hen I met Philip in the library the next afternoon for our game of chess, he said, “I know it’s not as exciting as fencing, but I wondered if you would be interested in archery.”

I was interested in almost anything that took me away from the quiet pastimes of the drawing room. We went outside to the southwest lawn, where a target had been set up for us. A couple of servants stood nearby, and Philip motioned for me to go first. We practiced until my arms were too tired to shoot one more arrow. As we walked back to the house, Philip said lightly, “I suppose the chess will have to wait until tomorrow.”

But the next afternoon, when I met him in the library, he asked if I had seen the gardens yet. I hadn’t, so he took me on a tour of the grounds and showed me the water garden and the Oriental garden and the rose garden. We talked and strolled around the grounds until a sudden rain shower drove us inside.

I was surprised once again to discover that hours had passed while I was in Philip’s company, though it had felt like mere minutes. And when I tried to account for the passage of time by recalling exactly what we had talked about, I could only remember bits and pieces—a story here, a memory there—and the fact that I had never had to search for something to say to him.

Days blended together, and between our morning rides, our afternoon activities, dinner, and time spent with the family in the evening, there was hardly a moment when I was out of Philip’s presence. I felt as if I were enjoying a guilty pleasure and that I should turn my mind to something more productive than enjoying my new friendship with Philip. But I felt as wild and free as a bird suddenly released from its cage. I grew unguarded, and blissfully happy, and content to the very core of my soul. And although only a handful of days passed in this matter, I felt as if I had known Philip all my life.

Philip and I had taken five rides together, and he had beaten me five times, when a letter arrived for me one morning. I was frustrated, because I knew that Meg had untapped potential within her, and I was determined to prove it.

“One of these days, you will be seeing the backside of Meg,” I told Philip as I sat down to breakfast.

He laughed with the familiar glint in his eyes that made me think he was enjoying a secret. He had too many secrets. I narrowed my eyes at him, but by now I knew him too well to hope that he would reveal any of his mysteries to me.

The butler cleared his throat as he held a silver salver toward me. On it rested a letter. The envelope bore Grandmother’s familiar, shaky handwriting. She must have mailed this immediately after I left Bath for it to have arrived so soon. I set it beside my plate and looked at it with misgiving. Seeing it made me anxious, as if I had been living in a dream. I feared whatever the letter contained would cause me to wake. I decided to read it later, in private.

Lady Caroline spoke up. “I think we ought to host a ball for our guests while they’re here. What do you all think?”

Mrs. Clumpett looked up with her ready smile. “Oh, I love a ball. And so does Mr. Clumpett. Don’t you, my dear?”

I couldn’t imagine that he actually loved a ball, but he grunted in response.

“Philip?” Lady Caroline said. “Do you have any objections?”

“You know you have free rein here, Mother.”

That seemed odd. Why should she have to ask his permission to hold a ball? If she needed to ask anyone, it should have been Sir Charles.

“I think a ball will be delightful,” she said. “We’ll introduce Marianne to all the eligible gentlemen in the area and watch them fight over her. What fun it will be!”

I looked at her in surprise and blushed. “I am sure you’re mistaken about the level of interest I will inspire,” I murmured.

“I am never mistaken about such things,” she said, smiling like a cat before a dish of cream. “What do you think, Philip? Won’t she be all the rage?”

I couldn’t look at Philip. He would undoubtedly say something polite, which everyone would know was a lie. But then, when he didn’t immediately answer, I had to look at him. I was so surprised by what I saw that I looked twice.

Philip held his mother’s gaze with a hard look in his eyes. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He almost looked angry, but I couldn’t fathom why her words would spark such a reaction in him.

Lady Caroline’s smile turned hard—almost mocking—from across the table.

After a tense silence, he finally said, “Undoubtedly.”

I took a quick breath. Something was amiss here, and it made me uncomfortable to be the cause of it. “A ball sounds wonderful,” I said, wanting to clear the tension, “but I have no desire to be fought over. I would rather just enjoy the dancing.”

