Chapter One

London, October 1815

“I doubt Marie Antoinette looked half so tragic on her way to the guillotine.”

Marjie had endured this lecture before. She was the first to admit she hadn’t a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for their evening’s social obligation, but she understood the necessity.

Marjie’s sister and brother-in-law Philip, the Earl of Lampton, took active roles in the ton and participated in the never-ending social whirl. Marjie could not have avoided being thrust into the madness of the London Season and its horrid “marriage mart.”

Embarking on the business of searching for a husband was not at all what she wished to be doing. Her affections were long since claimed by a tall, golden-haired soldier in a dashing blue uniform. Stanley Jonquil had been recalled to the Continent after Napoleon’s escape from exile, and Marjie’s heart had gone with him. Yet, she was required to spend the better part of each night dancing and conversing with gentlemen who paled in comparison, all the while wishing for the company of the one she loved.

Marie Antoinette’s execution walk felt like an apt comparison.

“I really do not wish to go.” Marjie leaned against her bedchamber door. Perhaps if she barricaded herself in, Sorrel would allow her to stay. “Must I?”

“If I can endure an evening of dancing, you certainly can.” Sorrel rose awkwardly from her spot on the edge of Marjie’s bed, reaching for her ebony walking stick.

Marjie recognized the tightening around Sorrel’s mouth and the way her expression froze. She was in pain, more so than usual.

Marjie forced herself to stay in place. Her first instinct was always to rush to her sister’s aid, but Philip had explained to her only a few weeks earlier that Sorrel did not appreciate being “smothered.”

“Is the brace not helping?” Marjie asked.

“I have been a little sore today,” Sorrel replied dismissively.

Marjie knew her sister did not like discussing her injury nor the frustration she had endured over the years as she’d attempted to regain her mobility. A surgery early in the summer had corrected two badly healed breaks in her right leg, but nothing could be done for her shattered hip.

For months, Philip had corresponded with a doctor whose specialty was creating braces to correct clubfoot and bent limbs in children. The doctor had fashioned something similar for Sorrel: an apparatus consisting of a wide, sturdy belt fitted snugly across her hips and a metal rod connected to the belt that ran the length of her right thigh, belting around her leg just above her knee. The doctor’s theory was that the brace would hold the broken pieces of her hip in place, allowing her to walk with greater stability and less pain. The simple alteration of Sorrel’s wardrobe to gowns that fit more fully at the hips made the brace easier to disguise. While Sorrel still used her walking stick, she did seem to be relying a little less on it.

Seeing her sister in so much obvious pain over the past three years had been excruciating. Marjie had taken Philip’s words to heart and had not spoken her concern aloud, but she felt it every bit as much as she ever had.

“Now, come along.” Sorrel reached the doorway herself. “Philip may have finished dressing for the evening and will wish to depart.”

“Does it not strike you as odd that Philip takes longer to dress than you do?” Marjie said, gathering her gloves as she accepted the inevitability of the evening’s schedule. “Should it not be the other way around?”

“When one is married to a gentleman whose reputation as a dandy is epic in its proportions, such things are simply assumed and accepted.” Sorrel smiled, something she hadn’t done a great deal of after her crippling accident. Meeting Philip had changed that.

The Jonquil brothers were, in a word, remarkable. Stanley was, of course, Marjie’s favorite. Philip, the eldest, had earned both her respect and her sisterly affection simply by making Sorrel as happy as Marjie had ever seen her.

As soon as Stanley returned home, Marjie would be happy as well. He had survived Waterloo. They knew that much but little else. She had written twenty-five letters to him in the six months since he had left for war, including the one she had only just finished that afternoon and intended to post in the morning. She had saved the ribbon she’d worn in her hair the day they had said their good-byes, intending to use it to bind the letters he sent her from the battlefront. The ribbon was still in the drawer of her night table, unused.

Not a single member of Stanley’s family had heard from him since his departure either. The fact that his mother had not received a letter worried the family most of all. Of the seven brothers, Stanley had always been the most attentive to his mother’s needs. For him to neglect something as elemental as writing to her was very unlike him.

Marjie tried not to worry, though it was what Sorrel said she did best. She had checked the casualty lists every day after Waterloo, relieved when his name did not appear there. She prayed for him often, thought of him throughout the day, dreamed of him at night. If only she could know he was well. Though part of her worried over the possible answer, she wished she knew why he had not sent her so much as a single line, a single word.

“Do try to pull yourself into the present, Marjie,” Sorrel said.

“My apologies.” They had reached the second-floor landing, and she hadn’t even realized it. “I was—”

“Worrying,” Sorrel finished for her. “Fretting over Stanley will not bring him home any sooner. You cannot spend every moment of every day pining for a man who does not even write to you.”

Heat flooded Marjie’s cheeks. Everyone in the family was aware of her circumstances, but none had spoken of it quite so bluntly. Sorrel simply did not understand. The man Sorrel loved was at her side every day. His affection for her could not be questioned. She had his attention and his love. Marjie had only her memories of Stanley’s attentiveness and the distant hope that he would return to her.

