Lady Bridget's Diary (Keeping Up with the Cavendishes #1)(8)

In that moment, it all became very real to her: chances were, this was their home now. This was where they would make friends, fall in love, start families of their own. If they weren’t laughed out of town.

She supposed they could go back to America. But now that Bridget thought about it, could she really return to everyone whispering that she just couldn’t succeed in England? They would say that she wasn’t pretty enough or ladylike enough so the English sent her back to the horse farm from whence she came.

She pictured a look of smug satisfaction on the face of Dreadful Darcy.

“So much for the duchess’s plan for us to take the haute ton by storm,” Amelia said, lazily twisting one of her long brown curls around her finger. “I hope we have disabused her of that notion so we can cease all those tedious lessons. I couldn’t care less how to address the younger son of a viscount. Or whomever.”

“Actually, I think I understand the point of all those lessons now,” Bridget said softly. They were to help her succeed rather than infringe upon her time spent perusing fashion periodicals in bed, sipping chocolate. They were to help her become a True Lady. “And now that I have already ruined my reputation, and made myself a laughingstock, I want to make them all forget.” She pictured Darcy, snidely dismissing her looks and her manners. She thought of that tall, beautiful woman being all tall, beautiful, and well mannered. She probably knew whether a baron outranked an earl. She probably never fell, not even when learning to walk as a baby.

In that moment, Bridget was resolved. She would silence their laughter. She would earn their respect. She would faithfully attend to Josephine’s every lesson. “I will make everyone forget that I am the girl who fell,” she said, with a look of fierce determination. “I shall be known as Lady Bridget, diamond of the first water.”

Amelia laughed.

“Really?” Claire asked, skeptical. “I would much rather have some complex equations to solve. At least numbers make sense and are what they are, and opinions don’t matter at all.”

“To you. They make sense to you,” Amelia pointed out.

“If you would just apply yourself . . .” Claire replied.

Bridget interrupted a frequently recurring argument. “If we would all just apply ourselves to the duchess’s teachings, then we wouldn’t be the laughingstocks of London.”

“That has quite a ring to it,” Amelia said.

“That is entirely beside the point, Amelia,” Bridget huffed.

There was a knock on the door. James pushed it open slightly.

“Are you all decent?”

“Yes, do come in, Your Grace,” Claire called out.

“Oooh, it’s the duke,” Amelia teased. “We’d better bow and curtsy.”

Giggling, she and Bridget slid off the bed and Bridget was, well, Bridget. When she bowed and lifted her arm with a flourish, it smacked Amelia in the nose.

“Ow!”

“Good evening, Your Grace,” Bridget said in her most Dignified Lady voice. She might as well start practicing, for she had much catching up to do.

“We are so honored to have you grace us with your presence, Your Grace.” Amelia tried to curtsy and hold her nose at the same time, which resulted in her tumbling to the floor.

“Do shut up, all of you,” he muttered. Then he pulled up a chair next to the bed and took a seat, stretching his long legs out before him. He wore breeches, boots, and just a shirt. The duchess would undoubtedly be horrified by the informality.

“We were just discussing what a disaster this evening has been,” Claire told him.

“Living through it wasn’t enough? You have to discuss it, too?”

“Was it so bad dancing with all those women?”

“Aye.” James made A Face.

“What is it with gentlemen who do not like dancing?” Bridget wondered.

“It’s not so much the dancing as it is having everyone watch you do it,” James said with a shrug.

“I cannot believe Father never mentioned any of this,” Amelia said. Their parents died, one after the other. First, their mother passed away after contracting a wasting disease. Their father followed a few days later. Everyone said his cause of death was a broken heart.

“Sometimes he spoke of life in England before he came to America,” Claire said. She was the oldest and remembered more than the rest of them. “He spoke of foxhunting, cruel schoolmasters, and his time in the cavalry.”

“He spoke about Messenger,” James added with a fond smile.

They all smiled wistfully at the memory of the family’s prized horse, may he rest in peace. Legend had it that their father had absconded to America with the prize stallion—-owned by his brother, the duke, Josephine’s late husband. He’d fallen in love with an American woman his family forbade him to wed, so he left England and never looked back. When their father needed to find a way to support his new family, he bred Messenger and raised and trained a series of champion racehorses on their farm.

They’d had an idyllic existence . . . loving parents, a beautiful farm to roam, and siblings to either play with or fight with or both.

“But he never mentioned any of this, did he?” Bridget asked softly. She waved her hand at the bedroom, and the house, and the unimaginable wealth they hadn’t even set eyes on yet. The duchess had mentioned country estates. Plural.