Chapter 1
MORNING PAPER
“Primrose!”
For Primrose, her mother’s voice was as if it was coming from somewhere far away, as if she was submerged in water and someone was calling her from the shore while she was helplessly drowning. Primrose couldn’t focus.
Not on her mother looking for her through the manor, not the sheet of paper she was holding in her hands.
This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.
And yet it was clear as day. And as it seems, it was clear not only to her, but to the whole of the ton. “This letter found its way to the drawing rooms of prominent families”. The words echoed with the inevitability of a death sentence.
“Primrose!”
Her mother entered the drawing room, stomping like a petulant child, waving the same sheet that Prim was holding.
“What is this?”
It wasn’t an actual question, so Prim didn’t feel the need to answer that.
She had a simple answer to that question, nonetheless.
Because what was written about her, even if she was cited a “Miss P.J.”, was nothing sort of a lie.
A brazen, blatant lie. Even that answer was not the solution to the enormous problem that arose from that sheet of paper.
Whether it was true or a lie mattered little when it came to the ton. The only thing that mattered was the sensation a rumor caused, and a private missive between forbidden lovers is a guaranteed hook that will have the ton lap this story up.
So, the only real questions for Prim were who would do such a thing, deliberately printing such an ostentatious lie. And most importantly, and in a way scarier, why would one do so?
“I am talking to you, Primrose!”
“You are not talking to me,” Primrose said dryly, mainly from mental exhaustion. “You are yelling at me.”
“I am terribly sorry for not keeping my composure while I am informed that my daughter has a secret affair with the infamous Duke of Mildenhall, before I even had my tea.”
“Then perhaps,” Prim murmured, “it would be wise to wait until after you have had your tea to read the scandal sheets.”
“Primrose!”
Prim sighed and set the sheet on the little table right next to her armchair. She stood up to explain herself, but didn’t get the chance. Her father walked in, a deep scowl on his already red face. He eyed her with disapproving disbelief.
“What did you do, Primrose?”
“I…” Prim tried.
“Do you have any idea what this,” he slapped the sheet with the back of his hand, “will do to us? What would it mean to your mother and me?”
Prim scowled. That was what they were worried about? What would it do to their reputation? They didn’t even pause to think about what all of this would mean for her? How it would cling to her, follow her, whispered behind fans and gloved hands?
And granted, Prim herself had little regard for her own reputation.
But did her own parents stop to think what this rumor would do to her sisters?
How would it ruin their prospects in the same Season they are debuting?
Their chances were ruined before they had the chance to entertain even the idea of entering the marriage mart.
As if summoned by her worry, Camilla and Myrtle walked into the drawing room, their arms entwined the same way they must have been in the womb of their mother. The twins looked at her with so much emotion. Prim felt relieved that none of those emotions were judgment.
“You ruined us!” Her mother’s accusation, spoken with that soft voice of hers, landed somewhere in Prim’s stomach.
“Mother-” Prim tried again.
“How could you fall into the traps of such a man!” Her father huffed and took a step toward her. “How can your mother and I show our faces anywhere this Season?”
Prim looked down and took a deep breath.
It seemed that her father and mother thought that she was capable of doing what the sheet claimed.
That she would seduce a Duke, offering herself to him, to the point he would call her my rose, a title that alluded to intimacy beyond mere batting eyelashes and fleeting touches.
“Prim would never!” Her sisters ran to her side in seconds.
“Go to your room, girls!” Their mother ordered. “This has nothing to do with you!”
“Please,” Prim tried.
“This is outrageous,” her mother paced till she resorted to stand by her husband. “The Campbell ball is tonight! We can’t possibly attend after… How could you do this?”
The Campbell ball? Before them stood their three daughters, their reputation in ruins, and all they cared about was how they couldn’t mingle in the Campbell Estate.
“It is an utter disaster!” her father flailed in despair. “A devastating blow. Our name dragged in such a nasty business.”
Camilla and Myrtle flanked her, and now their arms were around Prim’s, a silent support that Prim cherished.
“This can’t be true,” the twins insisted, looking at Prim with unwavering care.
Prim’s heart tightened. At least her sisters knew her heart well enough to instantly know that Prim was incapable of doing such a thing. It consoled her a little and gave her the strength she finally needed to speak up.
