Chapter One
September 1813
Autumn sunlight flooded into the tiny drawing room at Westram Cottage. Lady Petra strode to the window. Beneath a blue sky, a slight breeze stirred the leaves of a nearby oak tree and nodded the heads of the red roses along the path to the front door. A perfect afternoon for a ride, if one had a horse.
She sighed and wandered back to her chair. She picked up the embroidery she’d been working on a few moments before. A handkerchief for her brother Red, the Earl of Westram. So boring. She cast it aside and got up to straighten the portrait of her mother on the opposite wall.
‘Petra,’ her older sister, Lady Marguerite Saxby, said, ‘please stop pacing. You are making me dizzy.’
Remorseful, Petra spun around. ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to disturb you.’
Auburn haired and green eyed, Marguerite was seated at the table going through her correspondence. As usual, her luxuriant tresses were pinned back severely beneath her widow’s cap. Although she returned Petra’s smile, there was sadness in her eyes. Marguerite hadn’t looked anything but sad since she was widowed.
Did Petra have that same look? She strode to the glass over the mantel and peered at her reflection. Unlike her older siblings, she took after her mother with blonde hair and blue eyes. Did she also look sad?
She closed her eyes against her reflection, unwilling to admit to sadness. Yet perhaps she could acknowledge regret. After all, it was partly her fault that she and Harry had had such a blazing row.
She had been so happy for the first few months of her marriage. It had come as a painful shock to realise that Harry, already bored with his brand-new wife, was seeking his entertainments elsewhere. If she’d been a proper tonnish wife and simply ignored his infidelities, brushed it off as something every fashionable husband did, things would have turned out very differently. But it had hurt so much, she could not remain silent. And the more she complained, the worse he behaved until, during their last argument, she’d accused him of not loving her any more. He’d shouted back that he had never loved her and had only married her because his father insisted on it.
He’d said she was a stupid little girl who had ruined his life.
The pain had left her speechless.
The next thing she knew he had stormed off to fight the French. Worse yet was him taking her brother and her brother-in-law with him. Not only had Harry broken her heart, but her stupid naivety had cost her sisters their husbands.
She turned away from the glass.
‘Do you not have mending to do?’ Marguerite asked.
‘All done.’
‘What about the garden? Doesn’t it need attention?’
Petra shook her head. ‘Every time I pick up a shovel or pull a weed, Jeb leaps in to take over. Red seems to have given him very definite ideas about what a lady should or should not do. Honestly, I miss making hats.’
‘Make one for yourself,’ Marguerite suggested.
‘It is not the same. Besides, I have more hats than I need. I feel so useless.’ Earning an income from their fledgling millinery business had been thrilling, until their brother Red had put a stop to it. He had been horrified to discover his sisters were engaging in trade.
They still received some income from the hats Marguerite designed, but the manufacturing had been handed over to the new owner when they sold the business. Ladies of quality did not enter into the world of commerce.
Marguerite scanned the next letter in her pile. ‘Carrie sends her love and says the dog Avery bought her will have a litter of puppies at the end of November, and would we like one?’
‘How adorable. Tell her yes.’
Marguerite nodded. ‘It would be good for you to have company on your walks. A dog would be just the thing.’
Petra joined her at the table to read over her shoulder. ‘She does not say what sort of breed they are? Hopefully, not too large.’
‘I will ask her when I reply. You
