Marriage in 1814 was not about love. It was a transaction. A brutal, powdered, corset meat market where young women were paraded like prize fillies before bored men with titles. Three sisters stepped out of a rented carriage in Somerset with strict orders from their mother: secure the Duke of Aldridge or face absolute financial ruin. Two came armed with practiced smiles and ruthless ambition. One just wanted a moment to breathe. She found a heavy velvet curtain. He found her.
Somerset mud had a peculiar way of clinging to everything it touched. It caked the wheels of the rented carriage, splattered against the mahogany doors, and seemed to seep through the floorboards, dragging the temperature inside down to a damp, bone-aching chill.
Inside the carriage, the air was entirely different. It was stifling, hot, anxious, and thick with the smell of cheap lavender water and nervous sweat. Lady Edith Montgomery sat rigid on the velvet cushions, her knuckles white as she gripped the ivory handle of her fan. She was a woman built of sheer, unyielding willpower, currently holding the frayed edges of her family's respectability together through sheer force of habit. Her husband had died 3 years prior, leaving behind nothing but a sprawling estate in Yorkshire that was mortgaged to the hilt and a ledger of gambling debts that kept Edith awake until dawn.
"Pinch your cheeks, Rosalind," Edith snapped. Her eyes darted to her eldest daughter. "You look like a corpse. Dukes do not marry corpses. They marry robust women who can give them robust heirs."
Rosalind, 21 and terrifyingly beautiful, obeyed without a word. She dug her manicured nails into her pale cheeks until they bloomed with a harsh artificial pink. She was the weapon, the family's golden ticket. Rosalind understood her assignment perfectly. She was to smile, play the pianoforte with acceptable mediocrity, and secure a proposal from Nathaniel Reed, the Duke of Aldridge.
Beside her sat Celia, 19, reciting French verbs under her breath in a frantic, buzzing whisper. Celia was the contingency plan. If Rosalind failed to catch the Duke's eye, Celia was to trip gracefully into his path, laugh at his jokes, and hope he preferred blondes with nervous dispositions.
And then there was Nora. Nora sat facing backward, her shoulder pressed against the cold glass of the carriage window. At 20, she was neither the breathtaking beauty nor the charming backup. She was the third sister, the afterthought. Her dark hair was pinned up in a style that was already unraveling, and her dress, a hand-me-down from Rosalind, hastily altered by a half-blind seamstress, pinched terribly at the armpits.
"Stop slouching, Nora," Edith barked without even looking at her. Motherly intuition honed by desperation. "You are bending the bone in your stays. Do you know what those stays cost?"
"More than my comfort, evidently," Nora muttered, shifting her weight. The whalebone dug a fresh, agonizing groove into her ribs.
Edith ignored the comment. She leaned forward as the massive iron gates of Aldridge Hall loomed through the dreary afternoon mist. "Listen to me, all of you. This house party is our final hour. Lord Croft's solicitors have threatened to seize the Yorkshire house by Christmas. We have precisely two weeks to convince the Duke that a Montgomery girl is the answer to his bachelorhood. Rosalind, you will agree with everything he says. Celia, you will laugh only when it is appropriate. Nora." Edith paused, her gaze sweeping over her youngest daughter with a mixture of exhaustion and faint irritation. "Nora, just try not to frighten anyone. Read a book in the corner. Stay out of Rosalind's light."
"Gladly," Nora said. She meant it. The very idea of parading herself before a strange man, performing like a dancing bear in a town square to beg for her financial survival, made her stomach churn. It was humiliating. It was a cattle auction. Only the cattle wore silk and pretended they were having a marvelous time.
The carriage jerked to a halt, the wheels protesting as they ground into the crushed gravel of the Duke's sweeping driveway. Outside, the estate of Aldridge Hall rose from the earth like a stone fortress. It was massive, imposing, and reeked of generational wealth. A small army of footmen descended the limestone steps, opening doors and offering gloved hands to the arriving guests.
Nora stepped out, her thin leather slippers instantly sinking into the damp gravel. She shivered. Around them, half a dozen other carriages were unloading their cargo. Dozens of girls, all wrapped in expensive furs and bright silks, all sporting the same desperate predatory glint in their eyes. The competition.
Rosalind smoothed her skirts, her chin lifting as she adjusted her invisible armor. Celia took a deep, shuddering breath. Nora just looked at the massive oak doors of the manor and calculated how long she could reasonably hide in the library before someone sent a search party. She suspected no one would bother looking for her at all. The thought brought her a small cynical measure of comfort as she followed her mother into the lion's den.
