Page 2 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Two

Marriage Mart-yr Moria

“A rejected proposal by Lady M a rite of passage for the elite men of London. Perhaps Lady M collects them for sport, aiming for the loftiest title like some sort of big game trophy.”

* * *

“What utter rot.”

The sound of a scandal rag hitting the ottoman in front of Moria called her to look up from her embroidery hoop.

Her mouth quirked to the side in amusement.

She’d already seen this particular headline earlier that day when her friends Lady Gretchen Von Mien and Miss Carina Smythe had come to call, acting as though she had committed some boast-worthy accomplishment.

All she’d done was to answer a question in the negative.

“I should find this writer and rip out their innards,” Moria’s older brother Jasper, The Earl of Westmoreland added, raking a hand through his tousled bronze hair.

Moria’s other brother Lawrence followed Jasper in the room on his heels. “I think you might find this particular one lacking in guts entirely, mocking a lady behind anonymity. It’s cowardly.”

Jasper handed Lawrence a tumbler of amber liquid, the latter perching on the arm of Moria’s chair.

“Perhaps the article is right, though. Maybe I am hunting for a lofty title.” Moria said, not looking up from her sewing.

“You were right to refuse Lord Adderton, for what it’s worth. He didn’t deserve you,” Lawrence returned, colliding his shoulder with hers the way that brothers often do.

There was a tug at the hoop of embroidery where Moria was ripping out stitches to restart part of the design in a different color thread. Jasper’s twin sister Kathleen seated beside her chose this moment to interject, turning on her most matriarchal of tones to her younger sister.

“You can’t cut people out as easily as you can your needlepoint. I’m not sure your reputation will survive if you keep turning down proposals, dear,” she counseled.

If you give up pieces of yourself, remember your worth. Those that need reminding, my dear, you make them pay. Dearly.

Their mother’s words came back to Moria, words meant only for her, something she’d hoarded to herself along with memories that weren’t ready for the light of day just yet.

The Pembrooke women were more than ladies, just more, their mother included, God rest her fiery soul.

Moria had spent the last year since her return to society showing just how much more she was than what she’d been boxed up and labeled as when they’d put her on the shelf.

Well, she’d taken herself off that damn shelf and no one was putting her back there without her permission.

Moria set down her embroidery, taking her squirming nephew from Kathleen. She settled the infant and a linen cloth on the shoulder of her butter yellow dress. “The Pembrooke ladies are too strong to worry about things like reputations. Don’t worry about me, sister.”

Moria stood to rock the infant with swaying motions, turning so that Kathleen could check whether his eyes were yet closed.

Kathleen nodded, lowering her voice so as not to wake the colicky infant after Moria had successfully gotten him to sleep.

“It’s Olivia I worry about. Did you have to cause such a scandal right before her debut? ”

“Me? I didn’t cause the scandal,” Moria whisper-shouted over her nephew’s head.

The infant stirred, Moria bounced him to keep him settled.

“He didn’t have to run and sell the story to the papers!

He was only after my hand because Drysdale showed interest, that and my dowry.

I could never be married to such a fickle character. ”

“You will have to marry before Olivia can,” Kathleen whispered. “It’s your third season, Moria.”

Jasper chose that moment to aid his twin sister’s point. “I think what Kathleen is trying to say is that…the more scandals you find yourself in the center of, the harder it will be for our younger sister to make an appropriate match.”

Kathleen placed a hand on Moria’s forearm, both sisterly and motherly at once, before she asked, “That is what you want, isn’t it, sister? To make a match of your own as well?”

Moria stared at the top of the infant’s dark, downy head pressed against the crook of her neck. Three of her siblings stared back at her, awaiting her answer. A lump formed in the back of Moria’s throat. Moria wasn’t really sure what she wanted, only the who.

* * *

The high ceilings and windows of the Pembrooke London summerhouse and smell of fresh flowers made for a welcome retreat, and Moria needed a reprieve from her siblings.

All their good-intentioned worrying and arguing had made it hard for her to hear her own thoughts.

She threw herself into a mindless task: embroidering a swath of silk and linen for a gown for her nephew’s christening.

She didn’t hear her companion, Miss Bridget Kelley, part servant and part friend, as she entered the summerhouse and sat beside her. Moria didn’t look up. A piece of ironed white paper with achingly familiar penmanship entered her field of vision. Moria stilled. Willed herself not to show her hand.

“Does this have anything to do with your refusal of the lord and his…fickleness of character?”

Miss Kelley narrowed her eyes. Moria pasted on a bored smile. So Miss Kelley had been at the piano attempting to teach Moria’s nephew and her own ward to play the scales, but she had been eavesdropping on Moria’s conversation with her sister.

“What do you know?”

The other woman toyed with the envelope and seemed to choose her words. Moria wanted to snap the envelope from her hands, eager to hear his words. Even in the few times they’d met in secret, his voice was still so clear and deep in her mind.

Wherever I go, I fear you’ll follow me. In my thoughts, at least, my lady.

He hadn’t been telling the truth, had he? He was the one following her wherever she went, thoughts of him appearing without being conjured, like some phantom.

Miss Kelley clearing her throat brought Moria back to the present. “I suspect you’ve been carrying on a courtship with the sender of these letters,” she asserted, holding up the offending parchment.

