Prologue

September 1823

Village of Boroughbridge

Yorkshire, England

It started as an ordinary breakfast.

As the eldest of the four Weatherby sisters, Eleanor had the honor of sitting near the head of the table, just to the left of the seat reserved for her father.

It was a dubious honor, at best.

Their father, Kenneth Weatherby, proved her point by striding into the dining room and snapping his fingers. “Eleanor, my toast.”

She bit back a sharp response. As if she needed a reminder. As if he didn’t demand that she toast his bread for him each and every morning.

Across the worn oak table, the second oldest Weatherby sister, Clarissa, glanced up from her precious newspaper just long enough to give Eleanor a commiserating look. She immediately buried her nose again. The paper might be yesterday’s edition, saved for them by their more prosperous neighbors, the Ramsays, but Clarissa would read every line of it, including the weather report from the Outer Hebrides and the minutes of the Post Office’s quarterly meeting, with avid interest.

Eleanor set her own book, a well-worn copy of Twelfth Night, aside and went to work on her father’s toast. Three minutes later, she handed him a plate of crisp, golden slices with a forced smile.

Kenneth Weatherby began buttering his toast. “An opportunity has arisen.”

Eleanor saw the alarm she felt mirrored in Clarissa’s eyes. Their father was a naturalist, which was a respectable enough occupation, at least, the way his peers practiced it.

But Kenneth Weatherby had no interest in meticulously cataloging every conceivable variety of birds, bees, fish, or flowers. Oh, no—he was determined to make a breakthrough.

And that determination to chase after rainbows usually led to disaster not just for him, but for his four daughters.

“What sort of opportunity?” Eleanor asked, unable to mask the tension in her voice.

Their father did not look up from his toast. “It is an around-the-world voyage. Smithers is organizing it. I will be leaving next Friday.”

“An around-the-world voyage!” the third oldest Weatherby sister, Kate, exclaimed. “How exciting.”

Kate was the only one who would think so. A talented artist, Kate served as their father’s assistant, creating exquisitely lifelike watercolor illustrations of his specimens. Kate’s paintings had been featured in the handful of scientific exhibitions in London in which their father had been invited to participate.

Privately, Eleanor thought that Kate’s illustrations were the most remarkable thing about her father’s work and the only reason he had been invited to participate in those events.

But while Kate seemed thrilled by the prospect, Eleanor felt nothing but alarm. “An around-the-world voyage? How much does that cost?”

Kenneth Weatherby took up his chipped teacup, then scowled. “Philippa! My tea!”

Philippa, or Pippa, as she was usually called, was the youngest of the four Weatherby sisters. Seated next to Eleanor, she was busy cooing to her three cats, Pepper, Ollie, and Crumpet, and feeding them morsels from her own plate.

At her father’s recrimination, Pippa snapped to attention. “Sorry, Father,” she said, taking up the teapot and preparing their father’s cup just the way he liked it, with two lumps of sugar and a splash of cream.

After taking a sip of tea, Kenneth Weatherby went right back to buttering his toast, seeming to have forgotten all about the rather startling announcement he had made just moments ago.

“What is the cost of the voyage?” Eleanor asked sharply.

“Only a thousand pounds,” her father said, reaching for the jam.

Clarissa froze with a spoonful of soft-boiled egg halfway to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. Eleanor suspected she was making much the same expression. A thousand pounds? This year, they’d only managed to afford fabric enough for two new dresses amongst the four sisters. Those had gone to Pippa and Kate, whose wardrobes were the most threadbare. And they could only afford sugar for their father’s tea. His four daughters had to go without.

Not that Eleanor really minded. As Clarissa would explain, whether someone asked for her opinion or not, everyone should still be boycotting sugar, because even after the abolition of the slave trade, money spent on sugar still flowed to the plantation owners who continued the cruel practice in the West Indies. Eleanor had to admit that her sister was right, even if she yearned for sweetened tea.

But the point was, they didn’t have anywhere near a thousand pounds! Eleanor should know. She’d been managing the household budget for years.

“Where on earth did you get a thousand pounds?” Eleanor asked, hoping against hope that her father had somehow managed to find a benefactor.

“I sold the house,” he replied calmly while spreading gooseberry jam on his toast.

Clarissa’s spoon clattered against the flagstone floor. Pepper, Ollie, and Crumpet abandoned Pippa to race beneath the table so they could nibble up the fallen eggs.

Eleanor could scarcely think. The room around her seemed to sway. Sold the house? He couldn’t have sold the house. Even her life could not possibly be this horrible!

Eleanor drew in a steadying breath. “I think I must have misheard, Father.” Her voice sounded far away, as if someone else were saying the words. “For a moment, I thought you said that you had sold the house.”

