Note to Readers
Cheriton Abbey—early September 1817
Try as she might, Lady Jane Colebrooke couldn’t quite suppress her quiver of excitement as her father’s carriage passed through the gates of Cheriton Abbey, the Devonshire seat of their neighbour, the powerful Duke of Cheriton. It was Olivia, the Duke’s daughter and Jane’s childhood friend, who had told Jane that her brother, Lord Alexander Beauchamp, would be home for the first time in over four years and Jane’s heart had twitched with the longing to see him again.
Not that him being there would make any difference. She’d long ago accepted he would never return her feelings. They’d last met in London in the spring. He’d even danced with her. And still he never seemed to notice her as a female, let alone a lady worthy of courting. No. To him, she was—as she had always been—good old Janey. She turned from the window and her heart shrivelled at seeing her stepmother’s sharp gaze on her.
‘Why the sour expression, Jane? You are going to a garden party, not a funeral.’
Jane bit the inside of her cheek, determined not to retaliate. Defying her stepmother had never borne fruit and life, she had learned, was more tolerable if she allowed Lady Stowford’s jibes to pass over her head.
‘I hope you will at least be civil to Sir Denzil when you meet him,’ Stepmama continued. ‘He has been invited… I made a particular point of asking when I saw him at church last Sunday.’
Jane swallowed. Stepmama had been doing her utmost to pair Jane and Sir Denzil Pikeford ever since the man—another neighbour—had begun to show an interest in her. The fact Jane actively disliked the baronet made no difference—Stepmama was so eager to get her just-turned-twenty-three-year-old stepdaughter off her hands she had even persuaded Papa to add an extra one thousand pounds to her dowry.
One thing Jane knew for certain: if she ever did marry, she would not meekly accept whatever her husband decreed, as she accepted Stepmama’s demands. She would stand up for herself. Right from the start. But it was hard to change the habits of a lifetime with the stepmother who had raised her from a baby and who ruled their household like an empress.
‘You do not accuse me of incivility, I hope, ma’am?’
Papa stirred at her words. ‘Jane is never rude to people, my dear.’ Bless him for one of his sporadic attempts to support the daughter of his first marriage, no matter how unkind Stepmama might be. Jane couldn’t blame him for intervening so rarely. Not when she, too, often chose to remain silent rather than setting the household on its ears for days on end.
‘You know very well she needs to be more than polite, Stowford, if I am to bring Sir Denzil to the point. Really…have you forgotten our dear Miranda is to come out next year? How shameful if her older sister is still unwed!’
She raked her stepdaughter from head to toe while Miranda, the elder of Jane’s two half-sisters, smirked.
‘You
