Her Cinderella Season

Displeasure marred his pleasing features, but only for a moment. He chuckled and assumed an air of condescension. ‘Your innocence is refreshing, Miss Beecham.’ He sighed. ‘The sad truth is that if it would give them a moment’s pleasure, most of these people would as soon toss their coin in the gutter as donate it to our cause.’

‘But surely you don’t believe that merriment and worthiness are mutually exclusive?’ Her father’s image immediately rose up in her mind. His quick smile and ready laugh were two of her most cherished memories. ‘I’m certain you will agree that it is possible to work hard, to become a useful and praiseworthy soul and still partake of the joy in life?’

‘The joy in life?’ Mr Cooperage appeared startled by the concept. ‘My dear, we were not put on this earth to enjoy life—’ He cut himself abruptly off. Lily could see that it pained him greatly. She suspected he wanted badly to inform her exactly what he thought her purpose on this earth to be.

Instead, he forced a smile. ‘I will not waste our few moments of conversation.’ He paused and began again in a lower, almost normal conversational tone. ‘I do thank you for your efforts today. However they are gained, I mean to put today’s profits to good use. I hope to accomplish much of God’s work in my time abroad.’

‘How impatient you must be to begin,’ she said, grateful for a topic on which they could agree. ‘I can only imagine your excitement at the prospect of helping so many people, learning their customs and culture, seeing strange lands and exotic sights.’ She sighed. ‘I do envy you the experience!’

‘You should not,’ he objected. ‘I donot complain. I will endure the strange lodgings, heathen food and poor company because I have a duty, but I would not subject a woman to the hardships of travel.’

She should not have been surprised. ‘But what if a woman has a calling such as yours, sir? What then? Or do you not believe such a thing to be possible?’

He returned her serious expression. ‘I believe it to be rare, but possible.’ He glanced back towards the park gate. ‘Your mother, I believe, has been called. I do think she will answer.’

Her mother had been called? To do what?

‘My mission will keep me from the shores of England for a little more than a year, Miss Beecham, but your good mother assures me that there are no other suitors in the wings and that a year is not too long a wait.’ He roamed an earnest gaze over her face. ‘Was she wrong?’

Lily took a step back. Surprise? He had succeeded in shocking her. ‘You wish my mother to wait for you, sir? Do you mean to court her?’

He chuckled. ‘Your modesty reflects well on you, my dear. No—it is you who I wish to wait for me. You who I mean to court most assiduously when I return.’

His eyes left her face, and darted over the rest of her. ‘Your mother was agreeable to the notion. I hope you feel the same?’

Lily stood frozen—not shocked, but numb. Completely taken aback. Mr Cooperage wished to marry her? And her mother had consented? It must be a mistake. At first she could not even wrap her mind about such an idea, but then she had to struggle to breathe as the bleak image of such a life swept over her.

‘Miss Beecham?’ Mr Cooperage sounded anxious, and mildly annoyed. ‘A year is too long?’ he asked.

She couldn’t breathe. She willed her chest to expand, tried to gasp for the air that she desperately needed. She was going to die. She would collapse to the ground right here, buried and suffocated under the weight of a future she did not want.

Her life was never going to change. The truth hit her hard, at last knocking the breath back into her starving lungs. She gasped out loud and Mr Cooperage began to look truly alarmed. Seven years. So long she had laboured; she had tried her best and squashed the truest part of her nature, all in the attempt to get her mother to look at her with pride. Was this, then, what it would take? The sacrifice of her future?

Lily took a step back, and then another. Only vaguely did she realise how close she had come to the busy street behind her. She only thought to distance herself from the grim reality of the life unfolding in front of her.

‘Miss Beecham!’ called Mr Cooperage. ‘Watch your step. Watch behind you!’ he thundered. ‘Miss Beecham!’

A short, heavy snort sounded near her. Lily turned. A team of horses, heads tossing wildly, surged towards her.

Her gaze met one wild, rolling eye. A call of fright rang out. Had she made the sound, or had the horse?

‘Miss Beecham!’

Chapter Two

Jack Alden pulled as hard as he dared on the ribbons. Pain seared its way up his injured arm. Pettigrew’s ill-tempered bays responded at last, subsiding to a sweating, quivering stop.

‘I warned you that these nags were too much for that arm,’ his brother Charles said. His hand gripped the side of the borrowed crane-neck phaeton.

‘Stow it, Charles,’ Jack growled. He stared ahead. ‘Hell and damnation, it’s a woman in the street!’

‘Well, no wonder that park drag ground to a halt. I told you when it started into the other lane that this damned flighty team would bolt.’

‘She’s not moving,’ Jack complained. Was the woman mad? Oblivious to the fact that she’d nearly been trampled like a turnip off a farm cart, she stood stock still. She wasn’t even looking their way now; her attention appeared focused on something on the pavement. Jack could not see just what held her interest with near deadly result. Nor could he see her face, covered as it was by a singularly ugly brown bonnet.