“And if you’re wrong?” Moria hedged, only briefly looking up from her needlework.

Her every impulse screamed to hide, except for one. One strong, loud voice inside her that said, but why do you have to hide him?

“But I’m right,” Miss Kelley said with a feline grin.

“What makes you so certain?” Moria threw down her needlework on the seat beside her.

“Call it…a woman’s intuition.”

Moria leaned around the other woman to call into the doorway, “Not now, Finn, she’s busy!” Miss Kelley, brow furrowed, turned toward the direction to find a doorway devoid of her five year old ward.

Moria capitalized on her distraction to slip the letter from the woman’s hands. When Miss Kelley turned around, Moria grinned, fanning herself with the envelope. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my desk to answer this correspondence.”

Moria made to leave, but the other woman grabbed her skirt.

“Unhand me! You forget yourself, Miss Kelley. You would be wise to remember your place.”

“Snobbery doesn’t suit you, Moria,” she stepped closer to her charge, “I think you will need someone on your side to get what you want. You would be courting him out in the open if you were able to.”

The overwhelming urge to tell someone, the soft understanding in Miss Kelley’s eyes softened her resolve. The letter pressed against her chest, Moria sat back down. The other woman closed the door and then sat opposite her on a settee.

“He’s a captain in Her Majesty’s Army. We met at the coaching inn on the way to London for Noelle’s first season.”

The other woman’s eyes widened. “You’ve hidden this for an entire year?”

Moria nodded. Miss Kelley looked stunned, She shook her head.

“That must have been…lonely. Not to be able to share any of what you were thinking or feeling with the rest of your family or your friends. Why didn’t you share this with them?

” the other woman asked, gentleness in her voice the key to Moria’s vault.

Moria looked at the envelope in her hands, his sloping, neat hand as familiar as his face in her mind.

“It was all mine for a moment. After over a year in mourning and a whole lifetime of sharing everything with them. After I returned from mourning in the country, and it seemed like society had just…moved on. And then Noelle was engaged. And I was being courted by a Duke, and the Earl of Drysdale. Everyone was singing my praises again….” She blew some air out of her mouth, “It never seemed like the right time.”

“But you care for him…or else you’d have broken it off.

Are you aiming to keep your relationship a secret and wed someone else…

The Earl of Drysdale, or the Duke of Andover, perhaps?

” Moria’s companion picked some blooms out of a basket on the nearby table, arranging them in her hands and discarding some as she talked.

While it was done by ladies of means, marriages for alliance’s sake and then affairs conducted later in secret…

Moria had known that kind of love before.

Or she’d thought that’s what it was. But she saw the unconditional affection that both her sisters had achieved with their partners.

She wanted love returned and shared in the open, in the light.

Not the kind of adoration of being the darling of the ton, but a love that withstood her every flaw and had room for her failings.

I hear you, even when you’re saying nothing at all.

Maybe the man who’d written to her could be such a man. Moria pocketed the letter.

“That’s not what I want. I want Devyn. I want to share him with my family…but I…” A single tear fell as Moria shook her head as if to bat away any further tears. “What if I can’t give up all the ground I’ve conquered? What if they all think I’m throwing my future away?”

Miss Kelley was beside her in a moment. Comforting hands traced patterns down her back.

Moria saw a swath of red hair, a sparkle of green eyes and almost envisioned her mother she’d lost to the unfairness of disease.

“When your brother and sister took me into their employ, there was no mention of steering you toward a match with a noble. Your brother’s words were: ‘men who love my sisters and would treat them with respect.’”

“A union with an army captain that I’ve been having a clandestine affair with?”

Miss Kelley nudged her good naturedly in the ribs, “If it helps, considering how terrible your lady’s maid is at lying and keeping your secrets, I’m not terribly surprised.”

Moria gave a watery laugh, taking the blooms from her companion and adding them to a vase. “I’m not sure how, but oddly it does.”

“Tell me how I can help.”

The woman in front of her looked determined, like she was willing to do battle for Moria: hands on her hips, her chin tilted at a defiant angle.

Moria had never been particularly kind to the woman, in fact she and her younger sister had pulled their fair share of pranks on Miss Kelley since she’d arrived the previous season when she’d championed Lady Noelle.

Miraculously, the red-headed Irishwoman had handled them all with grace.

Moria picked a few blooms to add to the others. “Aren’t you worried about jeopardizing your position?”

Miss Kelley didn’t hesitate. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re worried for my position, Lady Moria?” she questioned, handing Moria her pruning scissors.

Okay, she deserved that. “I do happen to find you somewhat hard to have to replace, Bridget,” she said, trimming the stalks of the blooms she was preparing for a bouquet that was to be anonymously delivered to the charity hospital.

It was the first time she’d ever called the woman, not quite a servant, not quite a friend, by her given name and the first time she’d complimented her (audibly at least).

“Then we will just have to be discreet about our plans then if we are to make your epistolary and secret courtship more palatable. If you are willing to accept my help, that is.”

Moria removed the tulips and added several hydrangea blossoms in their place, and then met her eyes. “You think you could do that?”

“I might. But you’ll have to tell me everything first.”

Moria gave a nod of approval to the floral arrangement and sat on the bench on the opposite wall. She’d picked this tale apart herself and knew exactly where to begin.