An Exquisite Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page A

was James Beauclaire. Then, abruptly, Adele slammed the book shut.
    â€œBut as I said. It’s just daydreams.”
    â€œLovely daydreams, though,” murmured Madelene.
    Helene heard them, but she wasn’t listening, not properly. Thoughts had begun dropping through her mind, like cards falling to the table. They were piling up, making a complex pattern of their very own.
    â€œMaybe they could be more,” Helene said.
    Adele laughed bitterly. “Maybe I’ll be crowned Queen of England at Almack’s next Wednesday. No. I’m twenty-two, and my aunt won’t hear of my dressing myself. And even if one of you could find a modiste who’d actually make one of these, it wouldn’t change anything for you, either. I’d still be the dumpling, you’d be the bluestocking, and Madelene . . .”
    â€œI’m the redheaded stepsister,” Madelene muttered.
    â€œAnd we’re all equally doomed.” Adele hugged her notebook to her chest.
    Thoughts, patterns, ideas, dreams, possibilities. They all flashed through Helene’s mind, one after another.
    â€œI don’t accept that,” she said suddenly.
    â€œThen tell me.” Adele gestured at them all with her free hand. “What can
we
do?”
    It was the question Helene had been asking herself all evening. What could they do? But now she had an answer. It waited in Adele’s books of beautiful gowns. It was contained in Helene’s own jewel case, where there was still one precious jeweled brooch that she’d kept back through all her family’s troubles, so it would be there to sell when the final need arose.
    It waited in the fact that, like Adele, she’d been spending the past several years observing the workings of the ballrooms and salons of London and writing the results down in her own books. But where Adele had been studying the vagaries of fashion, Helene had been studying the nuances of connection between hostesses, and matrons and ladies, all the women who controlled the ballrooms, and therefore the destinies of their families, especially their daughters.
    The answers, or at least the possibilities, were there, in Adele’s books, and her own. But Helene knew those possibilities contained terrible risks. The cost of failure would be high, ruinously high, in fact, and not just because of the money involved. They would, all three of them, be laying themselves bare to public scrutiny. And in Helene’s case, she would be risking not just her reputation, but her sister Susannah’s as well. Susannah was fifteen and on the verge of entering society in her own right. That is, she would be if circumstances were different. If there were still money. If Helene hadn’t ruined everyone’s chances . . .
    Maybe circumstances could be made to be different.
    â€œOh! I’m so sorry!”
    Helene whirled around, her heart pounding madly.
    A woman’s silhouette stood in the doorway. The light was so dim, however, that Helene didn’t immediately recognize her.
    â€œI didn’t know anybody was here,” the woman said, and now Helene was able to place her.
    â€œYou’re Miss Deborah Sewell, I believe,” Helene said.
    â€œYou believe correctly,” the woman answered. She also closed the door behind her and came forward into the tiny circle of light cast by the dim coals in the hearth.
    Helene had been a bit surprised to find Miss Deborah Sewell included on the Windford guest list. Tall and elegant in her bearing, Miss Sewell also openly defied all custom by being a single woman who kept her own establishment. As if this weren’t enough, she actually worked for her living. She was known to write articles on art and travel, but far more shocking was that she was also very widely suspected of being the author of the sensational three-volume novel
The Matchless
.
    â€œAnd you are Lady Helene Fitzgerald,” Miss Sewell said. She did not