A Rumored Engagement. Lily George

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      Chapter One

      “Well, here we are.” Susannah Siddons injected a false note of cheeriness into her voice. After all, it fell to her to convince her sisters that she had matters well under control. Not always an easy task when one was only twenty and the head of the household. “It’s not much, but we’ll give it a good cleaning and it will look much better.”

      She turned to face her sisters, Hannah and Rebecca, whom she had long ago nicknamed Nan and Becky, her stair-step sisters, as she called them. Becky two years younger and Nan four years younger—yet despite that difference, they clung together close as twins. Their faces, as alike as two profiles on the same coin, reflected doubt and disgust as they glanced up at the tumbledown building before them.

      “It’s awfully small,” Nan ventured, biting her lip in a distracted fashion. “Where will we live?”

      “On the top floor, silly,” Susannah answered with a bright smile. “There are two rooms up there and a small kitchen in the back of the shop area.”

      “It’s rather far off the main road, wouldn’t you say?” Becky scanned the street with a rapid glance. “How can we attract shoppers if we don’t have anyone strolling by our windows?”

      “Well...” Susannah hesitated. Becky had a point. They were at the far end of the main road, where the gravel path trailed off into the nearby meadow. The hustle and bustle of a daily market crowd—or as much of a crowd that ever gathered in a small village like Tansley—would be down at the end of the road. Still, this shabby storefront was all her slender purse could afford. “We’ll just have to give them a reason to seek us out. We’ll make our windows so alluring, so stuffed with beautiful goods, that our shop will become a destination.”

      She tucked a stray lock of deep auburn hair back under her bonnet and leaned forward to get a better look at the store through the dirty glass window. But all that she saw was a reflection of herself—the dark circles under her gray-green eyes, her pale skin with its light dusting of freckles. No one, looking at her, would be deceived. Her life was a shambles, and though she might try to hide it from her sisters, ’twas writ plain across her face and her person.

      She drew back from her reflection sharply. It didn’t matter. No one cared what she looked like, anyway. “Shall we go in? Father’s solicitor said he’d leave the key under a stone.”

      Becky dropped her satchel on the grass and pushed back her bonnet. “I don’t see a stone.”

      Nan walked up to the front doorway and parted the long moor-grass with her fingers. “Neither do I.”

      Perfect. How absolutely, positively, perfectly perfect. They had been traveling for weeks now and finally reached the end of their journey—only to find the door locked. ’Twas a metaphor for her entire life. Tears stung the back of her eyelids and a hysterical desire to laugh bubbled within her. What could they do? The solicitor lived back in Matlock, a day’s journey away. The mail carriage they’d ridden in on was long departed. People came and went down at the other end of the street, their faces and forms blurred by the distance.

      She could go and ask one of the other shopkeepers for assistance, or one of the townspeople. But a sudden and unreasonable wave of stubbornness assailed her, holding her in its grip. She was here to start a new life for her sisters, and it would be intolerable for anyone to know she was making such a poor start. She would find a way to open that door on her own. “I’ll look around back. Perhaps there’s another door to the shop, and he hid the key there.”

      With masterful nonchalance, straightening her spine and holding her shoulders back, she marched around to the rear of the building. There was another door, to be sure, but no key there, either. Nothing even remotely resembling a stone graced the back porch. She clenched her fists and bit her tongue, willing herself not to lose her temper completely and utterly. ’Twould be a blessed relief to roll about in the long moor-grass and flail her arms and legs as she had as a child. But it would do no good. Giving vent to her temper wouldn’t change their present circumstances.

      There was only one thing to do.

      She returned to the front of the building, where Becky and Nan stood waiting. “I’m going to break in,” she announced.

      Her sisters gasped in unison. “No,” they breathed, their eyes widening in shock.

      “Oh, yes, I shall,” she snapped. “I’ll break out one of the door panes. You’ll see. We’ll be in quick as a wink.”

      Of course, since there was no rock to be found, she’d have to improvise. She opened her valise and withdrew her sturdy boots with their lovely curved heels. One blow from those heels would surely do the trick. Tapping it against her palm, she walked over to the doorway and raised the boot in the air.

      “What do you think you’re doing?” A man’s voice, rich and deep, boomed behind her. She dropped the boot and swung around. There, beside her sisters on the tapering path, were two young gentlemen. Her breath came in quick gasps as she studied the form of one of the men. Surely that wasn’t Daniel Hale. No, it couldn’t be. And yet—those mischievous green eyes, the tousled black hair—she squinted, taking a closer look. Daniel wasn’t as tall as this fellow when he left, but then, that was several years ago.

      Her sisters were staring at her, openmouthed and silent. Both gentlemen awaited her reaction. The dark one who looked like Daniel appeared amused, if one could judge from the upturned corner of his mouth. The man beside him, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, merely looked confused and a trifle bored.

      “It’s my shop,” she explained, coming toward them with her palms turned upward in a defensive gesture. ’Twould be horrid to begin life in Tansley marked as a woman who tried to break in to a building. She must defuse the situation. “We’re just moving in. But I cannot find the key and so I thought I could break the glass with my boot heel.”

      “Good thing we came along,” the green-eyed man said with a chuckle. “’Tis mighty hard to find a glazer in the village. You’d have a broken door for weeks.”

      There was no doubt about it. This man was Daniel. An older, more rugged version of the boy she’d known, but it was him. Her heart pounded so that surely everyone in the little group could hear it. Better to cover her nervousness by concentrating on the problem at hand. “I don’t know how to unlock it. Without the key, I have no way to get in. And I can’t go back to Matlock to beg the key from the solicitor. We’ve only just arrived.” She indicated her sisters with a jerk of her bonnet.

      “I can help you.” He stepped forward, dusting his hands on his breeches. “Give me a hairpin and I can pick the lock.”

      She nodded. Of course. If only she’d thought of that herself. She tugged her bonnet off her head, pushing some of the curls back off her shoulder. As she removed a hairpin, her hair finally broke free of all restraint. It tumbled around her shoulders and she pushed it behind her with an impatient hand. So many women had hair that behaved perfectly well. Why couldn’t her hair be more ladylike?

      His intense gaze searched СКАЧАТЬ