The grand drawing room of Aldridge Hall was a masterpiece of intimidation. Gold leaf crawled up the cornices. Massive crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across the patterned carpets, and the walls were lined with portraits of dead men who looked thoroughly disappointed in the living. Currently, the room held roughly 60 people. 30 of them were young, eligible women. 30 of them were their eagle-eyed mothers, and in the center of the room stood the prize.
Nathaniel Reed, the Duke of Aldridge, didn't look like a man enjoying his wealth. He looked like a man enduring a prolonged root canal. He was 30 years old, tall and broad-shouldered, but he lacked the polished, delicate refinement favored by London society. His jaw was square and permanently shadowed with stubble. His nose had a faint crook in it, suggesting someone had punched him a long time ago. Nora silently commended whoever had done it. He wore a dark coat that fit perfectly, but he wore it as though it were a uniform he couldn't wait to take off. He stood near the massive marble fireplace, a half-empty glass of amber liquid in his hand, nodding mechanically as a viscount's daughter chattered at him.
"Look at him," Lady Edith breathed, her fingers biting into Rosalind's arm. "He is magnificent. 10,000 acres in Somerset alone. Rosalind, go drop your fan. Do something."
Rosalind didn't need to be told twice. She detached herself from her mother and drifted across the room with the practiced grace of a hunting falcon. Nora watched, a morbid fascination taking hold as her sister expertly navigated the crowd, timing her approach perfectly so she arrived at the Duke's side just as the viscount's daughter paused for breath. Nora couldn't hear what Rosalind said, but she saw the result. Rosalind smiled, that perfect calculated curve of her lips. She curtsied, exposing just the right amount of a pale, elegant neck.
The Duke looked down at her. His expression did not change. He offered a polite, abbreviated bow. He said something brief. Rosalind laughed musically. It was utterly soulless.
Nora felt a sudden, crushing weight on her chest. The air in the room was thick, saturated with the competing scents of rosewater, bergamot, and burning wax. The fire roared too hot. The chatter of 60 women was a high-pitched, echoing cacophony that drilled directly into her temples. Her corset, already too tight, felt as though it was shrinking by the second. She took a shallow breath, but her lungs met the immovable barrier of whalebone and canvas. A thin sheen of cold sweat broke out on her neck.
"I am going to faint," she realized with a spike of horror. "I am going to pass out in the middle of a duke's drawing room, and mother will actually murder me."
She began to back away step by step. She kept her eyes lowered, avoiding the gaze of the dowagers who sat on the velvet sofas judging the livestock. The edge of the room was lined with massive floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out into the pitch-black night. Each window was framed by heavy burgundy velvet curtains tied back with thick gold tassels.
Nora reached the wall. She felt a sliver of a draft seeping through the glass. Cold, glorious night air. Without thinking, without caring about propriety or her mother's strict instructions to remain visible but unremarkable, Nora stepped sideways. She slipped behind the thick fold of the burgundy curtain, letting the heavy velvet fall shut behind her.
Instantly the noise of the room was muffled. The heat receded. She was encased in a small dark sanctuary between the glass and the fabric. Nora leaned her forehead against the freezing windowpane. She closed her eyes and let out a long shuddering breath. Her hands went to her waist, pressing against her ribs, trying to find an inch of slack in the dress. There was none. She looked down at her feet. Her left shoe was rubbing her heel raw.
"To hell with it," she whispered.
She reached down, unlaced the ribbon, and kicked the shoe off. Her toes flexed against the cold wooden floorboards. The relief was instantaneous, a sharp contrast to the dull ache in her back. She leaned against the window frame, fully prepared to stand on one foot in the dark for the next 3 hours.
Then the curtain rustled. A hand gripped the edge of the velvet and pulled it back. Light from the drawing room sliced into the dark alcove. Nora froze, her breath catching in her throat. She expected to see her mother's furious face, or perhaps a footman come to shoo her out of the drapery.
Instead, a man stepped into the narrow space. He let the curtain drop behind him, plunging them back into shadows. He didn't see her at first. He leaned back against the wall, tilted his head toward the ceiling, and let out a long, rough exhale that sounded remarkably like a curse. Nora stood perfectly still, balanced awkwardly on one bare foot.