Chapter 1
Marguerite de Vaury
Colette’s sobs were the kind that shook the bed linens, great racking noises muffled only barely by her pressed pillow. Her hair, unbrushed, lay wild across the lacework as though she’d been rolling in her grief for hours. I sat by her side, smoothing my palm in idle circles down her narrow back as though that might settle her.
“You should’ve seen him, Marguerite!” she wailed again, lifting her blotched, wet face just long enough to scowl at the wall. “Fat and short, fingers thick as sausages! How could Papa do this to me?”
And oh, she meant it. The outrage of a girl raised soft, well-fed and petted her whole life—like a lapdog recoiling from her first leash.
I kept my sigh silent, lips pressed firm. I was not a girl who wept for ugly betrothals. My own father had left behind nothing but disgrace and shame. There were no suitors clamoring for me, hideous or otherwise. If I’d been promised to a Marquess, I’d have tied the knots myself and prayed he was at least decent in bed.
“It can’t be so bad—he’s a Marquess, Colette,” I said, more pointedly this time, fingers steady on her spine. “You’ll be Marchioness of something-or-other, draped in velvets, attended to. Most girls would weep with gratitude.”
She groaned as if I’d insulted her soul. “Do you think I care about velvets when he sweats like a pig before supper?”
“Then don’t eat with him,” I snapped, then softened it with a small smile. “You can dine in your room and commission portraits of yourself looking tragic. The world will call you elegant and mysterious.”
“You’re heartless,” she moaned.
“No, I’m practical.” I leaned in, lowering my voice just slightly, just enough to cut past her dramatics. “This is the way of things. You don’t marry for love, you marry for fortune, and if he’s fat, that only means he eats well and isn’t likely to chase chambermaids. Consider it a small mercy.”
She huffed and twisted, flopping like a fish across the mattress. “I shall never recover.”
“You will,” I said, sitting straighter, letting the full weight of my lineage—the tatters of pride, duty, bitter inheritance—show in my voice. “You’ll learn how to smile with your teeth closed and get what you want from him without ever lifting your skirts. Or with them lifted, if that suits you. But you’ll have a title, and a household, and a seat at court. The rest of us must claw for that.”
Her sniffling slowed. She peeked up at me, brow furrowed in a way that made her look younger than she was.
“You’d really do it, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “Marry someone like him.”
I smoothed her hair behind her ear, voice flat as a polished knife: “I’d marry a one-eyed goat if it came with land.”
And I spoke truth.
I was the eldest of two daughters born under no lucky star, unless misfortune counts among the constellations. My father was no titled gentleman nor even a reputable tradesman, but a drifter with charm in excess and scruples in short supply. He called himself a merchant—what he truly dealt in was sweet words, counterfeit promises, and other men’s coin. He’d cheated more households than he could remember, and when at last his lies outpaced his luck, he vanished like smoke on a gust, leaving behind a thin-lipped wife and two hungry girls with no name worth signing.
My mother, left to mend the wreckage, endured with a quiet ferocity. She stitched, scrubbed, and knelt from dawn to dusk, never once letting tears stain her cheeks where we might see them. If not for Vicar Elgard’s charity—driven more by pride than pity, I suspect—we would’ve been sleeping in the parish crypt with the bones and dust. Instead, we worked. Mama took in mending, I scrubbed chamber pots and boiled linens till my hands blistered. We lived in the vicar’s house in the small, airless attic tucked above the servant quarters, where even the spiders seemed to hang in judgment.
It was there I met Colette.
We were of the same age, but even as girls, we had nothing in common. She was all polish and perfume, child of the vicar’s second wife—a Frenchwoman with lace at her sleeves and opinions about everything. Colette had fashionable black curls that coiled like ribbons and eyes the precise blue of Wedgwood china. Her hands were soft, nails trimmed and pink, her days spent at the pianoforte or in lessons with her governess while mine were spent bent over scalding washbasins or starching her hems.
She had a dowry. That alone put her in a different kingdom.
I had flaxen hair that turned brassy in the sun, a narrow face dusted with freckles no matter how much buttermilk I rubbed on, and hands toughened by lye soap and steam. I could make a bed blindfolded and fold linens to church standard, but no one ever taught me how to flirt or curtsy. No one cared if I did.
So yes. I would marry the fat marquess. I would marry a gout-ridden baron or a half-lame knight with one good tooth. I would marry the one-eyed goat if it came with a coat of arms and a roof I could call my own. Not because I was desperate, but because I had eyes in my head and no illusions in my heart. Girls like me did not wait for romance. We forged our fortunes with the only tools given to us: our wits, our silence, and the ability to endure.
Colette wept now, because her future had a belly and jowls. But she had a future, and the means to shape it. Me—I had only the memory of my mother’s thin wrists, cracked from bleachwater and tied in rags at night, and the quiet determination never to end up the same: bent, silent, and worn thin with no coin of her own to speak of.
The sobs rose and fell like a tide, soaking the lace-trimmed pillows, while I stroked her back and kept my thoughts to myself. Then the door creaked open with a sharp clack of the latch, and in swept Lady Montfort, the Vicar’s wife, trailing perfume and irritation in equal measure.
“There you are,” she said, not to Colette, but to me, as if I’d been skulking about like a stray cat underfoot. “How long have you been fussing over her now?”
I rose quickly, smoothing my skirts—plain muslin, damp still from the laundry basin—though I made no apology. Lady Montfort disliked apologies; she preferred deference.