Mr. Clumpett suddenly looked up from his book. “This sounds very much like something I just read.” He flipped through some pages while I looked at him in surprise. I didn’t think he had been listening to us at all. “Ah, here it is.” He cleared his throat before reading: “‘The male rhinoceros will not tolerate any other male entering his territory during mating season. If such a thing occurs, dangerous fights are bound to ensue.’”

He looked up with bright eyes. “That would be a sight to see, wouldn’t it? A dangerous rhinoceros fight?”

“Fascinating,” his wife said with feeling.

I stared. Had he really just read something over breakfast about animals mating? I didn’t know where to look in my embarrassment. Philip cleared his throat, but it sounded to me as if he was trying not to laugh.

“Very apropos,” Lady Caroline said with a smile. “Well, then, it is settled. I will organize the guest list and start writing the invitations this afternoon.”

I took that as permission to excuse myself; I was eager to escape the charged emotions of the room. I picked up my letter and walked to the door. But I felt a gaze on my back as I did so, and I glanced over my shoulder. Philip was watching me with a very solemn expression. I gave him a questioning look in return. Abruptly he smiled, and all traces of that foreign look were erased. It lingered in my mind, though, as I left the dining room. In that moment, Philip had reminded me very much of someone else, but I couldn’t think of whom.

I sat at the writing desk in my room and stared at Grandmother’s letter for several minutes before daring to open it. Finally, I succumbed to the inevitable and broke the seal. The morning sunlight slanted through the window and warmed my back as I read.

I gazed out the window while considering the ramifications of Grandmother’s message. The fact that she had mailed it before I had been absent one week illustrated her lack of faith in me. I had to smile as I admitted to myself that her lack of faith in me was partly justified, for I had not given one moment’s thought to her assignment since I had fallen into the river.

In fact, that event—falling in the river—highlighted the problem perfectly. I did not have the instincts of an elegant lady. But, according to my grandmother, I would have to become an elegant lady in order to win an inheritance.

As I considered this quandary, I did not attempt to deceive myself. Young ladies of elegant birth with no fortune had little hope for comfort in the world. Work was not an option. And marriage without a sizeable dowry... well, only the very blessed achieved that. I did not need a mirror before me to know that I was not among the very blessed. My figure was too petite for the current trend in beauty, and my looks, while passable, did not have the striking quality needed to attract a gentleman’s attention.

Besides that, the fact remained that I had no desire to be married simply for the achievement of it. That was Cecily’s ambition, and I had learned at a young age that if I ever wanted the same thing Cecily wanted, I would inevitably lose to her.

It was the doll that had made that point clear to me. When we were six, our great-aunt had sent us a doll she had bought in Paris. She wrote in the letter accompanying the package that it was unique in the whole world. It was finely made, with hazel eyes and real, curled auburn hair.

Having no children of her own, it did not occur to my great-aunt what problems one doll between two girls would present. Cecily and I fought over it the moment it arrived. Of course, we were meant to share it, and sharing may have come later, but we fought over the right to be the first to hold that doll. Since Cecily was the eldest, she claimed that right. It didn’t matter that it was only by seven minutes. Those seven minutes were a lifetime between us and could never be made up.

So she held the doll first. Something fierce and unyielding grew within my young heart as I watched my sister stroke the doll’s pretty auburn hair and hug it to her chest. I despised the feeling of losing to her, and I decided in a moment of jealousy and resentment that I would do anything rather than lose to her again.

So when it was my turn to hold the doll, I claimed that I didn’t want to touch the ugly thing. No matter how much Cecily held and caressed the doll and talked about how pretty it was, I remained stoically insistent that I did not want to touch it. And I never did. Eleven years passed and I never once touched that doll, not even to feel her hair. A maid once put it on my bed by mistake, but even then I did not touch it. I put a handkerchief over my hand and picked up the doll by the foot and flung it onto Cecily’s bed.

At first it was only possessions we fought over. But as we grew older, the list lengthened—talents, beauty, attention from boys. I applied the lesson of the doll and decided it was better to want something different from Cecily instead of lose to her. I learned to hide my desires, or to change them as soon as learning hers.

