Lady Emmaline Daughtry sat in the gardens of Ashurst Hall on one of the first bright days of spring, completely and entirely alone.
It was her twenty-eighth birthday.
On her lap was the letter that had arrived in the morning post from her nieces, Lydia and Nicole. In order to keep to one sheet, thus saving on the postage, Lydia had written her rather formal, excruciatingly correct wishes in her finest copperplate. Nicole, being Nicole, had scribbled her good wishes upside-down between Lydiaâs lines, her usual exuberance evident in both her atrocious spelling and her latest affectation of marking all her iâs with small hearts.
The twins were back with their mother, the thrice-widowed Helen Daughtry, at their small estate of Willowbrook, as Helen was once again between husbands and had remembered that she had daughters to fuss over in her own fashion.
That would change in a few weeks, when Helen went tripping off to London for the Season, and Lydia and Nicole were once again shuttled back to Ashurst Hall âto bear their dearest spinster aunt their Comfort and Presence, as you must be So Devastatingly Lonely isolated in the back of beyond.â Or so Helenâs last letter, all but pinned to the twinsâ luggage, had stated so cruelly. But all under the guise of being caring and compassionate.
Lady Emmaline knew her late brotherâs widow could be a kind person, in her own way. She simply wasnât a kind person frequently.
In that way, Helen had fit very well with the Daughtry family, who seemed to belong to another age, the more rough and tumbleâand most definitely profaneâage of two decades past. Marital fidelity was a joke to them, kindness considered a weakness and selfishness a near art form. Or else todayâs Society had simply learned to hide their failings and vices betterâ¦
Her morals had, however, been the only way her sister-in-law resembled the Daughtrys. Helen always said sheâd married the wrong brother when sheâd wed the second son, but even that marriage had been quite above her social station. Yet, ever resourceful, sheâd made do with a husband who had tired of her within a few months, and built her own life, her own circle of London friends.
When Emmalineâs brother Geoffrey had died, Helen had tricked herself out in crushingly expensive widowâs weeds, impatiently waited out a full month of mourning and then deposited her son, Rafael, and the twins on the doorstep of Ashurst Hall and returned to London and those friends. Over the years, the children had spent more time at Ashurst Hall than on their own estate, until Rafe had left to serve with Wellington.
Emmaline had been as thrilled by these additions to the family as her only surviving brother had been appalledâwhich may have been one of the reasons Emmaline had been so delighted. After all, it wasnât as if there was any love lost between Charlton and herself.
Charlton and Geoffrey were so very much older than Emmaline, and males to her female, so it was not surprising that the three had never been especially close. And Emmaline could have accepted that. But Emmalineâs mother had departed this earth the same day her only daughter was born, and for that, Charlton and Geoffrey would never forgive her. Even their father, the Duke of Ashurst, had been no more than occasionally aware of his daughterâs existence. Not that heâd much cared for his sons, either. Emmaline always thought his children would have garnered more affection from their sire if they could run on four legs, go up on point when they spotted the fox and then lay at his feet at the banquet whilst he celebrated his latest glorious kill.
And then Geoffrey had died, and their father had looked around and noticed that, by Jupiter, he was in danger of being outnumbered by petticoats. Charltonâs wife was enough to have twittering about Ashurst Hall, complaining that he came to dinner in his hunting clothes, or tossing fierce looks at him when he belched or scratched satisfyingly whenever the spirit moved him. It was time to marry off the one he could get rid of, by Jupiter!
So Emmaline had been hauled off to London upon the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, where she was put under the supposedly watchful eye of Helen Daughtry. Which is the same as to say Emmaline was left to her own devices while Helen flirted outrageously with any man who happened to look at Emmaline in a matrimonial way.
Not that Emmaline hadnât had her chances during the Seasons sheâd suffered through under Helenâs haphazard chaperonage. There had been at least a few gentlemen who hadnât taken one look at Helenâs décolletage and deserted Emmaline as if sheâd just told them she had contracted the plague. There had been Sir William Masterson, a widower with six children under the age of ten. Heâd made no bones that he was looking for a woman to ride herd on hisâ¦well, on his herd. Lord Phillipson had loved her;