2. Chapter 2
M y eyes had not even opened the next morning before my stepsister Addie pushed open my bedroom door. “Is it true—are you to become a duchess, Lily?”
I had been up late the night before, working on my manuscript, though it had been hard to concentrate.
My mind had played a dozen different scenarios about the duke and his castle.
I finally gave up on writing around three in the morning and I felt sluggish now as I pulled myself to a seated position.
At the age of sixteen, Addie was charming and energetic, with a penchant for reading, asking questions, and spending as much time as she could out of doors.
Her ability to get into trouble was a great mystery to me since she was so sweet, but she was always involved in one mishap or another.
Perhaps it was because she pushed forward with little thought to consequences—such as waking me up so early in the morning after a ball.
“Nothing has been settled yet,” I said as I yawned—and then quickly looked at my desk, hoping I had not forgotten to hide my manuscript. Thankfully, it was not sitting out.
“What is the duke like?” Addie’s brown eyes were vibrant with interest as she sat on the edge of my bed.
“Is he old or young? Handsome or stodgy? An open book or a brooding, mysterious type?” Her expressive face and voice changed with each question.
“Where does he live? Is it a great home? Or is he poor, like Lord Cranford?”
“Addie!” I put my hands on either side of her face and laughed. “It’s much too early for all your questions.” I leaned back onto my pillows. “And you’re making me nervous.”
She let out a sigh. “It’s all so romantic. Just like a novel.”
“If Mother heard you, she’d scold you for those novels you read.” I said the words lightly, knowing I was the last person who should chastise her.
I wrote some of the books Addie read.
I’d kept the secret for two years, writing under a pen name.
My books were fiction, but they were inspired by the very society Mother longed to enter.
They were satirical, for the most part, but they had been very popular because they were written by someone who had an inside look.
My publisher was expecting my next manuscript by the first of August, and I was nowhere near done with it.
This one would be the most autobiographical of them all, about an American heiress brought to England for a title.
Since there were dozens of young women who had been involved in this transatlantic trade for the past decade, any one of them could be the author.
I wasn’t too concerned I would be singled out, unless I gave specific details, which I would not.
If Mother knew the truth she would be horrified. Many people in our circle assumed the author was someone they knew, but none suspected me, and I needed to keep it that way. We would be ostracized by polite society and any chance my sisters and I had at making a good match would be compromised.
Addie prattled on about the novel she was reading as the door opened again and my maid, Molly, entered. She paused for only a moment when she saw Addie but continued into my room to open the curtains and let in the daylight.
“Good mornin’,” she said to me in her Irish accent. “It’s happy I am that Miss Addie woke you first. ’Tis my least favorite job.”
I smiled ruefully. I wasn’t always the easiest person to wake in the morning.
“Your mother said to remind you that the Duke of Severton will be here to see you today,” Molly added, though I could see that she was teasing me.
“How could I forget?”
“She’d like you to wear the blue mornin’ gown,” Molly continued. “She says it complements your bonnie blue eyes.”
I stepped out of bed and allowed Molly to help me put on my dressing robe as I moved to the vanity mirror, Addie chatting happily.
We had rented a massive townhouse near Kensington Palace and had arrived the last week of April.
In the beginning of May, I had been presented to Queen Victoria at one of her drawing room presentations, the only acceptable way to be welcomed into English society, and since then, I’d attended a whirlwind of events and activities.
It had been exhausting, although it had provided excellent material for my novel.
“What is the duke’s first name?” Addie asked as she watched Molly prepare my toilette.
I opened my mouth to answer, then realized I didn’t know.
Molly waited for a moment and then said, “’Tis Ames Welby, the 7th Duke of Severton.”
My gaze caught hers in the mirror. “How do you know?”
“Rumors have been circulating about the duke all season,” she confided. “And while I don’t like to gossip, a maid can’t ignore everything she hears.”
