Page 1 of The Etiquette of Love (The Academy of Love #7)

Torrance Park

1796

W ake up, Little Bird. Wake up…”

Winifred thought it was a dream—and a grand one, too. It was her brother Piers’s voice, and he was the person she loved most in the world. Although Piers had told her never to tell that to Wareham or Nanny because it would hurt their feelings that neither of them was Winifred’s favorite.

“Winifred?”

The sound of her name pulled her from her pleasant dream. Piers almost never called her that; it was always Little Bird.

Winifred opened her eyes and blinked. It was dark.

“Is it late, Piers?” she asked, pushing up onto her elbows.

Her brother’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “It is so late that it is early, Little Bird.”

“Have you come to take me to see the swans again?” The last time Piers had woken her before dawn they had taken a basket of food from Cook and gone to the lake where Piers had shown her the swan’s nest and baby swans. But that had been back when Mama and Papa were still alive. Winifred had told her parents all about the swans when she had returned home that day and they had let her eat dinner in the hall that night with the adults—along with Piers and Dicky—and it had been one of the best days of her life.

Those are cygnets , Little Bird, just like you. And one day, you will grow up just as beautiful as those swans. Piers had pointed to the mother bird, who had suddenly decided to cruise toward them at full speed and had then come all the way out of the water to chase them, running and honking and hissing with her head down.

Piers scooped Winfred up in his arms and ran, both of them laughing at the poor beast’s ungainly waddle on land, when she had been so graceful in the water.

Piers shook his head. “No swans tonight, Little Bird.”

Winifred’s belly clenched at her brother’s smile. On the outside it looked like his regular grin, but even she could see beneath it; Piers was sad .

“Is something wrong, Piers?”

“I am going away. Tonight.”

“Like Mama and Papa?” she asked in a high, terrified voice.

“No, no, hush,” he soothed when she could not help the tear that slid down her cheek. “Don’t cry—never cry for me, Little Bird!” he said fiercely. “I am not dying like Mama and Papa. I am just going away.”

“But you will be back?”

He hesitated, squeezing her hand so hard it hurt, but Winifred didn’t complain. “I will be back, but it might take a very, very long time. While you wait for me, do not believe what they say about me, Little Bird. Never believe their lies.”

“I won’t, Piers. I promise, I would never.”

“Do not tell anyone you saw me tonight. This is a secret just between us.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” She was openly crying, no matter how much she tried not to. “Should I light a candle for you—the way you said that sailors’ families do—so you can find your way home?”

He gave a laugh that sounded cracked and broken. “You are too little to play with fire.”

“Nanny can light it for me.”

“Yes, you do that. You have Nanny light one. And one day, it will lead me home again.” He took her face in both hands and kissed her forehead. “You are the only thing I will regret leaving behind. I love you, Little Bird.”

And then her big brother—her protector and knight and hero and friend and companion, all rolled into one—was gone.

Winifred never told a soul about Piers’s visit—not Nanny or even Dicky, the only brother she had left now. She loved Dicky, of course, but he was not Piers. Dicky had changed after Papa and Mama died. He had become the Earl of Wareham, like their Papa had been, and did not play with Winifred the way he used to do.

“Your brother is Wareham now. He is not a boy to be bothered with your childish demands, my lady,” Nanny had chided when Winifred asked why Wareham was always so serious.

So, she never told a soul. But every day, she waited for Piers to come home.

Days rolled into weeks and months into years, and still she waited. At first, Nanny put a candle in the window for Winifred, but soon she was old enough to do so herself.

Almost four years had passed when Dicky came to the nursery to see her one day. “I have a surprise for you, Winny.” Her brother had lost the shadowed, haunted look he had worn for years after their parents’ deaths. He had become the Dicky of her extreme youth, laughing and playing and holding house parties for all his friends in the summer. They had boating and archery contests down at the lake and it was magical. The only thing that could have made her life better was if Piers had been there, too. But she didn’t ask Dicky about Piers because it always made him sad—and also a little angry.

“What sort of surprise, Dicky?”

“I have a new sister for you.”

“You—you are bringing home a baby?” Winifred asked, so excited she stuttered.

Dicky laughed. “Soon, I hope. By sister, I mean my betrothed, Miss Sophia Telford.”

“Oh,” Winifred said, unable to hide her disappointment.

But Dicky didn’t even notice. Instead, he went back to the door and opened it. A moment later, he led a beautiful woman into the room, his face glowing with pride. “This is Sophia, Winny. Sophia, this is my sister, Winifred.”

Winifred curtsied as her governess, Miss Tower, had taught her.

“How charming!” Miss Telford cooed. She was beautiful, like a fairy princess, with blond curls and huge blue eyes. “I am so excited to have a new little sister.” She smiled at Winifred, but it never reached her eyes, and it made Winifred shiver; it was not a truly friendly smile.

Things changed in the months after her brother’s wedding. At first it was small things, like Winifred not being allowed to eat breakfast with Dicky anymore.

“The breakfast room is for adults, Winifred. You should be up in the nursery with your governess,” Sophia had said.

Dicky had been sitting right beside her, and he had smiled and nodded. “You will be more comfortable up there, Winny.”

