Chapter 1: The Terms of Ruin
Viscount Henry Ravenshire had always believed there were two certainties in life: death and the enduring patience of his grandmother. He had been wrong about both.
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, carried by a mud-spattered rider who had ridden through the night. Henry had been in the middle of a particularly fine breakfast, kedgeree, buttered toast, and the lingering memory of a weekend spent at Lord Pembroke's country house, where the claret had flowed like water and the company had been pleasingly uncomplicated. He unfolded the vellum with one hand, still holding his coffee cup in the other.
“My Lord Ravenshire, it is my solemn duty to inform you that the Dowager Viscountess Ravenshire passed away peacefully in her sleep on the morning of the 14th instant. Her solicitors, Messrs. Fairmont and Vale, request your presence at their offices in London at your earliest convenience regarding the reading of the will. Yours, etc., Jonathan Crumb, Undertaker.”
Henry set down his coffee. The toast suddenly seemed dry. His grandmother, sharp-tongued, indomitable, eighty-four years old and still capable of reducing a footman to tears with a single glance, was gone. He had not loved her, precisely. One did not love a force of nature, but he had respected her, which was perhaps rarer and more valuable.
Three days later, he sat in the dusty offices of Fairmont and Vale, a thin shaft of London sunlight cutting across the mahogany table. The solicitor, Mr. Fairmont the younger, was a man of such profound solemnity that Henry suspected he had been born wearing black and reciting legal statutes.
“My lord,” Mr. Fairmont began, adjusting his spectacles, “the Dowager Viscountess's will is, I shall not mince words, somewhat unconventional.”
“My grandmother was many things,” Henry drawled, crossing his legs at the ankle. “Conventional was never among them. Get on with it.”
Mr. Fairmont cleared his throat and read aloud. “To my grandson, Henry, Viscount Ravenshire, I leave the entirety of my personal fortune, including the Ravenshire Court estate, its lands, tenants, and all associated incomes, upon the express condition that he shall be lawfully married within six months of the date of my death. Furthermore, the bride must be of good character and reputation, and the marriage must be certified by my solicitors as genuine and not entered into for the mere purpose of fulfilling this clause. Should he fail in this, the entirety of the estate shall pass to the distant cousin of my late husband, Mr. Reginald Pounce of Cheapside.”
Henry sat in stunned silence. Then he laughed, a short, incredulous sound. “Pounce of Cheapside?” he repeated. “She cannot be serious. Reginald Pounce is a linen draper. He smells of starch and desperation.”
Mr. Fairmont did not smile. “The Dowager was most serious, my lord. I have the honor of informing you that the clause is ironclad. It was drafted by my father personally and witnessed by three parties of unimpeachable standing.”
Henry stood so abruptly that his chair scraped backward. He walked to the window, stared out at the grimy London street, and felt the walls of his careless existence begin to crumble. Six months. Six months to find a bride, a genuine bride, not some convenient arrangement, or lose everything.
Ravenshire Court. The land his father had loved. The tenants who had depended on his family for three generations. All of it, delivered into the moist palms of a linen merchant from Cheapside.
“There must be a loophole,” he said, his voice quieter now.
“There is not, my lord. I have examined the document with the most meticulous care. You must marry, and the marriage must be real in both form and intention. I am to receive quarterly reports from your household staff regarding the state of your union.”
Henry turned. “My household staff? She has spies.”
“The Dowager retained a deep affection for Cook, I believe,” Mr. Fairmont said mildly, “and for your mother's former maid, who remains at Ravenshire Court.”
Henry lowered himself back into the chair. For the first time in his thirty-two years, he felt the cold breath of genuine consequence. He had always assumed the title and estate would simply be his by birthright, by inevitability. He had never imagined his grandmother would use them as weapons from beyond the grave.
“What sort of woman did she expect?” he asked, almost to himself. “A paragon? A saint?”
Mr. Fairmont consulted a second document. “The Dowager left additional instructions. She specifically excluded any woman of the London season, whom she described as, I quote, ‘vapid, mercenary, or possessing the intellectual capacity of a teapot.’ She expressed a preference for a woman of sense, loyalty, and practical disposition. An odd request, my lord, but not legally binding.”
Henry closed his eyes. His grandmother had spent her final months constructing a trap so elaborate that he could only admire its craftsmanship. She had known him too well. She had known he would never choose marriage for himself, that he preferred the easy charm of temporary attachments, the safety of never being truly known. So she had chosen for him.
But where, in all of England, was he to find a woman of sense and practicality who would agree to marry a near stranger within six months? And not just any marriage, a real one, watched and reported upon by the very servants who had known him since childhood. He was, he realized grimly, utterly undone.
Forty miles north of London, in a village called Willowmere, Miss Lydia Barnes was attempting to teach her younger sister the difference between a simile and a metaphor while simultaneously scraping porridge from the bottom of an empty pot.
“Charlotte, if you do not attend, you shall never pass your examination.”
Charlotte, seventeen and possessed of a dreamy disposition that Lydia secretly envied, looked up from the window. “I was attending. The clouds look like woolly sheep. That is a simile, is it not?”
“It is.”
“And the porridge is like concrete.”
“That is also a simile, and one of which I am growing exceedingly weary.”
Lydia set down the spoon. The kitchen was small and cramped, the way all kitchens were in houses that had once been grand and had since fallen into shabby disrepair. The Barnes family had once been comfortable, not wealthy, but respectable. Their father had been a rector, their mother the daughter of a country squire. But the rector had died of a putrid fever three years ago, leaving a widow, four daughters, and a pension so meager that Lydia had been forced to take in sewing just to keep them in bread.
She was twenty-five now, an age when most of her peers were married and nursing their second children. She had never been proposed to, never been courted, never even been kissed. She was too practical for romance, too plain for poetry, too busy keeping her family alive to pine for what she could not have.
There was a knock at the door. Lydia wiped her hands on her apron and went to answer it. Standing on the threshold was Mrs. Henley, the vicar's wife, her face bright with that particular expression of suppressed excitement that meant she was the bearer of news.
“Lydia, my dear,” Mrs. Henley said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation, “you will never believe what I have just heard. The old Dowager Viscountess Ravenshire has died, and the new Viscount, the grandson, is looking for a bride.”
Lydia closed the door. “Mrs. Henley, I fail to see how this concerns me. I have never met the Viscount. I am unlikely to meet the Viscount, and even if I did, I am hardly bride material for a man of his station.”
Mrs. Henley clasped her hands. “That is the extraordinary part. He is not looking in London. He is looking here, in the country. His solicitor has been making inquiries, discreet inquiries, but nothing remains discreet in Willowmere for long. He is said to be seeking a woman of good character and practical sense. Lydia, that is you.”
Lydia stared at her. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious. The Viscount will be attending the assembly at Briarwood Hall next week. You must go. You must.”
Lydia thought of the assembly. She thought of her one good gown, which was faded at the elbows and had been let out twice. She thought of her hair, which was neither golden nor dark, but an indeterminate brown, and which refused to curl no matter how many rags she slept in. She thought of the practical, steady, utterly forgettable face that stared back at her from her mother's cracked mirror every morning.
“Mrs. Henley,” she said quietly, “I am grateful for your concern. But I am not the sort of woman men marry. I am the sort of woman men forget to invite to dinner.”