“That’s correct,” he replied, reaching for the ham.

“This was Mother’s house,” Clarissa said, her voice shaking with rage. “It was part of her dowry.”

“And surely Mama would have wanted it to go to us someday?” Pippa asked, glancing at Eleanor uncertainly.

Eleanor gave her a firm nod. Elizabeth Weatherby had died bringing Pippa into the world, so her youngest sister had never had the chance to know their mother.

But Pippa was absolutely right.

“The marriage settlement included no language to that effect,” their father noted. “The house is legally mine, to dispose of as I see fit.”

“Nevertheless, she would have been furious,” Eleanor said in a clipped voice.

Their father looked baffled by this reception. “This is the chance of a lifetime. I couldn’t possibly turn down such an opportunity.”

He said it so guilelessly, that the notion popped into Eleanor’s head that things could not possibly be as bad as she was assuming. That, for once in his life, her father must have given a thought to his daughters and made accommodations for them, rather than leaving everything for her to figure out.

She therefore asked, “Who will be taking the four of us in?”

“How should I know?” her father asked before taking a bite of toast.

“But where will we live?” Clarissa burst out.

Kenneth Weatherby continued chewing his toast, leaving his four daughters to stare at one another in horrified silence. When he finally swallowed, he said, “Eleanor will figure something out. She always does. And you have two weeks until the buyer comes to take possession.”

Eleanor wanted to scream. Two weeks? How on earth was she supposed to find a new living situation for the four of them in two weeks?

And yes, it was true that she had become good at figuring these things out, good at finding ways to stretch their meager budget until it all but burst at the seams. She’d had a great deal of practice, as she’d been doing it ever since their mother died twenty years ago.

But just because she always managed to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear didn’t mean she should have to.

Eleanor fought to keep the panic rising in her breast from creeping into her voice. She had to be strong for her sisters. “But we have no close family to turn to.”

Her father paused as if considering this for the first time, but just as quickly, he shrugged. “I suppose you’ll have to marry, then.”

“That isn’t such a simple matter!” Clarissa snapped.

This was a rather spectacular understatement. The four Weatherby sisters were not only penniless, but they were also not particularly well-connected. To be sure, their mother’s second cousin had married an earl, but any benefit that could be wrung from that tenuous connection had been negated by their father’s eccentricities.

To make matters worse, they were bluestockings, all save perhaps for Pippa, whose great passion—cats—was fairly conventional. Pippa had the added advantage of being pretty with her wavy blonde hair, green eyes, and delicate features.

Truth be told, Clarissa and Kate were pretty, too, although they cared little for their appearance and put no effort into it.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said about Eleanor. There was nothing feminine about her. She was tall—taller than half the men of her acquaintance—but she wasn’t tall in a willowy, elegant way. The word that came to mind was sturdy. She had once been told that she would’ve made a good farm wife, and she couldn’t honestly disagree. She had the sort of build that made people think, I’ll bet she could churn a lot of butter. As for her face, at best, it was plain, with a nose that might euphemistically be described as “Roman.”

And so, Eleanor had accepted years ago that no man would ever want to marry her, a truth that had been confirmed by the fact that she was now firmly on the shelf at the age of seven and twenty.

But hope remained for all three of her sisters, and in fact, their mother’s countess cousin had once even managed to arrange a match for Clarissa with Rupert Dupree, the second son of the Earl of Rottenbury. This had seemed like a blessing at the time, but really, it had been the prologue of their latest disaster. Because Rupert had jilted Clarissa, and the papers had picked it up, turning the four Weatherby sisters into laughing stocks.

Or, more specifically, turning them into the Weatherby Wallflowers, which was the nickname the gossip rags had gleefully adopted.

It was a good thing Rotten Rupert, as they had taken to calling him, had decamped for the Continent immediately after jilting Clarissa. Were Eleanor ever to pass him in the street, she was confident that she would wind up committing one or more acts of violence upon his person for which she would face, at a minimum, transportation.

And that was nothing compared to what Clarissa would do. Clarissa would not settle for mere murder; Clarissa would desecrate Rupert Dupree’s corpse, and she would cackle while she did it.

So, when her father suggested marriage, as if this were a simple solution, as if Eleanor had not been trying to find respectable husbands for her sisters for years, something inside her snapped.

“And have you found husbands for us, Father?” she asked, for once not troubling to conceal the sharpness of her tone.

Her father looked startled. “No. I assumed you would prefer husbands of your own choosing.”

“Husbands of our own choosing.” Eleanor laughed, but not in an amused way. “A curious turn of phrase, considering we have no choices.”

Their father frowned. “What do you mean, you have no choices? You could choose any man in the world. I wouldn’t stand in your way.”