I smiled. Molly had been my connection to the servants’ rumors and gossip since she’d come to work for us in New York three years ago. I trusted her for the truth and had found her to be reliable. She was the only person who knew I wrote novels. Not even my publisher knew my real name.
“I’ve heard many rumors, too,” I told her. “I wonder if they are the same ones you’ve heard.”
She slowly took my blond hair out of the braid I wore to bed, running her fingers through the tangles. “They say his castle is haunted by one of the early duchesses, who roams the moors at night, calling for vengeance.”
“What kind of vengeance?” Addie asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“People say she was murdered by her husband.” Molly’s accent deepened. “And since then, she’s called on each subsequent duchess to bring justice upon the head of the duke who killed her.”
“But wouldn’t her husband be dead by now?” Addie frowned.
“Aye, but she doesn’t know that. She’s a ghost.”
“Oh,” Addie said as if that made perfect sense.
“But that’s not where the tale ends,” Molly continued, now looking at Addie in the mirror. “The last three dukes have been murdered—by their wives—and each claimed the Wailing Duchess is the cause. She drives the duchesses to madness until they take revenge on their husbands.”
Addie’s eyes grew wide with complete and utter shock.
“All that cannot possibly be true,” I told them as I placed my hands on the vanity table. I liked a good story as much as the next person—perhaps even more—but reality had to rule if I was going to move to the castle. “There are no such things as ghosts.”
“But ’tis true that the last duchess, Ames Welby’s mother, murdered his father and was sent to prison.” Molly picked up the brush and began to run it through my hair. “She died soon after.”
“Is that true, Lily?” Addie asked me.
I hesitated. “I have heard that part is true. But we don’t know why she did it.”
“And you want to take your chances and become the next duchess?” My younger sister stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Everyone has free will,” I told her. “No one can make me do something I don’t want to do—especially a wailing duchess who does not exist.”
“’Tis my experience that every rumor starts with a grain of truth,” Molly offered. “Some part of the story must be true.”
“Will you go with Lily if she marries the duke?” Addie asked Molly. “And live at the castle? Or will you return with us to New York?”
Molly’s gaze caught mine in the mirror. She’d become my lady’s maid after I had debuted into society, and I’d quickly come to trust her, especially after she found one of my manuscripts and had kept my secret.
Not only that, she often helped me brainstorm, using her own unique position in society.
When I was younger, Mother had cautioned me not to treat our staff like friends or family but, with Molly, it was hard not to think of her as a friend.
“Would you like to come with me?” I asked her.
She continued to brush my hair. “I left Ireland to make a new life for meself in America. I never imagined I’d end up in England, of all places.”
“Could you ever imagine becoming a lady’s maid to a duchess?” Addie prodded, waggling her eyebrows in excitement.
I sent my younger sister a thankful glance as I said, “Please, Molly. I cannot marry a stranger and move to his house without someone I trust at my side.”
Molly took a moment, but then she finally said, “Aye. If you marry the duke, I will go with you.”
Gratitude overwhelmed me. “Thank you.”
But my momentary relief was soon crowded out by uncertainties and doubts. Was it foolish to marry a man I knew nothing about—or, worse, knowing what I did about him? He had spoken so honestly to me, but was that a ruse to manipulate me into an unhappy marriage?
My only consolation was that I would retain the rights to my fortune under English law.
The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 guaranteed that I could maintain control of my wealth and assets.
Everything had been placed in a trust for me, and I would ensure that all prenuptial agreements would protect my inheritance.
But it didn’t truly matter. When I married, it would be for life, and my wealth would be poured into the home and property of my husband.
My parents had raised me with deep and abiding faith, instilling values in me that I held dear.
And one of them was the belief that marriage was a binding covenant with God and my husband.
That was why this decision was so nerve-racking.
It was forever.
As Addie continued to pester Molly with questions, and Molly prepared me to meet the duke, my head began to pound, and I became sick to my stomach.
What if I was about to make a lifelong mistake?