Prologue
1794
She’d only been at Far Hope a week, and she’d already broken two of the three rules her mother had given her. She was about to break the third.
The kitchens were busy supplying treats for the party above, and Eleanor was able to move through the chaos largely unmarked, thanks to the forgettable gown of coarse gray wool she’d borrowed from her maid. She’d brushed her blond hair free of powder and curls and tucked it under a simple linen cap, and she’d washed all the carefully applied cosmetics from her face, scrubbing her fair skin into a state of red splotchiness to make it look like she’d been running back and forth in the hot kitchens all evening.
And, finally, under her skirts, Eleanor had traded her pointed silk heels for leather half-boots. Much better for walking over the rutted Dartmoor roads.
She didn’t take much once she was downstairs—even dressed like a servant, there was only so much suspicion she could evade, and swiping a week’s worth of food would have definitely been suspicious. After her visit to the kitchens, she stuffed her ill-gotten gains into a haversack along with a leather costrel full of water. She left Far Hope under the cover of night, hopeful that her maid would be able to spin out the lie of her illness long enough for her to escape, and hopeful that no one would discover the real reason Eleanor wasn’t at her own betrothal ball until it was much, much too late.
Chapter One
The Lady Eleanor Vane had been resigned to her fate—more or less. She had been a dutiful daughter, had spent the last four years helping her father, the new Marquess of Pennard, restore the old pile he’d inherited in Somerset, all while also tending to her mother’s vague malaise of the gut. She was an accomplished young woman in every metric: she was a faithful churchgoer; she dedicated herself to various philanthropic pursuits; she could play the pianoforte, sing, dance, embroider, and converse in three different Continental languages; and other than her vocal support for William Wilberforce and his abolition bills, she was otherwise as placidly unobjectionable as her father wanted her to be.
At least, that was how she appeared on the outside.
Inside, she roiled.
The renovation she didn’t mind; the languages and charities she didn’t mind. She didn’t even mind caring for her mother, who was an objectively terrible patient in every way.
But the restraint, the relentless serenity and calm that was demanded of her . . . the constant entitlement of everyone else to her time . . .
That she did mind.
The worst part of it all was that—at some point along the way—she’d begun to lie to herself. She began to feel like this was just a phase of her life, merely a stage on her journey, and that at some undefined point in her future, things would get easier. One day, she would spend her days however she wanted. She would go anywhere she liked, whenever she wanted, and she would reach for the things that excited her. She would live her life for herself, no one else, and that would be the reward for being so perfectly competent, efficient, and respectable.
She never could exactly picture what living for herself looked like, however, and whenever she tried, the images and imaginings darted and flashed their way out of reach, like fish scattering away from a thrown pebble in a garden pond. She didn’t know any women who lived for themselves, except spinsters, but even they were often dependent on their family for their means . . . and anyway, she didn’t necessarily want to be a spinster. Outside of spinsters, there was Mary Wollstonecraft—but Eleanor wasn’t a writer. There was the Duchess of Devonshire, Eleanor supposed—but the duchess had also been forced into an unhappy marriage. There was the Countess of Kellow, but Eleanor didn’t know enough about her to know if she was happy or fulfilled.
All Eleanor knew was what this ideal life wasn’t. It wasn’t tepid; it wasn’t tedious. It wasn’t a trap. Perhaps there would be marriage, perhaps there would be a great move across oceans, perhaps there would be danger—the point was that anything could happen, in the same way nothing ever happened in the present. She would be free to leave, free to roam, free to think. And if she did anything like marry or move or manage another estate, it would be because she wanted to. Because she’d chosen it for herself, claimed it for herself.
It was a fiction, she knew that from the beginning. Except, unlike other kinds of fictions, this story she told herself began to feel truer and truer over time, instead of less. Until it felt like the truth after all. Until it felt like it had been the truth all along.
She’d believed her own lie, and that single act of foolishness had begun her unraveling. Two months ago, Lord Pennard had pronounced that Eleanor was to be betrothed—sight unseen—to Gilbert Gifford, Earl Sloreley.
She was to marry a stranger.
Without delay.
Gilbert was the Duke of Jarrell’s nephew and heir, and he was a squirming embarrassment to his entire family. A man just past his majority, there had been the usual slate of gambling, womanizing, and intemperance that was generally tolerated in heirs—but then came the scandal in Italy during his grand tour, something involving an elderly contessa’s racehorse and a baptismal font full of madeira, and Sloreley had been summoned home in shame. The duke had paid, bribed, and donated in order to assuage the wounded sensibilities of the contessa and the Church—and possibly of the horse—and now the duke had clearly had enough of his nephew’s dissolution. Sloreley would be married, and married to the most respectable girl the duke could find, and that girl was Eleanor.
All of this Eleanor’s father disclosed to her in his study as if he were explaining the weather, as if it would be as impersonal and bloodless to her as it was to him.
“So I am to marry this earl,” she’d said, trying to keep her pulse steady. “Even though we have never met, and he is rumored to be an unrepentant lecher.”
Not that Eleanor minded lechery per se, but she did mind ridiculousness. She did mind inheriting another project.
“And he baptized a horse,” she added, to clarify her point.
“The priest baptized the horse. Sloreley only watched,” her father had corrected cheerfully. There had been florid blooms of early morning drink on his otherwise chalky cheeks. “He’s young still, Eleanor, you can control him. You can help him corral his vices and grow into a proper man.” He’d given her a fond look. “You are a born manager, you know. Just look how easily you’ve managed Pennard Hall while your mother’s been ill. Everyone sings your praises! And besides, Sloreley is Jarrell’s heir, which means you’ll be a duchess someday. Your first son will be a duke.”
“But why is he the heir? I know the current duke is unmarried, but surely he’s not too old to find a wife?”
Her father had waved his hand. “Jarrell’s first wife died some years ago, and he’s never made a secret of his wish not to remarry. And what does it matter? The important thing is that Gifford is the heir and you’ll marry Gifford. I have no doubt you’ll be able to take him in hand. None at all.”
So this was to be her reward, then. She’d succeeded at every task she’d set her mind to, and now she’d been given her prize: another unending task of impossible proportions.