“You would not stand in our way, but nor would you do anything to aid us, such as making sure we have dowries, giving us a Season, or even making sure we had decent wardrobes. It is no simple matter to find a husband with the ‘advantages’ you have provided us, Father.”

Kenneth Weatherby looked bewildered. “We didn’t have money for any of those things.”

“No,” Eleanor snapped. “No, we didn’t. Not after you undertook that voyage to Cyrene, in order to search for basilisks. Then, there was the trip to Eritrea to hunt for a Pegasus. And the summer you spent looking for sea serpents off the coast of Aberdeen. And the time you went to Tatarstan in search of wyverns. And—”

Her father’s ears had turned red. Although Clarissa could be snide, he was not used to having Eleanor defy him. “Scientific discovery is not always a linear process, Eleanor. The careers of the greatest naturalists are littered with false starts.”

She surged to her feet. “A Pegasus, Father! You spent hundreds of pounds—money that could have gone toward giving Clarissa a Season, Kate a dowry, or Pippa a proper wardrobe, to chase after a Pegasus!”

Her father scowled. “It’s easy to point the finger after the fact. But had I found any of those creatures, it would have been the making of my career.”

“There is a reason no one has found those creatures,” Eleanor snapped. “Because they do not exist! I have known that since I was a six-year-old child!”

“Even I know that,” Pippa added, slicing a morsel off one of her kippers and feeding it to Crumpet.

“As much as I hate to contradict you, Father,” Kate said, “I agree with Eleanor. Although this is truly the voyage of a lifetime, it isn’t right for the two of us to take it if it means that my sisters will be without a roof over their heads.”

Across the table, Clarissa caught Eleanor’s eye, and they exchanged a look of alarm. In Eleanor’s opinion, Kate had never seen their father with clear eyes. Whereas Eleanor, Clarissa, and Pippa understood that he would abandon them in a heartbeat if it meant he could go chasing after fairies in Albania, Kate thought the world of their father. In fact, the reason she had honed her artistic talent so meticulously was so she could be of use to him.

And so, Kate’s assumption that their father would be taking her with him on his around-the-world voyage was not entirely implausible.

But when had Kenneth Weatherby ever thought of anyone but himself?

Eleanor held her breath. God, how she hoped she was wrong. Kate would be crushed if their father abandoned her. At least Eleanor, Clarissa, and Pippa had grown used to it.

Their father did not look at Kate as he said, “You seem to have made an erroneous assumption, Katherine. The sale of the house did not generate enough money to cover the cost of two passages. Well, strictly speaking, I suppose it did, but I would not have been able to afford a private cabin. I will therefore be going alone, and you will be staying here with your sisters.”

Eleanor watched the blood drain from Kate’s face. “But… but you need me. You need me to illustrate your findings! We’re a team, a duo, and—”

“I will not deny that your drawings do add a negligible amount of value to my work. But you would do well to remember, Katherine, that I am the scientific expert. You are, at best, my assistant.”

Kate looked as if he had slapped her, but she recovered quickly. “And that is all I want—to assist you! Let me come with you, Father. I can be of help to you. I know I can!”

He shook his head. “The voyage is expected to last a minimum of two years. I refuse to make it in discomfort. No, you will stay here with your sisters.”

Tears streamed down Kate’s face. One dropped onto her wrist, and she started, touching her cheeks as if she did not realize she had been crying. Kate was by far the most stoic of the four sisters. She could sit in a copse of trees for hours, still as a fawn hiding in the grass, waiting for an animal she wished to sketch to emerge. She would not complain of cold, nor heat, nor rain, nor boredom. In fact, Eleanor could not recall the last time she had seen her second-youngest sister cry.

But Kate had genuinely thought that their father loved her. And this was the moment she finally realized she had been wrong.

Clarissa stood, wrapping an arm around Kate’s shoulders and urging her to her feet. “Come, Kate,” she said, glaring venomously at their father. “We’ll finish our breakfast in the front room. Pippa, would you bring the teapot?”

Pippa stood and began placing the tea things on a tray. Eleanor gathered her sisters’ half-finished plates and started to follow them.

Just before she strode through the door, she paused to deliver a final parting shot. “You are the worst father imaginable. If Mother could see you now, she would be disgusted.”

Her father said nothing in response as Eleanor sailed out the door.

In the front room, Eleanor found Clarissa and Pippa sitting on either side of Kate on the tattered brown sofa, arms around their sister’s shoulders while she sobbed.

Eleanor set their plates on a side table, then knelt on the floor so she could take her sister’s hands. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

“I thought…” Kate sobbed. “After everything I’ve done…”

Eleanor rubbed the back of her sister’s hand with her thumb. “I know, dear. I know.”

“Eleanor,” Pippa said, her voice quavering, “what are we going to do?”

