Lady Be Reckless (Duke's Daughters #2)
Megan Frampton
Author’s Note
Illegitimacy in Victorian England was a great stigma for both mother and child. An illegitimate child would have no claim on its father, and the Bastardy Clause of the 1834 Poor Law set law that said children would be the sole responsibility of the mother.
Of course, there are examples where a father would take care of his children; perhaps the most famous example just prior to this era is the Duke of Clarence, whose mistress, the actress Dorothea Jordan, bore at least ten of his children. The duke ensured his illegitimate children did well in the world, either through marriage for the daughters or occupations for the sons.
Chapter 1
It is not proper for a young lady to propose to a gentleman. Unless, of course, the gentleman has a deep and abiding (and silent) love for the lady, and he is not aware she reciprocates.
Lady Olivia’s Particular Guide to Decorum
1847 London
A Polite Drawing Room Currently Being Used for Sewing of a Dubious Quality
“Olivia!” The duchess’s call could probably be heard from two floors away. And Olivia was seated in the same room, in full view of her mother.
“Yes, Mother?” she replied in an aggrieved tone. She had promised to deliver no fewer than ten shifts within a month’s time to the Society for Poor and Orphaned Children, and she was only on the second one, since her needle skills were not as good as her skills in promising things she might not be able to deliver, apparently.
Not for the first time, she wished that things were as she wished they should be, so she wouldn’t have to constantly be trying to improve things. Her needle-pricked fingers would no doubt wish that also.
“I cannot deal with Cook today. You will have to,” her mother announced, not paying attention to what Olivia was already occupied with. As was usual.
Olivia merely nodded. Her mother had said the same thing, or a variation thereof, in the year or so since Olivia’s eldest sister, Eleanor, had married Lord Alexander Raybourn. The Duchess of Marymount hadn’t always been so helpless; but once Olivia’s sister Della had run off with the dancing master and Eleanor had refused to marry the gentleman their parents had chosen for her, the duchess seemed to have given up all the duties she’d previously handled, leaving her remaining three daughters to handle everything. And since Olivia’s twin Pearl was shy and preferred to be outdoors, and their sister Ida was too busy reading and looking down her nose at everyone else, it was all left up to Olivia.
Olivia did not flinch from doing what was necessary to make things right. Hence the shift making.
“Olivia, are you listening to me?”
“Of course I am,” Olivia replied, frowning at the knot in her sewing. She had to admit to being a terrible seamstress. “You want me to speak with Cook, and you probably also want me to review the guest list for next week’s dinner party to be certain all the invitations went out properly. And to remind Cook that the Marquis of Wheatley does not like green beans.”
“Hmph. Well, yes,” her mother replied in a grudging tone.
The guest list for the dinner party included Lord Carson, who was the marquis’s son and the gentleman Eleanor had refused to marry.
Leaving him free to marry Olivia, something she had wanted since the first moment she saw him. Her parents had wanted the same thing since Eleanor had married the man she’d fallen in love with instead of Lord Carson.
Lord Carson. She sighed as she thought about him. He was handsome and kind and very, very busy. Olivia wanted to help him, and she could tell, from how he spoke to her, that he wanted her to help him also. It would be a perfect match. Even though her parents thought the same thing, and she seldom agreed with the elder Howletts.
Not to mention it would mean she would be able to run more things as she wished to. Including Lord Carson.
But it wouldn’t be a match at all if the dinner party wasn’t absolutely perfect, which meant she should go straightaway and speak to Cook.
Olivia dropped the fabric and thread onto the table beside her as she prepared to take care of things. Again.
The door to the sitting room was flung open and her twin, Pearl, launched herself inside, her eyes wide. “Olivia, you have to come quickly!” Pearl said in an urgent tone.
“What is it?” she asked as she rose to her feet.
“The gardener next door, he’s—” And then Pearl stopped, shaking her head.
Olivia marched out of the sitting room, Cook and sewing forgotten, shoulders squared, as she went to right whatever was wrong that was making her twin so upset.
“He found some kittens in the shed and now he says he’s going to—oh, Livy, you have to save them!” Pearl said, her voice wavering with emotion.
“Indeed I will,” Olivia declared, brushing past a few startled servants to the back of the house.
She felt herself start to burn with the righteous fury that had become her constant companion over the past few years, since she’d realized that the world was not entirely just and that there were, indeed, terrible people who existed in it.
She hadn’t been able to eradicate all the terrible people in the world, but she could acknowledge to herself—privately, not wishing to draw attention to her deeds—that she had made the world a slightly better place in the time since she’d come to her senses.