“We will be back at Lampton Park in only a few more weeks,” Sorrel said. Her tone had softened a bit, perhaps having realized how her words had wounded. “In the meantime, it would do you good to make friends—young ladies you might write to during the winter months and look forward to seeing again when the Season begins. And if you knew a gentleman or two, the round of balls and musicales might seem a bit less endless.”

“I suppose.” She had her doubts though.

“You seem to have already forged something of a friendship with Lord Devereaux.” The fact that Sorrel could have a conversation while limping down the stairs was testament to her improving mobility. Stairs had once been an enormous obstacle for her. “Many people have credited his continued presence among Society to his preference for your company.”

Marjie smiled and shook her head. “The ton has assumed too much in our friendship. We’ve simply found we understand one another. He misses his wife. I miss Stanley.”

Sorrel sighed. “Lord Devereaux is a widower. It is understandable for him to struggle with returning to Society and for his grief to be so consuming. You and Stanley do not even have an understanding. A career in the army may very well keep him away from England for years. I do not think Stanley would wish you to be socially paralyzed by his absence.”

Sometimes Sorrel could be remarkably unsympathetic.

She laid a hand on Marjie’s arm, a rare moment of physical affection between two sisters raised in a family that seldom touched one another. “I do not wish to be cruel, but neither do I wish for you to look back years from now and realize you lost your opportunity for happiness while waiting on a possibility that was not meant to be.”

Marjie took a quick, desperate breath, refusing to allow her emotions to surface. “I have to have some hope,” she quietly insisted.

“Hope is not a prison.” Sorrel gently squeezed her arm. “Hope should lessen your fears, not intensify them.”

Their brother, Fennel, was supposed to be the insightful one. Sorrel was correct though. Beneath her façade of calm, Marjie was very much afraid—afraid that something had happened to Stanley, afraid he would not return, afraid he did not love her as she loved him.

A knock sounded at the front door.

Sorrel eyed the door with confusion. “Who would be calling at this time of night?”

“Was that a knock?” Philip’s voice reached them from behind.

Marjie looked over her shoulder to see him descending the stairs, as impeccable in appearance as ever, though the canary-yellow waistcoat and deep-purple jacket were a bit over the top.

“Perhaps one of the neighbors has come to complain about the brightness of your attire,” Sorrel suggested.

A grin spread across Philip’s face. “It is rather eye-catching, isn’t it?”

Sorrel shook her head even as she lightly laughed. “I thought you were supposed to be on the road to reform.”

“These things take time, dear.” Philip slipped Sorrel’s arm through his. “You are stunning tonight, as always.” He kissed Sorrel’s cheek. “That shade of green is perfect on you.”

She gave him a look that would have been scolding if not for the deep red staining her cheeks. Philip was the only person Marjie knew who was capable of undermining Sorrel’s legendary composure.

As they reached a step low enough to afford a view of the front entryway, all three of them stopped simultaneously. A crowd of servants stood before them. Mrs. Jeffers, the housekeeper, talked incessantly but too rapidly to be understood. Her husband, the butler, rushed about the small space but not with any perceivable purpose.

“Well, my dear, it appears the staff has finally lost their minds,” Philip said.

“It was bound to happen.” Sorrel almost sounded like she meant it.

“Jeffers.” Philip’s voice, authoritative without being raised, cut through the chaos below them, and all eyes turned toward the three of them. “I am expecting a very entertaining explanation of all this.”

“My lord.” Jeffers turned wide eyes on them, his hands fidgeting and a look of flustered amazement on his face. Marjie had never before seen the butler anything short of completely composed. “It is only that it is so unexpected. None of us had any idea. Had we been warned, perhaps . . . Even then . . .”

“Mrs. Jeffers? Would you like to attempt a less rambling explanation?” Philip led Sorrel the rest of the way down the stairs. Marjie followed behind.

The housekeeper, suddenly silent, shook her head, wiping at her face with an enormous handkerchief.

“Well, I, for one, am dying of curiosity.” Philip glanced around at the assembled staff.

Marjie was no less intrigued. While Philip had an easy way with his staff, they were never lax in their duties.

“Obviously something has overset the lot of you,” Philip said. “Would you care to tell me what?”

The crowd parted in answer, revealing a soldier, thin and pale, sitting on the footman’s bench to the side of the front door, his threadbare blue uniform hanging from his frail form. He looked up at Philip, dark circles beneath his deep-blue eyes.

Marjie’s throat tightened. Her heart beat hard against her ribs. Even haggard, she would have known him anywhere. Stanley. But not at all as she remembered him. He was too thin, too still. Had he been ill? Injured? When had he returned home? Why had they not been told? She could not voice a single question.

“How—? When did—?” Philip was not usually inarticulate. “When did you get back in England?”

Stanley’s posture slumped further, and his eyes dropped to his gloved hands, which rested on a rough-hewn walking stick. “I suppose I should have sent word.”