Her three sisters looked at her expectantly.

Eleanor was no stranger to this moment. She had been just seven years old when her mother died, and she’d been looking after her three sisters ever since. She had never failed them before.

Nor would she fail them this time.

“We’re going to stick together,” Eleanor answered, trying to infuse her voice with a confidence she did not feel. “Our father has abandoned us, but this isn’t new. In truth, he abandoned us years ago.”

All three of her sisters, even Kate, nodded sadly in agreement.

“But,” Eleanor continued, rising to pace the room, “we are not giving up. I am going to write to every distant relation, ostensible friend, and casual acquaintance I can possibly think of. Who knows—maybe one of them will offer to shelter us. But we must not rely upon the generosity of others.” She made a point of holding each of her three sisters’ eyes for a beat. “We must look to ourselves and think about how we might earn our own livings going forward.”

“I could offer drawing lessons,” Kate said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “I’ll have time now that I won’t be helping Father.”

“Yes!” Eleanor exclaimed. “That’s an excellent suggestion. We would need to move to a larger town that would have a better pool of potential students. But it looks like we’ll be leaving Boroughbridge one way or another.”

“I could offer lessons in French or Spanish,” Clarissa noted. “Or find work as a governess.”

“I think becoming a governess or a companion might be a good option for me as well,” Eleanor noted. She swallowed. “Or perhaps even a housekeeper.”

It would be a step down, to be sure. A governess existed in the shadowy realm between servant and family. A gently bred woman could contemplate taking a position as a governess.

A housekeeper was something else entirely. Still, Eleanor would be good at it. She knew she would.

And if becoming a housekeeper was her only option to keep her sisters from being turned out into the streets, she would do it.

“I don’t think I could do any of those things,” Pippa noted miserably. “I’m not clever like the rest of you.”

“Yes, you are!” Eleanor insisted in the same breath Kate murmured, “That’s not true.”

“You’re perfectly clever,” Clarissa said with a note of finality. “You’re just not a dyed-in-the-wool bluestocking like the rest of us.”

“Perhaps I could find work as a nursemaid, though.” Pippa gave a smile that did not reach her eyes. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was to marry and have children of my own.”

“Marriage isn’t a bad goal. Quite the opposite,” Eleanor noted. “If any of us can manage to catch a husband, that could pull us all back from the brink.” Her eyes fell on Clarissa, and she noted her sister’s drawn expression. “What is it, Claire?”

“It’s not that I disagree with anything you’ve said. These are all good ideas, and of course, we have to try everything.” Clarissa slouched back on the couch, rubbing her brow. “But we only have two weeks! What are the odds that you and I can find families in need of a governess, Kate can line up a dozen art students, and Pippa can catch a husband in two weeks?”

“We just need one bit of luck,” Eleanor countered. “Just one distant relation to offer us shelter for a month, or for one of us to find a position. I won’t lie—it’s not going to be easy. We may have to sleep four to a bed in a dismal little room. Our stomachs will probably be rumbling for the first few months. But things are going to turn around for us. I know they are.”

Clarissa looked unconvinced. “When have things ever gone right for the Weatherby Wallflowers?”

“There are worse things to be than wallflowers,” Eleanor countered.

Clarissa’s face was a portrait of skepticism. “Are there?”

“There are,” Eleanor said firmly. “Wallflowers are tenacious. No one bothers to tend them. They are relegated to the cracks between the paving stones, yet still they find a way to bloom.”

“Unlike hothouse flowers,” Pippa said, “wallflowers don’t merely bloom in perfect conditions. They can survive the frost, the drought, whatever the world throws at them.”

“Wallflowers are more interesting than hothouse flowers,” Kate added. “Every variety of rose is basically the same. But wallflowers are fascinating in their variety.”

Eyes shiny, Clarissa stood, snagging her teacup from the tray. “And wallflowers have thorns and sometimes even poison. Pity the man who thinks they will be easy to pluck.” She raised her cup in a toast. “Because a wallflower never surrenders.”

“Hear, hear!” Eleanor called, grabbing her own cup from the tray. “A wallflower never surrenders!”

“To the Weatherby Wallflowers!” Pippa cried, lifting her chipped cup.

“To sisterhood,” Kate added, raising her cup.

And that was how the four Weatherby sisters came to be hugging one another, raising toasts and sloshing tea upon the carpet in the front room of the house that would be their home for only two more weeks.

As she hugged her sisters, Eleanor’s gaze fell upon the miniature of their mother where it stood on the mantelpiece. She closed her eyes. Help me, Mother. I cannot let my sisters down.

That very moment, a beautiful pale-yellow butterfly fluttered past the window.

It was probably her imagination, but Eleanor fancied that it lingered there.