‘You nearly ran her down. She’s likely frozen in fear,’ Charles suggested.

‘For God’s sake!’ Jack thrust the reins into his brother’s hands and swung down. Another jolt of pain ripped through his arm. ‘Hold them fast!’ he growled in exasperation.

‘Do you know, Jack, people have begun to comment on the loss of your legendary detachment,’ Charles said as he held the bays in tight.

‘I am not detached!’ Jack said, walking away. ‘You make me sound like a freehold listing in The Times.’

‘Auction on London Gentleman, Manner Detached,’ his brother yelled after him.

Jack ignored him. Legendary detachment be damned. He was anchored fully in this moment and surging forwards on a wave of anger. The fool woman had nearly been killed, and by his hand! Well, that might be an exaggeration, but without doubt the responsibility would have been his. He’d caught sight of her over the thrashing heads of the horses—standing where she clearly did not belong—and fear and anger and guilt had blasted him like lightning out of the sky. The realisation that his concern was more for himself than for her only fuelled his fury.

‘Madam!’ he called as he strode towards her. The entire incident had happened so fast that the park drag had still not manoeuvred completely past. People milled about on the pavement, and one florid gentleman glared at the woman, but made no move to approach her.

‘Madam!’ No response. ‘If you are bent on suicide, might I suggest another man’s phaeton? This one is borrowed and I am bound to deliver it in one piece.’

She did not answer or even look at him. ‘Ma’am, do you not realise that you were nearly killed?’ He took her arm. ‘Come now, you cannot stand in the street!’

At last, ever so slowly, the bonnet began to turn. The infuriating creature looked him full in the face.

Jack immediately wished she hadn’t. He had grown up surrounded by beauty. He’d lived in an elegant house and received an excellent education. From ancient statuary to modern landscapes, between the sweep of grand architecture and the graceful curve of the smallest Sèvres bowl, he’d been taught to recognise and appreciate the value of loveliness.

This girl—she was the image of classic English beauty come to life. Gorgeous slate-blue eyes stared at him, but Jack had the eerie certainty that she did not see him at all. Instead she was focused on something far away, or perhaps deep inside. Red-gold curls framed high curving cheeks, smooth, ivory skin gone pale with fright and a slender little nose covered with the faintest smattering of freckles.

And her mouth. His own went dry—because all the fluids in his body were rushing south. A siren’s mouth: wide and dusky pink and irresistible. He stared, saw the sudden trembling of that incredibly plump lower lip—and he realised just what it was he was looking at.

Immense sorrow. A portrait of profound loss. The sight of it set off an alarm inside of Jack and awoke a heretofore unsuspected part of his character. He’d never been the heroic, knight-in-shining-armour sort—but that quivering lower lip made him want to jump into the fray. He could not quell the sudden urge to fight this unknown girl’s battles, soothe her hurts, or, better yet, kiss her senseless until she forgot what upset her and realised that there were a thousand better uses for that voluptuous mouth.

He swallowed convulsively, tightened his grip on her arm…and thankfully, came back to his senses. They stood in the middle of a busy London street. Catcalls and shouts and several anatomically impossible suggestions echoed from the surrounding bustle of stopped traffic. A begrimed coal carter had stepped forwards to help his brother calm the bays. Several of society’s finest, dressed for the daily strut and starved for distraction, gawked from the pavement.

‘Come,’ Jack said gently. Her steps wooden, the girl followed. He led her out of the street, past the sputtering red-faced gentleman, towards the Grosvenor Gate. Surely someone would claim her. He darted a glance back at the man who had fallen into step behind them. Someone other than this man—who had apparently left her to be run down like a dog in the street.

Lily was lost in a swirling fog. It had roiled up and out of her in the moment when she had fully understood her predicament. Her life was never going to change. Just the echo of that thought brought the mist suffocatingly close. She abandoned herself to it. She’d rather suffocate than contemplate the stifling mess her life had become.

Only vaguely was she aware that the stampeding horses had stopped. Dimly she realised that a stranger led her out of the street. The prickle of her skin told her that people were staring. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

‘Lilith!’ Her mother’s strident voice pierced the fog. ‘Lilith! Are you unharmed? What were you thinking?’

Anger and resentment surged inside of her, exploded out of her and blew a hole in the circling fog. It was big enough for her to catch a glimpse of her mother’s worried scowl as she hurried down from Mr Wilberforce’s barouche, and to take in the crowd forming around them.

Her gaze fell on the man who had saved her from herself and she forgot to speak. She stilled. Just at that moment a bright ray of sunlight broke free from the clouds. It shone down directly on to the gentleman, chasing streaks through his hair and outlining the masculine lines of his face. With a whoosh the fog surrounding her disappeared, swept away by the brilliant light and the intensity of the stranger’s stare.

Lily swallowed. The superstitious corner of her soul sprang to attention. Her heart began to pound loudly in her ears.