Chapter 1
One
“Have you not grown tired of this?”
Nelly’s words were amused, but her voice was tired. She couldn’t quite help it; she had been going along with her younger sister’s antics for months, and none of them had panned out.
Meg opened her mouth to reply, only to instead sigh and say, “Philippa, sweetie, we don’t eat grass.”
The toddler blinked enormous gray eyes at her—and then shoved a fistful of grass into her mouth regardless. Meg sighed again, more emphatically, and pulled her daughter closer to the center of the picnic blanket.
Finally, she turned her attention back to Nelly and properly replied. “I mean it this time when I say I think we’ve got the perfect match for you.”
“You’ve said that about every previous match,” Nelly reminded her dryly. “The most recent one went running—literally, he sprinted off like his backside was aflame and he had to outrun it—as soon as he realized, to his shock and horror, that I have a child.”
Meg wrinkled her nose slightly, and Nelly knew she was making a mental note to tell her husband about it.
“I promise,” Meg insisted, “this one will work out. A friend of William’s has recently inherited the Dukedom of Ashford, and he’s a bachelor.”
Nelly’s eyes narrowed slightly. There was a catch. She knew there had to be. Dukes did not agree to court unmarried mothers unless they felt they had no other options.
Meg squirmed under Nelly’s scrutiny for a moment before she admitted the truth.
“He might have lost an eye during his time in the navy. He was an admiral!” She paused, eyes drifting to the side in thought.
“Or did he lose a leg? Honestly, I can’t quite recall.
Nevertheless, it could be a promising match! ”
Nelly could feel her patience and her nerves fraying, like a corset lace that was long due to be replaced. She lifted a hand, covering her face as she collected herself. She could only imagine how much she looked like their mother just then.
“Be serious, Meg.” Her words came out sharper than she intended.
As if sensing the rising tensions, six-year-old Harriet chose that moment to skip back over, a small bouquet of flowers—weeds, admittedly—clutched in one hand.
She was lightly coated in dirt from her floral escapades, but it was nothing that wouldn’t come off with a bit of dusting.
On the whole, she had done a remarkable job of keeping herself tidy.
Tidy-ish, at any rate. Small victories.
“Mama! For you!”
Harriet thrust the fistful of flowers out to Nelly, standing just at the edge of the blanket as she did, to avoid putting her dirty shoes on it.
Nelly felt her temper cooling, and she pulled her hand away from her face to accept the flowers. “Thank you, dear,” she offered quietly, ordering the bundle of flowers and setting them down beside her.
Harriet knelt on the edge of the blanket and immediately took up the task of keeping her two-year-old cousin from eating the tiny bouquet.
When Nelly turned her attention back to Meg, her temper had cooled enough that she could properly articulate herself.
“I will meet him,” she agreed. “But,” she continued quickly, before Meg could reply, “this will be the last one.”
“But—”
“I am tired, Meg,” Nelly said. “Do you know how humiliating it is, each time they make some dubiously polite escape? How exhausting it is to have to pretend to be interested when I can tell they’re going to flee for the hills within two minutes of meeting me?”
She huffed out a dismal little laugh. “Besides, with each day that passes, Mother and Father have a harder and harder time not calling me a burden to my face. They would sooner keep Harriet and toss me by the wayside because at least then, they could pretend the story was something more respectable.”
“Mother and Father can keep their thoughts to themselves,” Meg replied, her tone getting slightly heated, though that wasn’t surprising. Meg had dealt with her own differing opinions with their parents, right up until the moment William proposed to her three years ago.
“I might leave,” Nelly admitted quietly, though in her mind it had moved from a ‘might’ to a certainty some time ago.
“London has been a nightmare, and I might like the chance to escape the prison. I think Harriet would do well in the country, too. She could have all the space to play she might want, and no one would know her story or mine.”
“We could help with that,” Meg offered quickly. “Will and me, I mean. We could help if you wish to leave the city.”
Nelly waited for a second before saying anything. As expected, Meg continued after a moment.
“Not until after the summer,” she admitted.
“The three of us will be traveling to Italy.” Absentmindedly, she reached out and stroked Philippa’s hair as she said it.
“When we return, we would be happy to help you make a new life somewhere if this final bachelor proves to be as weak-willed as all of the rest.”