“She was upset, madam.”
“Upset?” Lady Montfort made a sharp sound in her throat and clicked the door shut behind her. She advanced with that practiced gait of ladies who never learned to hurry, her silk skirts brushing the floor like whispers of a better life. “She’ll be a marchioness, mon dieu! What does she have to be upset about? The man could have two heads and a limp and it would still be a fine match. A marquess does not grow on every hedge in Yorkmintle.”
Colette sniffled from the bed. “You didn’t see him, maman…”
“I do not need to see him. I have seen the estate.” Lady Montfort turned her head slightly, casting me a narrow glance. “Marguerite, you may go. You’re a comfort, I’m sure, but there is no wisdom in wallowing with maids. She’ll adjust better without constant petting.”
My back straightened at that. Maid. As if I were no more than another pair of hands to wring linens and empty chamber pots. Which, of course, I was.
I curtsied shallowly. “Of course, madam.”
But before I turned, I met Colette’s eyes. Wet and swollen they might have been, but she knew. She knew I’d meant what I said, and that I envied her even this. The choice. The velvet. The escape.
Lady Montfort didn’t wait for the door to close before she resumed, voice already pitching into lecture.
“You must stop this nonsense, ma fille. You will be the envy of every rector’s daughter from here to Moonbligde. The banns will be read next month, and your trousseau must be arranged. Do you mean to greet your future husband with red eyes and sniveling?”
“But he—”
“But he is a marquess. And that is the end of it.” A pause. Then in a lower tone, meant not for me but not exactly private either: “Do you think I married your father for his splendid chin? One must be clever in marriage, not romantic. Romance is for letters and lace novels. Real women arrange their lives like wardrobes: with good bones and sensible cloth.”
I paused outside the door, lingering just a moment longer, hands curled into the folds of my apron. I would never be a lady, nor married for advantage, nor scolded gently for crying too long over the quality of my betrothal. No one would worry for my trousseau.
I straightened my back, tucked my chin, and made for the kitchens—no use lingering. Melancholy did not scrub pots, nor did it starch collars. Much like the miss, I had no liberty to wallow in my fate, though for far less glamorous reasons. She mourned the shape of her future husband’s belly. I mourned nothing. I hadn’t the time.
The day passed as they all did: eggs gathered before sunrise, cracked fingers dipped in vinegar to leech the sting, linens boiled till the air reeked of lye and steam. By mid-afternoon, my apron clung damp to my middle, and my shoulders ached from lifting iron pots over the stove. The house bustled with preparations for the Sabbath meal, yet Miss Colette remained absent. The Vicar, ever indulgent, allowed she might skip the service and take her supper in her room.
“Still distraught,” Marie muttered, pinning another kerchief to dry.
“Over a marquess,” I said flatly, lifting the tray. “How tragic.”
Marie snorted.
I took the tray myself. I’d always been the one to see to Colette when her moods struck. Perhaps she liked the way I listened without offering much in return. Or perhaps she liked the illusion of kindness from someone beneath her. It hardly mattered now.
The hallway to the private chambers was dim by then, lit only by the flicker of taper candles in the sconces. I knocked once out of habit—quiet, just in case she slept—then pushed the door open.
“Miss—”
But she wasn’t there.
The first thing I noticed was the draft. The window stood open an inch, lace curtains trembling with the night air. Her cloak was missing from its peg. Her writing desk had been left ajar, a bottle of ink uncapped, its stain dried in a crooked crescent. Her trunk, half-emptied, stood gaping at the foot of the bed like a yawning mouth. Her things—normally folded with a maid’s assistance—were strewn across the coverlet in a scatter of silks and petticoats.
I set the tray down, slowly, the porcelain rattling against the wood. Then I saw it.
A letter. Propped against her pillow like a farewell kiss.
I stepped closer, heart steady, fingers already reaching for it. The paper was folded once, no wax, no ribbon—sealed with the pressed edge of a thumb. I recognized her hand even before I read the lines.
— I’m sorry, Papa and Maman. I could not bear the thought of being that pig’s wife. I’m fleeing to my freedom with Carlisle. Do not worry for me.
That was all.
No address, no plan. Just that. Freedom.
Foolish girl.
What a wordless, weightless thing that is, freedom. Girls like us don’t have the luxury to chase it—not unless it’s bought by marriage or earned with blood. And she would throw it all away for a stableboy with a pretty mouth and debt behind his boots?
I stood by the bed, looking down at her scattered dresses—fine lawn, delicate muslins, a silk gown with embroidery so fine it caught the candlelight like spider’s thread. Each one worth more than a week’s wages in the laundry. Abandoned now, as if they meant nothing. As if she had never understood what they meant to those who had never owned such things.
She turned away from a marquess.
A real marquess. Land, title, estate. Velvet curtains. A footman to hold her horse. A proper cook, not some sweating apprentice feeding fifteen mouths from two chickens and a jar of lard. A lady’s maid of her own—no more sharing brushes with her mother or waiting while I heated the iron. A bed with goose feathers. A life with walls tall enough to keep the world out.
If it were me…
If it were me, I’d have tied the ribbons myself, bathed in rosewater and smiled till my cheeks ached. I’d have kissed that fat man’s ring and praised his baldness like it were a blessing. I’d have curtsied till my knees gave out, if it meant waking up in my own home, with a name that could open doors instead of shut them.
I’d have knelt and thanked the saints.
