Yes, she was the daughter of a coal miner turned earl and a fairly crass and somewhat difficult woman who’d never found welcome in London society. But that wasn’t it, either. No, Sesily’s particular fearsomeness came with being thirty years old, unmarried, rich, and a woman. And worse, all those things without shame. She had never taken herself up to a high shelf to live out her days. She hadn’t even taken herself off to the country. Instead, she took herself to balls. In low-cut, boned silks that looked decidedly unlike pastry. Without bonnets made for either debutantes or spinsters.
And that made her the most dangerous of all the Dangerous Daughters of the Earl of Wight.
What an irony that was, as Queen Victoria sat upon her throne not a half mile from Mayfair, all while the aristocracy trembled in fear of women who refused to be packed up and sent away when they grew too old, refused to marry, or showed no interest in the rules and regulations of the titled world.
And Sesily had no interest in the proper, prescribed universe of the aristocracy. Not when there was so much of the rest of the world to live in. To change.
Perhaps, years ago, when she and her sisters had arrived in London with soot in their hair and the North Country in their accent, she might have been able to be shamed. But years of scornful looks and cutting remarks had taught Sesily that society’s judgment either snuffed the light from its brightest stars or made it burn brighter …
And she’d made her choice.
Which was why the Duchess of Trevescan had summoned her here, to South Audley Street, two years earlier, and offered Sesily something more than a pressed silk frock and a perfect coiffure. Oh, Sesily still had those things—she knew armor when she saw it—but when she donned that dress, it was as likely that she was headed to a dark corner of Covent Garden as it was that she was headed to a glittering ballroom in Mayfair.
It was in the dark corners, after all, that Sesily made her mark, alongside a team of other women she’d soon counted as friends, brought together by the duchess.
Married too young to a hermit duke who preferred the isolation of his estate in the Scilly Isles, the Duchess of Trevescan refused to while away her youth in similar isolation, and instead chose to live in town, in one of London’s most extravagant homes. As for what she did there, what the duke did not know would not hurt him, she liked to say.
What the duke did not know, the rest of London did, however … When it came to scandal, the woman referred to simply as The Duchess outranked them all.
The promise of scandal brought London’s finest to the duchess’s parties. They adored the way she wielded her title and offered the illusion of propriety, the promise of gossip to be whispered about the following morning, and the hope that those in attendance might be able to claim proximity to scandal … humanity’s most valued currency.
But valuing scandal did not mean mothers liked their daughters too close to those who caused it, and so Sesily would never have the chance to burn the bonnets of the battalion of debutantes twirling through the massive gilded ballroom.
“It’s a pity, that,” she said to her friend. “But never fear. I shall send the gift anonymously. I shall be fairy godmother to the hideous fashion plates of 1838, whether or not their mothers have me round to tea.”
“You’ve your work cut out for you; every fashion plate of 1838 is hideous.”
“Then it is lucky I am rich. And idle.”
“Not so idle tonight,” came the soft reply, and Sesily’s gaze was instantly across the room, where a blond head stood above the rest of the revelers. No bonnet, but deserving destruction nonetheless.
“How long before the message is delivered?” Sesily asked.
The duchess sipped at her champagne, pointedly avoiding Sesily’s focus. “Not long now. My staff knows its business. Patience, friend.”
Sesily nodded, ignoring the tightening in her chest—the excitement. The adventure. The promise of success. The thrill of justice. “It is the least of my virtues.”
“Really?” the duchess retorted. “I would have thought that was chastity.”
“I confess.” Sesily cut her friend a wry smile. “I’m better with vices.”
“Good evening, Duchess, Lady Sesily.” The greeting came from behind them, on the meek, barely heard voice of Miss Adelaide Frampton, shy, retiring queen of wallflowers, who was followed by pitying whispers. An ugly duckling who never became a swan, poor thing.
While Mayfair’s whispers would wound another, that particular perception suited Adelaide down to the ground, allowing her to go unnoticed in society, few noticing the way her warm brown eyes remained ever watchful behind thick spectacles, even as she disappeared in a crowd.
Even fewer noticing that in disappearing, she saw everything.
“Miss Frampton,” the duchess said, “I take it all is well?”
“Quite,” Adelaide said, the words barely there in the cool breeze that blew in from the large open windows behind them. “Terribly warm in here, don’t you think?”
Sesily reached for the silver ladle in the enormous crystal punch bowl, swirling it round and round as she gathered the courage to pour herself a cup of the tepid orange punch within. “This looks gruesome.”
“Events welcoming young ladies require ratafia,” the duchess replied.
“Mmm. Well, as I haven’t been a young lady requiring ratafia in …” Sesily paused. “You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever required ratafia.”
“Born able to hold your liquor?”
Sesily smiled at her friend. “Like finds like, one might say.”
The duchess sighed, the sound full of boredom. “There’s a footman somewhere with champagne.” Of course there was. Champagne flowed like water at Trevescan House.
“I must say, Lady Sesily,” Adelaide interjected, “it is quite warm.”
“I see,” Sesily replied, her gaze tracking the crowd, noting that the blond head she’d been watching before was now closer to the doors leading into the dark gardens beyond.
There was no time for champagne. The missive to the Earl of Totting had been received.
Sesily poured a glass of the unpleasant-looking punch. Before she could return the ladle to the bowl, however, a newcomer jostled her arm, sloshing an orange blossom right over the rim of her glass and onto the brilliant white tablecloth.
“Oh no! Let me help with that, Lady Sesily.”
Lady Imogen Loveless extracted a handkerchief from her reticule, or at least attempted to. She had to dig, first haphazardly displacing a pencil and a slip of paper onto the table next to the punch bowl, dropping a small shell-shaped box with a gold clasp to the plush carpet below—“Only smelling salts,” she rushed to explain. “Don’t worry—they’ll keep!”
Sesily turned raised brows to the duchess, who watched Imogen’s hurried movements with equal parts amusement and amazement—the latter winning out when Imogen pulled three hairpins from her bag. She seemed to know she shouldn’t put those on the table, however, and instead shoved them directly into her disheveled coiffure, wild and precarious as it was. Then, she extracted the handkerchief, brandishing it in triumph. It was wrinkled and embroidered in a wild riot of extremely crooked stitches in the vague shape of a bell. Sesily had never seen anything so well matched to its owner.