Chapter 1
Chapter One
“Why am I not surprised?”
The very last thing that Lavinia wanted to hear while she was enjoying her quiet time to herself, was Barnaby’s voice. In fact, there was nothing that promised to ruin her whole day like hearing her cousin speak.
If Lavinia was being honest with herself, there was not a single time when she had endured the sound of her cousin’s voice for longer than a moment and had anything positive happen as a result of his presence.
“Do you not have anything better to do, sewing perhaps or whatever other practical thing ladies do?” Barnaby drawled, eyeing the book in her hand like it was something foul or infectious.
Lavinia’s hands curled more tightly around the beloved open book in her lap.
She wanted to pretend, if only for another moment, that if she pretended, she could not hear Barnaby, that somehow she would be sucked into the book in her hands that she clung to so desperately.
If only such a thing were possible, then it would be such an easy solution to the majority of her present problems.
But luck had never been kind to her, and it apparently had no desire to start being kind now, either.
“Reading is practical, cousin,” Lavinia sighed as Barnaby rounded the corner, his beady brown eyes narrowing with unveiled annoyance when he spotted her reading, curled up in her armchair, again.
All things that he wished she would cease doing.
In Lavinia’s opinion, Barnaby would be perfectly happy with keeping her locked away in her room until such a point in time when he wanted to parade her around all of his friends and tell stories about how he had rescued her and other nonsensical falsehoods. “Why are you surprised?”
Barnaby had inherited her father’s Viscount title when her father had passed two years ago. It had been a very explicit instruction listed in his will that Lavinia was to stay here at Creswell Estate until such a time as she chose to take a husband.
She was allowed to have a home here for as long as she desired, and there would be funds allocated in the will for her upkeep and needs until she found a husband.
But, Barnaby and she had never been particularly close with one another, and it was a rift between them that had only gotten larger and larger with age.
“Every day, I wake up and hope that today will be the day that you pull your nose from those dusty tomes and decide to be a proper lady, but every day, I am disappointed,” Barnaby hissed and stopped the moment that he was slapped upside the back of his head by a woman barely taller than half his height.
He flinched, leaning forward and rubbing at the back of his head, but Lavinia did not even have the time to be offended or pleased because the moment that she realized who it was that had slapped her cousin, excitement overwhelmed her.
Joy to the point that her book fell clean from her lap and clattered onto the floor, not seeming to care that she had just wholly lost her place in what she was reading as Lavinia nearly leapt out of her armchair.
“… typical,” Barnaby muttered mostly under his breath as Lavinia wrapped her arms around her godmother.
Lady Verimore was one of her favorite people.
As Lavinia’s list of favorite people was impossibly short, it was also a very exclusive honor to be considered.
She was on her feet at once, snapping her book shut and crossing the room over to where her godmother stood, looking rightly proud of herself.
“Oh! Lady Verimore! How lovely it is to see you!” Lavinia grabbed her godmother’s hands and pulled her close, the two women kissing the air on either side of their cheeks in greeting. “It has been far, far too long!”
Barnaby rolled his eyes. “Oh, for her you rise from the chair.”
“Well, I like her,” Lavinia answered without even glancing at her cousin. It was better that way for both of them. “I have missed you so dearly, Lady Verimore.”
Her godmother smiled. “I have been overdue for a visit; there is certainly no denying that. I hope that you shall forgive me for being absent.”
“Only this once,” Lavinia teased. “What brings you here to visit with us?”
“Can I not come to call upon my goddaughter? Besides, I knew that this one had likely been running amuck and was in need of some corralling,” she answered, gesturing with far more fondness toward Barnaby than Lavinia ever did.
“I was hoping to see you finally enter into your first season; we can both agree that you are most overdue.”
Lavinia huffed and was sorely tempted to sink right back down onto her seat. Marriage was the absolute last thing that she wanted to talk about. Just the prospect was likely to give her hives.
“Yes!” Barnaby said with a huff. “I am very pleased that you agree with the same sentiment that I have been expressing for quite some time now! I have told her over and over again that it is high time for her to find a husband!”
Lavinia sighed and pulled away from her godmother so that she could cross her arms over her chest. “You only wish for me to be married so that you can be rid of me. You do not actually care who I marry or if I have a husband. If I were to agree to leave this house today, you would stop pestering me.”
Barnaby huffed and blustered and shook his head in an attempt to deny the claims that they both knew were true.
She spent so much of her time in the library on her own for a reason.
It was certainly her intention to stay out from his eyeshot; she tried to keep to herself so that these conversations would become fewer and further between.
“I know that it can be intimidating to finally enter society, most of all when you have delayed so much longer than your peers, but I am happy to support you on this journey,” Lady Verimore announced wholeheartedly.
“You are missing my point entirely, the both of you,” Lavinia insisted.
There was almost nothing that she could stand more than being ignored.
She had so little control over her life in the years since her father passed, and she would not allow yet another thing to be taken from her.
This was something that she could control, and she would not be married off like some prize broodmare.
“You have taken advantage of my kindness and hospitality for far too long as it is!” Barnaby pouted.
“Is that what you think that I have been doing?” Lavinia gasped incredulously. “This is my home! I was born here! If anyone is being intrusive, it is you!”
Lady Verimore interrupted with a sigh. “That is quite enough of your quarreling. I do not have the time for such nonsense. I have lived a long time, and I intend to only spend the last of my years doing things that I enjoy. If you believe that listening to your bickering is one of those things, you are sorely mistaken.”
