Page 1 of Barely a Woman (Bow Street Beaus #1)

Morgan Brady had long feared she would sink to her father’s low expectations. She never imagined that the final descent would be a journey of her own making.

“Cut it off.” She raked trembling fingers through her long, amber hair—one last time. “Every bit.”

Aunt Meg peered at Morgan beneath a hooded brow, her expression as mortified as those of the gargoyles haunting nearby Westminster Abbey. “Are you certain, child?”

Morgan read again the letter in her lap, delivered from the Bow Street magistrate only three hours earlier.

Dear Mr. Brady, it began. We recently received your application for the advertised position.

Given your sterling qualifications and fine recommendation from the Reverend Silas Merrill, I hereby request your presence at Number Four Bow Street on the morrow at two in the afternoon that we may discuss the position of assistant to the Chief Clerk in the editing of our newsletter.

Until then, sincerely, Sir Nathaniel Conant, Magistrate of Bow Street.

She repeated silently the first words of the letter. Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady.

They mistakenly believed her to be a man. And why not? Nothing of her name or application indicated otherwise.

“Morgan?”

She tore her attention away from the letter to find her aunt wringing white knuckled hands, grimmer still.

Three pairs of eyes behind Aunt Meg scrutinized Morgan with that quality unique to children—terrified of change but enticed by it all the same.

The boys clung to one another as if expecting a deluge to wash through their moldering hovel on Tothill Street at any moment.

She forced a smile for her much younger half-brothers, offering them the optimism that so eluded her.

They needed their sister to be strong. She could not falter.

“I am certain, Auntie. I need this job. We all do.”

Aunt Meg unclenched her knotted fingers and heaved a defeated sigh.

She retrieved a pair of sheep shears, remnants of their former country life.

Morgan shifted her chair to face the cloudy mirror perched on the low bureau.

Both items had belonged first to her mother and then stepmother but were now hers.

The muddied, brown-eyed reflection offered no solace, but it never had.

A nose too bold. A jaw too strong. Cheekbones too prominent.

Not the porcelain doll face presently favored by gentlemen of Society.

Her husky voice further defeated the image.

Only the thick mass of wavy hair marked her as truly feminine. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Father always said I was barely a woman, anyway.”

The whisper of snapping shears forced her eyes open to find a length of hair fluttering to the floor at her feet.

She swallowed a cry but failed to contain her tears.

Her aunt continued cutting with a trembling hand, speaking not a word.

The little boys drew into a tighter knot, their eyes wide with fascinated alarm.

She tried to smile for them again but seemed to have forgotten how.

Six and twenty, she thought, and come to this. Come to what father always claimed of me.

Morgan grieved as she watched the remains of her tenuous womanhood tumble to the floor and disappear into a growing mound of amber curls.