Meg tipped her head to the side for a second, her expression thoughtful. “Would you like to come along with us to Italy?” she asked. “And Harriet, too, of course. We would be happy to have you; you know Will and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
It was a tempting thought, but it seemed a bit like a waste of time. If the meeting went as she assumed it would, then it would be quite a letdown to escape to a country where no one knew her name only to then have to return and still deal with the prospect of moving.
“Thank you, truly,” Nelly replied, “but I think I’ll have to pass.”
Meg looked as if she might argue for a second, but her attention was caught by something over Nelly’s shoulder before she could.
Suddenly, Philippa scrambled to her feet and made a clumsy break for it, darting off of the blanket and across the grass quickly enough that Harriet had to scoop up the tiny bouquet so it wouldn’t be trampled.
“Papa! Papa!” Philippa cried as she raced away, her arms outstretched and hands grasping. Nelly looked over her shoulder just in time to see William crouch and catch Philippa as she crashed into him. He stood back up and turned in a circle, holding Philippa out at arm’s length as she laughed.
Jealousy was an ugly feeling, and Nelly would never admit to it out loud, but at least to herself, she could not deny that she was envious.
Not of the fact that Meg had a husband; Nelly was sure that was lovely, but it was secondary to the fact that Philippa had a father to run to.
She had the one thing Nelly had not been able to give to Harriet.
“How come Philly has a papa, but I don’t have one?” Harriet asked after a moment, carefully rearranging the tiny bouquet before setting it back down. She did not sound sad or accusatory—she simply sounded curious—but the question seemed to spear Nelly through the heart all the same.
“Harriet, sweetie—” Meg tried to interrupt, but Harriet had never been one to be interrupted.
“I have a grandpa. And a mama.” She beamed up at Nelly as she said it. “But I don’t have a papa. How come?”
Nelly should answer the question. She knew that. Harriet was staring up at her, all wide eyes and earnest expectation. But Nelly could not get any words to form. It felt as if she was being suffocated, suddenly.
She could hear Meg speaking to Harriet, but she wasn’t entirely sure what she was saying. She felt as if she was moving through a dream as she got to her feet.
She knew Jane and Amy—Meg and Nelly’s personal maids—had been nearby, but she did not recall calling Jane back to her.
She did not recall calling for a carriage, either, but when the dream-like haze of the world cleared once again, she was sitting in a carriage with Jane, uncertain where the carriage was going as it rattled along.
It wasn’t entirely a surprise when the carriage pulled to a halt outside the church. It was the same church in which Meg and William had been married three years prior, and the same church Nelly had gone to for comfort many times over the last few years.
“Wait here, please,” she murmured to Jane as she disembarked from the carriage, scarcely even aware of the driver as he offered her a hand down.
She made her way inside the church. It was quiet inside, thankfully. It was the middle of a weekday, after all; it was a rare time for mass to be held.
Nelly made her way to the rearmost pew and dropped herself into it. She leaned forward, her elbows balanced on her knees, and dropped her face into her hands.
For a long moment, she stayed like that, refusing to move. The roof of the church could have caved in around her, and she was certain she wouldn’t even notice.
At last, though, she finally dragged her hands down her face and leaned back in the pew. She stared up at the ceiling, fighting back tears.
“Forgive me, Father.” The words escaped unbidden. “I have sinned, and I don’t know how to change it or fix it.” She squeezed her eyes closed, determined not to cry. Her problem was of her own making, after all. It was hers to shoulder, not to cry over.
“My daughter deserves the world, but I can’t give her that. The least she deserves is a father who can take care of her and see that she wants for nothing,” Nelly murmured.
“Harriet is everything to me,” she continued after a moment, opening her eyes and staring ahead at the altar. “I would pull the stars from the sky and give them to her as a necklace if I could. But how can I dream of something so absurd when I can’t even give her a father?”
She laughed bitterly and dragged the side of her hand over one eye and then the other.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough, I find that I miss it, sometimes.
The touch of a man. The last time I felt it, it was a disgrace, and it left me ruined and without a husband, and left my child without a father.
I have no right to crave it. But here I am. ”
If she had anything else to say after that, it dried up and evaporated when she heard a sound behind her. It was the scuff of a heavy boot on a stone floor.