The small things added up quickly into big, unpleasant things.

“You should not call your brother Dicky, Winifred,” Sophia said one afternoon. This time, it was just the two of them alone together.

“But it is what I have always called him.”

The cool look she had begun to dread entered Sophia’s jewel-like eyes. “He is Wareham, now and deserves your respect as the earl. You want to show your brother the proper respect, don’t you?”

When she put it that way…

Winifred nodded and said, “Yes, Sophia.”

The first time she had called her older brother Wareham, he laughed and pulled her plait. “What’s this, Winny?” he teased. “Why so formal?”

Sophia had been there at the time. Winifred had seen the watchful look on her sister-in-law’s face and the warning glitter in her eyes, so she had just pressed her lips together and smiled.

And she had never called her brother by his pet name again.

When she turned ten, Sophia gave a birthday party for her, although she did not invite Nanny, Miss Tower, or Gilly and Andy, the stablemaster’s children. “They are not proper friends, Winifred; they are servants,” Sophia explained in the gentle voice Winifred hated. “You should not be playing with the children of servants—you are too grown up now. And soon both Nanny and Miss Tower will be going away.”

“Er, Sophia, darling, perhaps now is not the best time to tell Winny about that,” Wareham said, coming to stand behind his wife with a pained look on his face.

“Of course it is! Winifred is a big girl.”

Winifred looked at her brother.

Wareham flushed; his smile forced. “You get to go away to school next month—won’t that be exciting?”

When she did not respond quickly enough, Sophia said, “Of course it will be exciting! You will meet new girls—proper young ladies, not the children of farmers and servants.”

“Sophia—” Wareham said in a protesting tone, laughing uncomfortably.

Maybe it was her brother’s expression that made Winifred brave, because—for once—she spoke up. “I don’t want to go away, Di—Wareham.”

“Perhaps we might wait another year?” Wareham said, looking at Sophia.

“But my love, her place has already been reserved.”

Wareham had frowned. “Oh, well…”

Winifred had known then that her brother would never, ever take her part.

So, she had gone away to school. And when she came home during the Christmas break, she hated it and was glad she could escape back to school again when the holiday was over.

Everything had changed. Everything.

But Winifred discovered things could always change even more.

When she turned seventeen, Sophia and Wareham once again sat her down.

Her brother smiled in the uncomfortable way that he now seemed to save just for Winifred.

It was, unsurprisingly, Sophia who spoke for them. “My cousin, the Earl of Sedgewick, has asked Wareham for permission to court you. You recall Sedgewick, don’t you Winifred?”

“Yes.” The earl had visited the house on numerous occasions but had not paid much attention to Winifred until this last holiday. He was old—older than Wareham—but there was no denying he was dashing and handsome. He smiled and laughed a great deal and there was a glint in his eyes that gave her a strange tingling feeling in her belly. And lower.

Winifred did not want to marry him. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Even though she knew it was futile, she turned to Wareham. “I thought I was to go to London next Season?”

Wareham opened his mouth.

“You can hardly expect to engage the interest of a gentleman more respected and adored than my cousin,” Sophia said, the glint Winifred loathed had entered the other woman’s eyes.

“Darling,” Wareham began, his gaze sliding from his wife to Winifred as he sensed the tension between them, maybe for the first time. “Perhaps Winny can make her decision about Sedgewick with more confidence after the Season?”

Sophia’s beautiful face hardened and Winifred felt a sudden, almost crippling, revulsion at the thought of her brother, once so magnificent, yet again diminished by Sophia’s implacable manipulations.

“I am honored by the earl’s interest,” she quickly said, meeting Sophia’s flat, determined gaze with one of her own. “You are correct… as always, Sophia.”

Sophia’s eyes had glittered with poorly concealed triumph. “He is the Earl of Sedgewick, Winifred. If you marry him, you will be a countess. Just like me.” She gave a girlish giggle that made Wareham smile.

Winifred felt nauseated.

A scant month later, she was betrothed. Not only would there be no Season, but Winifred would not return to school for her final semester, either.

“There is no point, now. All the other girls will be envious of your success—marriage without a Season!” Sophia said. And her word was always law.

The evening of her betrothal dinner she lit a candle as she did every night, even though Wareham had years ago told her that Piers had died in a shipwreck. She simply did not believe that was true. As she put the candle in the nursery window, Winifred said her usual prayer for his safe return. And then she prayed for something new.

“I am to be married, Piers. I should be grateful,” she whispered, parroting her sister-in-law’s words in a hollow voice, mesmerized by the small flame. “Sophia said there is no reason for a grand ceremony in London, so the wedding will take place in the village church. There will be no time to invite my friends as it will take place so soon,” she licked her unaccountably dry lips. “Very soon.” Her voice broke on the last word. “If you are ever going to come home, Piers, now would be a good time.”

But Piers did not come the next day. Or the next. Nor did he return in the weeks and months to come.

Five months, two weeks, and one day after her wedding, Winifred stopped putting candles in the window.

Nor did she ever again pray for her brother’s safe return. In fact, she stopped praying altogether.

Because prayers were nothing but hopes that were put into words, and dreams were for children.