Lavinia pulled out the card that she had been using against her cousin for these last two years. “My grief is still far too fresh to even consider such things.”
She glanced down to the black mourning dress that she still wore.
Barnaby was foolish enough to think that there was no end to an ‘acceptable’ period of mourning, but it was her father who had passed instead of a husband, so she would not be able to keep claiming the same excuses.
Her godmother was likely to not be so easily swayed.
“You have been a financial burden for some time now. Your mourning period has long since passed.”
“A burden on the money that my father left you specifically for my care, you mean? A burden in my own home with my own allocated funds?” Lavinia pointed out bitterly.
“I curse the day that you were allowed to learn to read. I curse that every day. I hope you know that,” Barnaby scoffed, gritting his teeth.
Lavinia was sorely tempted to laugh in his face.
He might not have wished for her to have seen all of those documents with her father’s signature on them, but she had.
He could not undo it, and he certainly could not harm those documents in any way shape or form as they were his legal claim as well.
“And if I were not here to help you in running and growing the estate, then what would you do? How can you stand here and claim that I am a burden when I have saved you money and made the estate far more efficient.”
This was an argument that they had had many times before and were very likely to have many more times to come.
Lady Verimore sighed and snapped her fingers at the two bickering adults.
It was an act of self-preservation on both Lavinia and Barnaby’s parts that they stopped talking when they were told to.
“I am not a fan of repeating myself. I have said that I shall support your season, and that is what I intend to do.”
Barnaby smirked, thinking that she was taking his side.
“Lord Millington, give us the room,” she asked with as much patience as she could muster, and her tone left absolutely no room for argument.
He seemed upset about being ordered about in his own estate, but as he did with most things, he backed down and did as he was told.
He was all bark and almost no bite. As annoying as Lavinia tended to find her cousin, she knew that he was mostly harmless in his comments and threats, and that alone made him somewhat tolerable.
The women both waited until the door to the library clicked shut once more before speaking again.
Lavinia would not have put it past her cousin to be at the door with his ear pressed up against the wood as he strained to hear whatever they were talking about.
Because of this, she spoke softly as she sank back down into her chair.
“Please, do not waste your breath, Godmother. I am very happy that you are here, but I am not getting married, and I shan’t be persuaded into it.”
Lady Verimore did not answer right away.
Instead, she took her time in selecting the firmest looking chair out of all of the available seating options available to her and slowly lowered herself into it with a sigh.
She did not dignify Lavinia’s protests with a direct response.
Instead, she spoke artfully around the subject at hand.
“Tell me, my dear, just how long do you plan to reside here? Because I was not aware of your lifelong dream to become a spinster. I can only imagine what your father would say about all of this.” She shook her head, laying the guilt trip on very thickly.
“Toiling away your days in the library, letting yourself become even more pale and reclusive…”
“What is your point?” Lavinia interrupted her although she knew better than to do that.
“He would be disappointed in you. That is my point. And it should be the only point that even matters in a situation like this. If your father had not passed, you and I both know that you would have been married off years ago,” she continued matter-of-factly.
“You are making me neglectful in my duties, child. I swore to your father that I would care for you should anything happen to him.”
The guilt trip was having its intended effect and then some, to the point that it was almost uncomfortable to look the older woman in the eye directly as they spoke to one another.
Her late father had gone to extensive lengths to ensure that there were back up plans and contingencies in place for anything that she would need.
Indeed, her father had thought of everything.
That was just the sort of man that he was.
A man that no other would ever be able to truly hold a candle to.
How on earth was she supposed to move forward with the high standards set for her by her own father as well as all of the lovely men in the books that she read?
Much to her own annoyance, she was a romantic at heart, and from the nonsense that she read about the ton each and every morning with breakfast, there was not a single true gentleman amongst the lot of them.
Time had a way of making people disappoint her, and her heart could not be broken any further, or she would never have any hope of picking up the pieces.
Even the few men in her life that she had thought were good… those that she had thought that perhaps… someday…
Her mind drifted, unbidden, back to her childhood, her closest childhood friend who the years had stolen from her… the one man that was supposed to forever be above reproach.
Now? He was a rake, just like the rest of them.
All men were the same.
“Come and stay with me then. Perhaps you shall find it easier to be open in both your mind and your heart if you have some time away from your cousin,” Lady Verimore suggested. It was obvious that she was not going to take no for an answer, no matter how badly Lavinia wished that she would.
Lavinia chewed on the inside of her cheek, scraping for any sort of excuse that might have any hope of getting her out of this. It was not that she did not wish to spend time in the country or even that she was truly averse to the social obligations… mostly.
“Yes, we shall have a grand time. Just the two of us, reconnecting and finding you a husband. You can trust me, child, I would never do anything to lead you astray. You know that. It is why I actually came to visit you, it was to bring you back with me. You cannot move on with your mourning while you’re cooped up in this place, running an estate that should not be your responsibility.
Your cousin, too, shall have to take a wife sooner or later. And then where will you two be?”
“I do not like it when you combat my feelings with logic,” Lavinia sighed, but her defenses were slowly starting to crumble under the pressure of her godmother’s insistence.
“That is why I do it, yes,” her godmother answered with a wink. “Will you come with me?”
No was not truly an option.
So, she did the only thing that she could do… she agreed.
At least for now, on the outside, she had agreed. If nothing else, the time away from Barnaby would be most welcome.