There was nothing I could do to become more beautiful than she was. But when she excelled at singing, rather than trying to match her, I refused my lessons and turned my focus instead to painting. When she proved herself a devoted flirt, I scorned such artifice and either avoided talking to eligible gentlemen or deliberately spoke my mind to them, which I discovered they did not like.

I had to be different from Cecily so I would not be inferior. We could not occupy the same space together. Like horses in a race, I was tired of jostling for position and losing. I chose a different course so that losing would not be an option.

And so while she planned her season and dreamed of the achievements she would make with her marriage, I did the opposite. She planned to marry someone wealthy, titled, and with a good parcel of land. I dreamed quietly of marrying someone whom I loved deeply, and who loved me madly in return. If such a man could not be found, then I would not marry at all.

Such was my attitude when Cecily and I came of age to be presented to society and enter the marriage mart in London. Cecily dreamed of nothing but town life; I dreamed of nothing but living comfortably in the country. I did not envy Cecily her season, because I had no such ambition. I did not aspire to a brilliant match, because it would be a contest with Cecily and she would win. I never wanted to be an elegant lady, because that was Cecily’s role.

But now, faced with this challenge from Grandmother, I realized I would be foolish to throw away a fortune simply because I had never been ambitious in the same way Cecily was. I might not have planned to be a wealthy heiress, but only a simpleton would turn down an opportunity to live very comfortably for the rest of her life.

In fact, this inheritance was exactly what would give me the freedom to choose whether or not I married for love. And all I had to do to earn it was to prove myself an elegant young lady. I was certainly not entirely hopeless in that regard, or else my grandmother would not have given me a chance to try. I would try, and I would earn the inheritance that would give me unparalleled freedom.

But there was another hope that lived in my heart—the hope that if I proved myself, my father might come home. If he could be proud of me, he might return. I might be able to go home. I might be able to convince him to stay and let me take care of him. With my inheritance from grandmother, we would live comfortably. He would want to keep me there, and he would want to stay with me, and I would never have to wonder again if I was wanted.

At the thought of my father, I remembered where I had seen the look that Philip had given me as I walked out of the dining room. I propped my chin on my hand and remembered the day shortly after my mother’s funeral when I had passed by my father’s study. He had held a framed portrait of my mother in one hand, and his eyes were cast downward as he gazed on her image. He did not see me, and so I caught him in a private moment, where concern for me did not guard his expression. His expression was exactly what I had seen in Philip’s countenance. At the time I had thought it was only a look of grief, but recollecting it now, after seeing it so clearly on Philip’s face, I thought—perhaps—it wasn’t grief I had seen, but longing.

But no. I must have been mistaken, or else he had been thinking of someone else. There was no earthly reason for Philip Wyndham to ever look at me with... longing. My cheeks suddenly warm, I banished the thought from my mind and turned my attention to responding to Grandmother’s letter.

I smiled as I imagined what she might make of this letter. It would surely frustrate her, but it would probably also make her laugh. She had a throaty laugh, which was always given up reluctantly—when it was given up at all—and that made it so much more worth the earning. It was something I was proud of—being able to make her laugh, or smile, when she normally repressed such instincts.

In this, Cecily did not share the same talent as I. My twin might outshine me in other accomplishments, but she had never made Grandmother’s gray eyes twinkle with suppressed amusement, and she had certainly never earned a laugh from her. It was not a charitable thought, but one which made my heart swell with pleasure nonetheless.

Despite my flippant response to Grandmother, I did feel the need to focus some of my attention on her assignment. And so, after I sealed the letter to her, I took another piece of paper and made a list. If I were going to improve myself, I needed to be honest about my failings.

Marianne’s List of Improvements

• Stop twirling.

• Wear a bonnet outside.

• Learn to sing at least one song for company.

• Learn to flirt with gentlemen.

That seemed like enough to work on for now, and I did not want to overwhelm myself. Heaven knew the last one on the list might be impossible. But I knew there was one more item I should add, although it was more general than specific in nature.

