The Wallflowers To Wives Collection. Bronwyn Scott

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      For all my PEO sisters! This is a series about women who decide to make their own destinies. Their ambition to remake themselves is not all that different from the ambition held by our seven founders. With special love, of course, to my chapter of outstanding women.

       Thanks for all your support.

Chapter One

      London—May 1821

      It all started with two words. ‘I’m pregnant.’ The phrase jerked Claire rudely out of her own admittedly rather self-centred thoughts and thrust her into the horrifying present of someone else’s reality. Had Beatrice truly said she was pregnant? Claire stared at her friend in abject confusion as the words settled. Pregnant, as in going to have a baby. Enceinte. Her brain switched to its fail-safe coping mechanism, French. In a crisis, everything always sounded better in French.

      Then the shock came, waves of it. Having a baby implied certain other things had taken place prior unless one was the Virgin Mary. Beatrice, one of her best friends since childhood, whom she had played with as a girl, whom she’d come out with, whom she’d not thought kept any secrets from her, had taken a lover and hadn’t told her. Hadn’t told any of them if the looks on the faces of Evie and May were anything to go on. They looked much like she suspected her face did—all pale emotion and bewilderment, while their brains picked through all responses possible for such a situation.

      All the while Bea sat still, equally pale, waiting for an answer, watching each of them expectantly and patiently while their emotions rolled. This was not at all what Claire had been anticipating today. Today’s meeting in the tiny attic garret of Evie Milham’s town house was supposed to be like all the other meetings: secret and commiserative. They would bemoan the lack of male attention and/or intelligence, eat some cake and go home, only to meet the following week and do it all over again. It was a comforting ritual they’d sustained over the last three years since they’d come out, when hopes had been, if not high, certainly higher than they’d become after three years on the marriage mart and no takers.

      Someone had to say something. Even May with her ever-ready comments couldn’t seem to mount an adequate response. For the first time, Claire noticed how tightly Beatrice’s hands were clenched in her lap, two hard, pale fists while she waited for their...verdict.

      Suddenly Claire understood. Beatrice was waiting for them to pass judgement on her, against her, no doubt wondering right now which of her friends would move away first. They wouldn’t be the first to know. Beatrice had already been through this with her family. Apparently, she thought she knew what to expect: rejection of the very worst sort. Exile. The social death of anonymity. It certainly made Claire’s own problems pale by comparison. She’d been selfishly absorbed in her own concerns while Beatrice grappled with something much larger. Beatrice shouldn’t have to do it alone.

      She would help, if only she knew how. She needed information and that gave her a voice again. The questions came out in a rush. ‘How? When? More importantly, who?’

      Beatrice swallowed hard, the questions no doubt discomforting, but it was too late to take them back. Quiet Evie shot her a quelling look in scolding and leaned forward to take Beatrice’s hand. ‘Bea, you don’t have to tell us.’

      Bea shook her dark head. ‘Yes, I do. You have a right to know. I owe you all this much. You will have decisions to make.’ She looked at each of them in turn and drew a fortifying breath. Claire’s heart broke for her friend. She wanted to tell Bea it would be all right, but she couldn’t. Things might never be ‘all right’ for Beatrice Penrose again.

      Beatrice began to speak. ‘Over the winter, I became acquainted with the friend of a neighbour who had come for an extended visit. In hindsight, the term “repairing lease” might be more appropriate. There were likely “reasons” he was in the countryside of Sussex instead of London or somewhere far more interesting.

      ‘I did not look past his handsome face, his manners and the acceptance he’d been afforded by local gentry because of those attributes. Others easily accepted him without question and I did, too.’ Beatrice’s fingers pleated her skirt absently. ‘The country in winter is as dull as the weather and he was exciting, new. No one had ever been interested in me the way he was.’

      Claire nodded in sympathy. She felt guilty for being absent. Her family had spent the holidays in the Lake District. She’d not been there to steer Beatrice away from danger. Neither had May, whose family had stayed in town, nor Evie, who had gone to one of her sisters’. Beatrice had been entirely on her own. Alone and lonely.

      Claire had plenty of experience, they all did, when it came to being overlooked by gentlemen of society for one reason or another; She was too smart with her acumen for languages when most gentlemen could barely master one; Evie was too discreet as to become anonymous and May was just too well informed, too sharp tongued. May had a talent for eavesdropping. She knew everything about everyone and that made her positively frightening to men who preferred to hide their secrets.

      ‘He СКАЧАТЬ