Lady Bridget's Diary (Keeping Up with the Cavendishes #1)(9)

“He occasionally referenced his brother the duke but he did not say much. He certainly never mentioned that he or I were in line to inherit. He never even knew that he had inherited. Which is for the best; it probably wasn’t the best topic of conversation back home, if you think about it, with all the anti--royalty and anti--British sentiments.”

“Vastly preferable to all the anti--American sentiments we encountered this evening,” Bridget said.

She thought again of Darcy, standing there so proud and perfect and seeing her as the downfall of civilization.

She thought of home, too. She hadn’t fit in there either, but at least it was familiar and comforting.

“I wonder if there is a portrait of Father somewhere in this great big house,” Amelia mused. “I’d love to see what he looked like as a young man.”

“We can ask Josephine tomorrow,” Claire said, affectionately patting Amelia’s hand.

“Oh good. Perhaps it can distract her from more deportment and etiquette and torture lessons,” Amelia said.

“No, we need those,” Bridget said. All eyes turned to look at her. “If we are going to stay . . . we need to fit in.”

“Bridget, that is all part of her nefarious plot to marry us off. We’ll be separated,” Amelia said, anguished.

“I’m not going to let her marry the lot of you off,” James said. Then, with a slight grin, he added, “Much as you plague me and I sometimes consider it.”

“I hate to point this out, but Bridget does have a point,” Claire said thoughtfully. “If we are going to stay, we ought to make an effort to fit in.”

“This is not a temporary situation then, is it?” Amelia asked.

The siblings fell silent. James was the duke. He ought to stay. The sisters could return, of course. They could go back to Maryland and tell stories of their little (failed) foray into English high society. But Bridget, for one, couldn’t imagine life without all her siblings nearby.

The Cavendish siblings stuck together. No matter what.

It was all becoming clear to Bridget: she would have to start applying herself to becoming a True Lady and ensuring that her sisters did as well. If they stayed, they needed to fit in. If they returned to America, it would not be as failures.

“I don’t want us to be apart,” Claire said softly.

“So we stick together,” James said, leaning forward to look earnestly at his three worried sisters. “We either all stay in England. Or we all return to America. Together.”



A short while later, Bridget tossed and turned in her large bed, in her large room, in this large house. She was homesick for her small bed, in her small room, in a smaller house, halfway round the world.

But she knew she couldn’t go back.

She might have had one misstep (literally) during her debut tonight, but that paled in comparison to her years back in America. She never had quite the right dress, her hair was never done enough, she always seemed to have mud on her boots, and she always seemed to say the wrong things.

She was so tired of being laughed at and so tired of never quite getting this business of being a woman right. She missed her mother, who wasn’t here to show her how or to console her and encourage her to try again.

Instead she had Dreadful Darcy. And the way he looked at her with those dark eyes, down the length of his perfect noble nose, as if she were mud on his precious, expensive boots. As if he couldn’t believe the riffraff had been allowed in to mingle with the Good and Proper people.

The way he said, in that haughty English voice of his, She is not handsome enough to tempt me to overlook her manners.

But she had the duchess to help her.

She would become a Person of Quality and a True Lady, if it was the last thing she did. She would be strict with the reducing diet so she could have a fashionable figure and fit into the fashionable dresses. Somehow, she’d get her hair to be glossy, sleek, and curled. She’d learn all the steps of the quadrille and all the other obscure country dances she might need to know. She would learn how to bite her tongue, unless she had exactly the right thing to say. She would figure out the right thing to say. And she’d never again hear or see condemnation from the likes of Lord Dreadful Darcy.

Tomorrow. She would begin becoming perfect tomorrow.





Chapter 3


Most people I met tonight were horrible, crashing bores, except for one handsome and charming gentleman, Mr. Wright. But his brother Lord Darcy was The Worst.

Lady Bridget’s Diary

Darcy was at work on vital estate business and matters of national importance when his brother strolled into the study and dropped into a chair.

“Did you know that Rothermere lost ten thousand pounds and a hunting box in Scotland over a game of whist last week?”

“I did not.” Darcy didn’t bother looking up from his paperwork.

“Certainly puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“What things?”

“Well, say a person lost just a few hundred pounds . . . It’s really not the end of the world, now is it?”

“Should I even bother to ask who lost a few hundred pounds?” Darcy asked dryly, finally looking up from his work. In the past few months, Rupert had begun losing at cards. In fact, he was steadily becoming worse and racking up increasing debts with each game. It should be noted that Darcy wasn’t opposed to cards or wagering; he was simply opposed to losing.