“It’s a lie!” Prim straightened her spine.
Her parents looked at her. They studied her face and then looked at each other. They seemed to be having a silent conversation like secret co-conspirators. They glanced back at Prim as if they were just adding her previous well-mannered behavior into account.
“Well,” her mother said without looking at Prim. “We are listening.”
“I have nothing to add, Mother, other than that this,” she points at the discarded sheet, “is nothing but lies, top to bottom.”
“So,” her father squinted at her, “you were not… intimate with the Duke.”
“Of course not!”
Prim felt the humiliation of hearing the accusation uttered deep in her bones. All her life, she carried the burden of being the first, precious daughter of the Viscount of Pembroke. Her every move was measured and thought of to avoid exactly what she was experiencing right in this minute.
And yet, her own parents knew her so little that they would easily think that she would go as far as to get entangled with a man. And not just any man. The Duke of Mildenhall of all people.
“I…” her father uttered. “We believe you. You didn’t concoct some seductive scheme to snare the Duke.”
“Father,” Camilla speaks up. “I am sure Prim would never try such a devious scheme. This is our Prim we are talking about.”
The gentle reminder coming from the mouth of a young lady barely out of her leading strings made the truth starker. Vernon and Sarah Jenkins, the Viscount and Viscountess of Pembroke, Prim’s own father and mother, didn’t really know their own daughter.
“I see,” her mother softened. “Such outrageous lies.”
“Preposterous,” her father echoed.
Prim took a deep breath. Now she could focus on the real problem instead of fighting her own parents to persuade them of her innocence.
“But then,” her mother tilted her head and looked at Prim, “who would circulate such a lie and expose you?”
“I…” Prim was ready to argue the same thing.
“Oh no, Prim,” her father shook his head. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Prim frowned again as both of them looked at her, their eyes dripping suspicion. They wouldn’t assume that she was… Moments ago, she was relieved that they agreed that her virtue remains intact, and now they were openly implying…
“Why would you conceive such a risky strategy, Prim?” both accused.
“Mother,” Prim tightened her jaw, “what is it exactly that you are saying?”
“We are simply asking if you wrote something like this,” her father said with a straight face.
“You think I wrote this?”
“Who else would?” her father shrugged.
“Why did you do that, Primrose?” Her mother added. “For some attention?”
The simmering flames of anger that Primrose has managed to keep in check roared. Her shoulders squared, her jaw tightened, and she dug her nails into her palms, desperately trying to contain the volcano that was threatening to erupt. This went too far.
It was one thing to allege that she was entangled in a scandal with a man.
But somehow, to have them think that she would deliberately expose herself in such a way is way worse.
Her own mother and father didn’t even pause to think before accusing her that she fabricated such a ruinous lie just to gain the spotlight.
They thought that she was reckless and inconsiderate. That she wouldn’t hesitate to drag her name, her family’s name and most importantly, her own sisters’ name through the mud for what exactly? Exposure? A moment of notoriety?
“I think I spoke too hastily before,” Prim said, her tone icy. “I said the article was a lie, top to bottom.”
Her parents shifted uneasily, sensing the shift in her posture.
“But the sheet spoke some truths.”
“Primrose,” her father warned.
“Especially talking about your devious plans to marry me off in trade for money and station.”
“Enough!” Her mother stepped closer.
“You believe that I would leak such things about my person, for personal gain, because this is something that you would do.”
“I said enough!”
Her mother’s hand rose and fell on her cheek once with force. Prim’s head snapped to the side, the sting blooming hot and immediate. Her ears rang. Her cheek burned. Her neck throbbed with the echo of the blow.
Her sisters whimpered, and for a single frozen moment, the entire room seemed to stop breathing.
“Prim,” her mother closed the distance.
Still in shock, Prim felt her mother’s arms around her.
The embrace warmed her cold body. Prim noted with a pang of disappointment the way her heart leapt.
Neither of her parents was ever cruel, but they were never warm either.
Being hugged by someone other than her younger sisters was a rare occasion.
“I am so sorry, Prim,” her mother apologised. “The sheet… The consequences. We are all at our wits’ end.”
“Well, well, well,” the Viscount tutted. “There is not much we can do now. All that we can actually do is wait.”
“Wait?” Prim looked up in shock.
