Page 1 of Convincing Marianne (The Widows of Lavender Cottage #2)
Chapter One
T he peacock's ear-splitting shriek echoed through Willowbrook Manor at precisely six in the morning, as it had every day for the past three months since Marianne had become its reluctant mistress.
She pulled her pillow over her head and tried to ignore the accompanying symphony of barking dogs, chattering monkeys, and what sounded suspiciously like a goat in the drawing room again.
"My lady?" A tentative voice summoned me through her bedroom door. "Lord Smithton has arrived for breakfast. Again."
Marianne sat up with a groan. Lord Smithton was the third suitor this week, and it was only Wednesday. "Tell him I'm indisposed," she called back. "Plague, perhaps. Something contagious."
"He says he's immune to all diseases, my lady, and that his love for you could cure anything."
"Good gracious,” Marianne muttered, throwing back her covers.
Through her window, she could see Smithton's ostentatious carriage in the drive, decorated with enough ribbons and flowers to stock a milliner's shop.
The man had clearly lost his mind—or perhaps that was simply what happened when men heard about her inheritance.
Twenty thousand pounds per year and three estates would apparently make any woman irresistible, regardless of the fact that one of those estates appeared to be operating as an unauthorized menagerie.
Marianne dressed quickly and made her way downstairs, stepping carefully around the various animals that had made themselves at home throughout the house.
How had her dear, eccentric husband managed to accumulate so many creatures?
There were at least twelve dogs of various sizes, two monkeys, a parrot that knew shockingly inappropriate language, three goats, a horse that had somehow learned to open doors, and the infamous peacock that served as the world's most pompous alarm clock.
She found Lord Smithton in the breakfast room, apparently engaged in conversation with Zeus, the larger of the two monkeys.
"Ah, my dear Lady Marianne!" Smithton exclaimed, leaping to his feet with such enthusiasm that he startled Zeus, who promptly threw a piece of fruit at his head. "You look radiant this morning! Like a goddess descended from Mount Olympus!"
"Lord Smithton," Marianne said wearily, "I thought I made it clear yesterday that I am not receiving suitors."
"Suitors?" Smithton laughed heartily. "My dear lady, I am not merely a suitor—I am your destiny! I have composed a sonnet about your eyes. Shall I recite it?"
"Please don't."
But Smithton was already launching into what could only be described as the worst poetry ever committed to the English language, complete with elaborate gestures that sent the other monkey, Athena, into fits of excited chattering.
"Your eyes are like... um... diamonds? No, sapphires! Or perhaps... what rhymes with beautiful?"
"Dutiful," suggested the parrot helpfully. "Dutiful, dutiful, Fiddlesticks!"
"Magnificent!" Smithton cried, apparently mishearing. "Yes, your eyes are magnificent and... dutiful!"
Marianne closed her own magnificent and dutiful eyes in despair. This was her life now—fending off increasingly ridiculous suitors while living in what amounted to a barnyard with pretensions.
The situation had begun three months ago when her husband Charles had died suddenly, leaving her not only his considerable fortune but also his "little hobby" of rescuing animals.
What had started as a few stray dogs had apparently escalated into a full-scale sanctuary that now housed creatures from across England and beyond.
And if the animals weren't challenging enough, the suitors had begun arriving well before her mourning period ended. They came bearing gifts, poetry, and increasingly desperate declarations of love that had nothing whatsoever to do with her and everything to do with her bank account.
"Lady Marianne," Smithton was saying, having apparently finished his sonnet without her noticing, "I have brought you a token of my affection."
He produced a jeweled collar from his coat pocket. "For your... pet."
"Which pet?" Marianne asked faintly. "I have rather a lot of them."
"The, er... the dog? The large spotty one that growled at me yesterday."
"That was Hercules. He's actually quite friendly once you get to know him."
As if summoned by his name, Hercules—a massive Great Dane with a gentle soul and an unfortunately intimidating appearance—bounded into the breakfast room and immediately knocked Smithton backward into his chair.
"Good boy," Marianne murmured under her breath.
"Lady Marianne!" came another voice from the doorway. "Mr. Wickworth has arrived and insists on speaking with you immediately."
Marianne's heart sank. Mr. Wickworth was by far the most persistent of her unwanted suitors, and his persistence had recently crossed the line into something rather more disturbing.
He had taken to lurking in her shrubbery, following her carriage, and sending increasingly heated declarations of his "burning passion. "
"Tell him I'm not at home," she said firmly.
"He says he knows you're here because he can hear the animals. Also, he's brought a cage for the peacock. Says it's too loud."
"He wants to cage Clarence?" Marianne felt a surge of protective indignation. Clarence might be loud and vain, but she was part of the family now.
"I'll take care of this," Lord Smithton announced, puffing out his chest. "No other man shall threaten my beloved!"
"I am not your beloved," Marianne pointed out, but Smithton was already striding toward the front hall with the air of a man going to battle.
The sounds of raised voices echoed through the house, followed by Clarence's triumphant shriek and what sounded like someone falling into the ornamental pond.
"My lady," her long-suffering butler Higgins appeared in the doorway, looking even more frazzled than usual. "Perhaps it would be wise to consider... alternative arrangements. For yourself, I mean. The animals are welcome to stay, of course." His eyes held compassion. “Temporarily of course.”
Marianne sank into a chair, suddenly overwhelmed by the impossibility of her situation.
She couldn't abandon the animals—they depended on her now, and Charles had loved them all dearly.
But she couldn't continue living like this either, under siege from fortune hunters and slowly going mad from the chaos.
"Higgins," she said slowly, "do you recall Lady Lytton mentioning something about a cottage? Somewhere peaceful where ladies could... retreat?"
"Ah yes, my lady. Lavender Cottage in Somerset. She said the most remarkable things about the community there. Very supportive of independent ladies, apparently."
"Somerset," Marianne repeated thoughtfully. "How far is Somerset?"
"A day's journey, my lady. Perhaps two if the roads are poor."
From the front hall came the sound of more shouting, followed by the distinctive splash of someone else entering the pond. Athena came racing through the breakfast room, pursued by what appeared to be a very angry peacock feather.
"Higgins," Marianne said with sudden decision, "prepare the traveling carriage. We leave tonight."
"Tonight, my lady? But surely?—"
"Tonight," she repeated firmly. "Pack only essentials. And Higgins? We're taking the animals."
"All of them, my lady?"
Marianne looked around at the chaos that had become her life—Zeus swinging from the chandelier, Hercules gnawing on what had once been a chair leg, and the parrot practicing what sounded like a maritime chanty of questionable propriety.
"All of them," she confirmed. "If Somerset is willing to welcome independent ladies, perhaps they'll extend that welcome to independent ladies with rather unusual... companions."
As the sounds of warfare continued from the front garden, Marianne began making lists in her head. The traveling carriage would need to be reinforced. They would need multiple wagons for the animals. Food, water, traveling papers...
It would be a logistical nightmare, but anything was better than spending another day fending off fortune hunters while living in a barnyard.
"Somerset it is," she murmured to herself, dodging a flying piece of fruit courtesy of Zeus. "How hard could it be?"
Outside, someone screamed as they apparently encountered the goats, and Marianne smiled for the first time in weeks.
Somerset, here she came. With any luck, Lavender Cottage would prove to be exactly the sanctuary she needed—for both herself and her rather extraordinary family.
After all, what was the worst that could happen?