The Lady Always Wins
Courtney Milan
Chapter One
A small village in Kent, Spring, 1845
SIMON DAVENANT HAD JUST three days to woo and marry a woman.
Not just a woman—the woman.
Right now, the only things standing between him and the object of his affections were an exuberant field of colored tulips, a walkway of white crushed stones, and seven years of pointed silence on his part.
It had been that long since last he’d set foot in Chester-on-Woolsey—seven long years in which he’d buried himself in his work, trying to forget dark hair and darker eyes, the feel of her skin, the sound of her laugh.
It hadn’t worked. Everything he’d done had reminded him of this place.
Simon had walked to Barrett’s Folly—the little property she had inherited from her aunt—from the railway station three miles distant. He’d diverted from his destination only long enough to leave his valise at the inn in town. The man who had assigned him his room was new to the area; he’d not even blinked in recognition when Simon gave his name.
At that early hour, only the bakery had been open. He’d stopped for a bun, but old Mrs. Brandell hadn’t remembered him, either. There was no reason the little village should recall him. He’d merely spent his childhood holidays here.
Nevertheless, it seemed unfair that he should have thought so often of Chester-on-Woolsey, while its inhabitants scarcely gave him so much as a backward glance. Still, he reminded himself as he watched the tulips wave before him, he’d come here for one reason, and one reason only. And she was in the house now in front of him.
The first glints of morning sunlight spangled off windows that needed washing. Barrett’s Folly had never been more than a cottage, but it seemed even tinier than he remembered. It had been just large enough for an aging woman and her scapegrace niece. He’d only been here twice over Easter, but both times he’d been struck by the effect of the tulips: two full acres, blooming in a riot of pinks and golds and reds.
One didn’t think of tulips as having an aroma—not like roses or gardenias. But massed in the tens of thousands, he could breathe in their scent: subtle and green and new, a smell that made him remember a time when he’d had nothing but hope for the world. It curled around his heart like a fist, that awakening nostalgia.
But even if he’d had the inclination to indulge in memories that had grown rather more bitter than sweet, he didn’t have the patience. He certainly didn’t have the time.
Simon adjusted his cravat, which was made of the finest, purest linen, and arranged his cuffs, which were held together at the wrists by gold links set with onyx stones. For richer or poorer, for better or worse, Virginia Barrett—no, damn it, Virginia Croswell—was finally going to be his.
He grabbed hold of his determination, ignored the faint protestations of his irrelevant conscience, and strode forward.
It took several minutes for someone to come when he rapped the knocker smartly. When the door finally opened, the person behind it was a maid-of-all-work, her apron layered with coal dust and white flour alike. She took one look at Simon—at Simon’s cuff links and Simon’s cravat—and frowned in puzzlement.
“Eee,” she said. “You’ll be having the wrong house, then, sir. The Granthams are two miles down, yet.”
So it was the Granthams who had purchased his parents’ old home. He didn’t care.
Simon took off his hat and brushed past her into the entry.
“I am precisely where I intend to be. Go fetch Mrs. Croswell, will you?”
The maid glanced at him, standing uninvited in the entry. Her gaze marched up the shiny gold-plated buttons on his navy coat, and settled on his unsmiling countenance.
“Yes, sir,” she finally said, and ducked back through another door.
She wasn’t a very good maid. And given the time it had taken her to respond, he suspected she was the only one. Curious, that.
He set his hat on a side table, and then his gloves. The same mirror from seven years ago sat in its fading false-gold frame on the wall; when he checked his reflection, he noticed that the edges had begun to spot with age. In the corners of the entry, dust had settled. Simon shook his head.
A door opened, and he turned from his inspection. The maid came through first. Behind him, he could hear a woman speaking.
“...very well,” she was saying. “But I don’t believe—”
The woman marched through the door, swiping flour-dusted hands over an apron. She saw him and stopped midstride.
He had envisioned this moment a thousand times. Sometimes, she threw herself at him. Sometimes, she flushed and looked away. He usually imagined her as she stood in his memory—a young, slim maiden, dressed in demure, light-colored muslins. Often, he’d thought of her in less. Far less.
But in all his imaginings, he had never pictured her as she was now: features made severe by the dark gray of half-mourning. The possibility that she’d be clad in widow’s garb should have occurred to him. Given the reason behind his swift decampment, it seemed idiotic not to have imagined her in somber colors. Maybe, deep down, he had refused to accept that she had married another man.
The years had changed her. They’d carved little laugh lines into the corners of her mouth. She’d rounded out comfortably, her hips and br**sts fuller, her arms pleasantly plump.
The discontinuity in his expectations jarred him. She’d been in his thoughts so much over the years that it was disconcerting to discover that she’d existed outside them.