She gazed upon her sisters holding each other. The Season was in full bloom. Camilla and Myrtle had just started to get noticed. This was their chance, their debut. And they would sit around and wait?
“Father, what do you hope to wait for?”
Her father looked out the window at the carriages passing. His look was resolved and weirdly calm. He had a plan. Prim knew that look.
“We are waiting for the Duke.”
The twins jumped up in shock.
“You’re right, dear,” her mother said eagerly, leaving Prim’s side. “The Duke will certainly come.”
“Of course he will,” the Viscount echoed, nodding. “This is a matter that will require delicate resolving.”
Prim watched in dawning horror as the cogs in their minds began to turn. Whatever warmth she had felt evaporated in an instant.
“Who knows?” her mother added, rubbing her hands together like a scheming villainess. “He may even come to arrange the simplest of solutions.”
Cold sweat slid down Prim’s spine.
“Marriage!” her father declared, eyes gleaming.
Prim looked out the window as if actually expecting the next passing carriage to procure the Duke with flowers and a vicar in tow.
“I’ll be in my study,” her father announced.
“I’ll instruct the kitchen.”
And just like that, the Jenkins sisters were left alone in the ironically sunny drawing room. For a few moments, all three are stunned. This was a Tuesday morning no one saw coming.
Prim was the first one to snap out of it.
She let herself fall back in her armchair, still staring out the window.
Her sisters sat right across her on the little sofa.
Tea was brought in, but her mother was still managing the household and probably changing in something more appropriate to receive a Duke.
“Do you think he is really coming?” Myrtle spoke for the first time. “Prim?”
Prim poured some fresh tea and pretended to drink to occupy her running mind and trembling hands. There were two completely new questions that burdened her now. Was the Duke really coming? And did she want him to?
“They say,” Camilla hesitated, but her youthful enthusiasm won. “They say the Duke is very charming.”
Prim’s eyes snapped to Camilla. The girl has taken her sister’s hand in hers, and she practically shook from excitement.
“They say he is dangerous,” Myrtle said.
“Well, he is a complete rake,” Camilla whispered.
“Mrs. Ellingham claims he once wagered he could make the sternest dowager in London blush.”
“He won,” Camilla whispered. “Twice.”
Prim’s fingers tightened around the delicate china. She was mentally preparing herself to go up against a dangerous, scandalous, admired, feared, and entirely impossible rake. Excellent. The writer of incredulous lies could have picked anyone else to falsely pair her with.
Prim looked out the window as the streetlamps were being lit one by one, each tiny flame marking the slow death of daylight, and of her hopes.
The family sat scattered about the drawing room like forgotten chess pieces after a losing game.
No one spoke. The silence was so sharp that every soft clink of a spoon against porcelain made Prim flinch.
Hours passed. Slow, agonising hours. Every knock, every rolling carriage wheel, every pair of heavy footsteps echoing along the pavement outside sent her nerves jerking to attention. But the truth crept in, cold and undeniable.
The Duke was not coming.
“The Duke,” her mother murmured at last, clasping her hands with false serenity, “must be terribly busy. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“I think,” her father added, clearing his throat with all the dignity of a man avoiding utter humiliation, “that it would be prudent to send you to your Aunt Ellie for a while. Just until this all…dies down.”
“Father!” the twins protested in unison.
Prim bit the side of her lower lip with her teeth, an old, familiar habit she fell back on when cornered. Actually, Auntie Ellie lived in a lovely countryside villa and allowed Prim everything as long as they shared romance novels after dinner. Prim wouldn’t mind the vacation.
But leaving now meant leaving her sisters alone with their image-perfectionist mother and their reputation-obsessed father. And Prim wasn’t cruel enough to abandon them to that.
“We will discuss it tomorrow,” her father declared, already marching toward the door, her mother sweeping after him like a ship caught in his wake.
The instant the adults vanished, Camilla and Myrtle rushed to her. They sank onto the carpet at her feet, clutching her hands tightly, their faces full of worry.
“Oh, Prim,” they whispered, full of sisterly heartbreak. “They can’t send you away. Not in the middle of the Season.”
Prim inhaled slowly, letting the fear settle into something sharper, steadier. Her jaw tightened. Her chin lifted.
“Don’t worry, girls,” Prim said, her voice low with newly forged steel. “I have a plan.”