dark eyes fixed on her.
There was such quickness in his eyes, such intelligence.
She’d always felt that, in an instant, he assessed her abilities and found her lacking.
But then he would say, “Oh, come along then,” and allow her to accompany him on whatever masculine business he was about, whether it was catching frogs or fishing along the River Ouzel, climbing stiles to torment the sheep on the Glebe Farm, or poking about the remains of their Anglo-Saxon forebears in the cemetery at Old Wolverton.
There must have been others with them, his brothers or hers, other boys from the parish, perhaps the gamekeeper’s boy or a young groom. But only Garrick stood out in her mind.
One summer they made a pet of a great spotted woodpecker they found injured in Wavendon Wood. Another they spent unearthing broken pottery in the fields at Monkston, remnants of the former industry of the former tenants who owned the Warin lands before Henry VIII decided he wanted them.
Then there was the fall they found a crude bracelet of some dull metal Garrick insisted was gold.
He’d claimed he would sell it, become fabulously wealthy, and travel the world to the tip of Africa and the Far Orient.
Madelina had immediately and vigorously staked a claim to part of the bracelet, since she had assisted in its unearthing and she too wanted to see the tip of Africa and the Far Orient.
But Garrick had taken the bracelet and young Madelina’s heart, carelessly, effortlessly, and never thought to return either.
It had taken her many years, and some hard lessons, to mature into the knowledge that reckless youths grew up to become reckless men.
While sensible if curious girls grew up to be young women who, if still curious, were more practiced in the art of good sense and would not go about casting their tender hearts after unsuitable subjects.
She would be courteous, no more.
She would ask him outright for the information she sought. And if he were not forthcoming—which she expected he would not be—well, she was sensible, after all. She would find what she needed for herself.
The door opened, and Mrs. Agnes Lockram, the widow of Philemon Lockram, Esq., entered. Alone.
Revolution in France had not impinged on Mrs. Lockram’s ability to procure the latest Parisian fashions.
She wore a lavender robe with full-length sleeves over a rustling petticoat of buttery yellow, and the sheer white buffont tucked over her breasts was starched enough to hold its own shape, giving her the silhouette of a pouter pigeon.
Next to her, Madelina felt girlish in her simple white round gown sprigged with red apples, the only accents the frill of lace at her neckline and a belt of wide red ribbon that cinched her waist.
“So good of you to have me to dine with you en famille, Modestine,” Agnes said grandly, kissing the air on either side of her hostess’s cheek.
“I had so many invitations I was simply beside myself, and then I thought, what could be more pleasant than a small dinner practically in the bosom of family, to savor a moment of quiet in the round of festivities? I swear I have been wearing holes in my slippers with the endless number of entertainments I am urged to attend. But you know how it is, my dear.”
Madelina tucked away a smile of amusement.
Agnes never ceased boasting she was wearied of her constant round of amusements while determined not to miss a single event.
And, because Agnes had born a baron’s daughter rather than to the St. Mary’s rectory next door to the Manor, Agnes always managed to remind Maman of her inferior social status even while granting her the status of favored confidante.