Read Online Amberley Chronicles Boxset I: The Impostor Debutante My Last Marchioness the Sister Quest (Amberley Chronicles Boxsets Book 1) by May Burnett - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: May Burnett
Ads: Link
young and romantic, the two girls had at times yearned for a season in London, and wondered what it would be like to be admired by fashionable gentlemen. Now that Charlotte had finally got a taste of these imagined delights, she could have done without the whole. Of course, then she never would have met James, either …. Better that she never had, she scolded herself.
She already been dealt her hand when she’d been too young and callow to know what she was doing, and lost her chance at winning – but at least she was still here, and in good health, able to help out her sister. Other girls died young, in childbed, which was a lot worse. No use whining and indulging in impossible daydreams. She had to make the best of a poor hand and get on with her life.
A vision of chestnut-haired children fleetingly passed before her. She had always expected to be a mother eventually. Young as she had been at the time, this had been a major factor in her consent to marry Peter. Now that hope no longer seemed realistic, due to the betrayal of her husband. It was hard, but she would instead be the best of aunts for Belinda’s children. She expected that there would be at least half a dozen, enough to keep both her sister and herself busy.
With the help of the well-trained maid Lady Amberley had sent to attend her, Charlotte was quickly transformed into the picture of a charmingly domestic young lady, who would not dream of leaving the house in a phaeton on such a cold, wet, blustery day. Her dress was of fine white muslin embroidered with small bunches of violets, and trimmed with purple ribbons. Her hair, too, looked much more elegant than it had back in Yorkshire. There she normally put it up into a fat bun in the early morning, and forgot all about it for the rest of the day.
By the time Charlotte reached the salon, Lady Amberley was already entertaining two middle-aged ladies, to whom Belinda was duly introduced. They were Lady Berryhill and Mrs. Throckmorton, she learned. Despite the lack of a title, the latter seemed to have a great deal more consequence.
Charlotte had already noted that within the ton, titles were not the only mark of status. As far as she had been able to determine, a person’s birth, connections, and wealth were just as important, and personal qualities also counted to some extent, if the other elements were present. It was a confusing subject, since only the members of the ton themselves knew exactly where each of them ranked in their small world. And even they might be mistaken, as Charlotte’s acceptance in their circle proved.
Charlotte decided that discretion was the better part of wisdom here and now. She answered questions about Yorkshire and her family with placid amiability, but did not assert herself in any way in the conversation, which gradually widened to include a number of new arrivals of both genders. Instead, she listened with apparent fascination to the most commonplace observations of their guests, and occasionally encouraged them to expand on their chosen subjects with leading questions. This modest reticence soon found favour in the eyes of the older ladies. She overheard Lady Berryhill referring to her as a “well-behaved, agreeable girl” as she was leaving the room.
Maybe she had inherited some of her mother’s acting ability after all, Charlotte reflected, and had to repress a sudden desire to laugh.
+++
In the meantime James was conducting some enquiries into his enemy, as he now thought of Conway. A few questions at his club elicited the information that the man had been hanging around the fringes of the ton for the last year or two, and was especially active at events where well-dowered debutantes were present.
“But I’ve also seen him at Denton’s, I think,” his friend Alphonse de Ville-Deuxtours told James. Alphonse, the scion of a noble French family in exile, was more English than the English now, except for his foreign name. They knew each other from
She already been dealt her hand when she’d been too young and callow to know what she was doing, and lost her chance at winning – but at least she was still here, and in good health, able to help out her sister. Other girls died young, in childbed, which was a lot worse. No use whining and indulging in impossible daydreams. She had to make the best of a poor hand and get on with her life.
A vision of chestnut-haired children fleetingly passed before her. She had always expected to be a mother eventually. Young as she had been at the time, this had been a major factor in her consent to marry Peter. Now that hope no longer seemed realistic, due to the betrayal of her husband. It was hard, but she would instead be the best of aunts for Belinda’s children. She expected that there would be at least half a dozen, enough to keep both her sister and herself busy.
With the help of the well-trained maid Lady Amberley had sent to attend her, Charlotte was quickly transformed into the picture of a charmingly domestic young lady, who would not dream of leaving the house in a phaeton on such a cold, wet, blustery day. Her dress was of fine white muslin embroidered with small bunches of violets, and trimmed with purple ribbons. Her hair, too, looked much more elegant than it had back in Yorkshire. There she normally put it up into a fat bun in the early morning, and forgot all about it for the rest of the day.
By the time Charlotte reached the salon, Lady Amberley was already entertaining two middle-aged ladies, to whom Belinda was duly introduced. They were Lady Berryhill and Mrs. Throckmorton, she learned. Despite the lack of a title, the latter seemed to have a great deal more consequence.
Charlotte had already noted that within the ton, titles were not the only mark of status. As far as she had been able to determine, a person’s birth, connections, and wealth were just as important, and personal qualities also counted to some extent, if the other elements were present. It was a confusing subject, since only the members of the ton themselves knew exactly where each of them ranked in their small world. And even they might be mistaken, as Charlotte’s acceptance in their circle proved.
Charlotte decided that discretion was the better part of wisdom here and now. She answered questions about Yorkshire and her family with placid amiability, but did not assert herself in any way in the conversation, which gradually widened to include a number of new arrivals of both genders. Instead, she listened with apparent fascination to the most commonplace observations of their guests, and occasionally encouraged them to expand on their chosen subjects with leading questions. This modest reticence soon found favour in the eyes of the older ladies. She overheard Lady Berryhill referring to her as a “well-behaved, agreeable girl” as she was leaving the room.
Maybe she had inherited some of her mother’s acting ability after all, Charlotte reflected, and had to repress a sudden desire to laugh.
+++
In the meantime James was conducting some enquiries into his enemy, as he now thought of Conway. A few questions at his club elicited the information that the man had been hanging around the fringes of the ton for the last year or two, and was especially active at events where well-dowered debutantes were present.
“But I’ve also seen him at Denton’s, I think,” his friend Alphonse de Ville-Deuxtours told James. Alphonse, the scion of a noble French family in exile, was more English than the English now, except for his foreign name. They knew each other from
Similar Books