• Follow the example of other elegant young ladies.

I knew this would mean having to sit at tea with them and talk about the things they were interested in, like bonnets and lace and such. But if doing so meant bringing my father home, I would try. If it meant avoiding my return to Bath, then I would try.

After finishing my list, I took my letter downstairs and found Mrs. Clumpett, who had mentioned wanting to walk to Lamdon, the nearest village. She agreed to accompany me to mail my letter. I felt proud of myself that I remembered to wear a bonnet.

“This is fortuitous timing,” she said. “Mr. Clumpett has just asked me to join him in a search for a certain species of beetle. And although I enjoy exploring the woods, I do not like insects.”

I welcomed her company. There was something odd but at the same time pleasant about her. She did not prattle on about inconsequential things like bonnets and fashion. She knew about things I had never considered, and she seemed to be an equal to her husband in terms of her quest for knowledge. I liked how she had been able to hold her own in their debate over dinner about the Jungle Bush-Quail. But I doubted she was what my grandmother had in mind when she told me to make myself into an elegant young lady.

As we walked into town together, it occurred to me that she looked nothing like her sister, Lady Caroline. Mrs. Clumpett stood no taller than I, and although there was no real fault to find in her nose, or her chin, or her eyes, there was also no real asset to any of those features. Except for her upturned lips, it was a forgettable face.

Lady Caroline, though, was a true beauty, from her rich brown hair to her dark blue eyes, from her statuesque figure to her high cheekbones and aquiline nose. Noticing the differences between them made me like Mrs. Clumpett even more. We had something in common, the two of us; we had both been cursed with beautiful sisters.

After mailing my letter, I found a shop where I bought a sketchbook, pencils, paper, and paint supplies, along with a satchel to carry everything. The idea of painting had taken such a hold of me that I felt the need to do something about it. Besides, I would like something of Edenbrooke to take away with me when I left. It was the closest thing to paradise I had ever known, and I wanted to remember it always.

“Are you an artist?” Mrs. Clumpett asked as she helped me carry my purchases.

“No, not at all,” I said with a laugh. “But I do enjoy it, and I hope to improve myself. It is one of the socially acceptable talents for a young lady to possess, you know.”

“Hmm.” She slanted a glance at me. “I hope you are not offended by my saying this, Miss Marianne, but I think there are more important things to consider than what talents are socially acceptable.”

I smiled to myself. It was all very well for Mrs. Clumpett to be a little odd and something of a Bluestocking—she was married and appeared to be well-matched. I, on the other hand, still had to secure my future happiness, and I knew that my future depended entirely on my becoming socially acceptable.

“I’m not sure my grandmother would agree,” I murmured.

Mrs. Clumpett laughed. “Neither would mine. But I hope you do not let anyone else’s expectations direct the course of your life.” She gently touched my arm, stopping me in the path. I turned toward her. “I have discovered happiness in being true to who I am. I hope you will give that idea some consideration.”

I nodded, touched that she seemed to care enough about me to offer such heartfelt advice. “I will consider it. Thank you.”

A cart coming down the path called me to attention, and I stepped aside to let it pass.

Riding in the cart was a plump woman. She was holding onto her hat with one hand and gripping the side of the cart with the other as she was jostled about on her seat. She looked up just as the cart was passing us and suddenly grabbed the arm of the driver.

“Please, stop here!”

“Why, it’s Mrs. Nutley!” I said, hurrying toward her. I had not heard anything from her about James, so I had assumed everything was going well with his recovery.

Mrs. Nutley clambered down gingerly from the cart and walked to us with small, quick steps. “I was just on my way to Edenbrooke to see you.”

She grasped my hand and I noticed a wrinkled handkerchief clutched in her other hand. I wondered why she was not at the inn taking care of James.

“I do not know what to think,” Mrs. Nutley said, dabbing at her eyes. “I only meant to stretch my legs—I walked down the path only a little way—but when I returned to the inn, James was gone!”