Chapter 1

1816 England

The End.

Two simple words but with them came an onslaught of emotions. Setting her quill aside, Agatha felt awash with achievement. Relief. Yet…mourning. The end was always bittersweet. It was over. Done. An accomplishment completed. A goal set and met. At the same time, the story was done, and that meant she wouldn't be writing about her characters again. They were gone. To live on in their book, but no longer residing in the front of her mind.

They had lived in her mind for the last few months, taking up quite a large amount of space, and she had poured her heart and soul into their story. She could only hope that a publisher would accept it.

KNOCK. KNOCK.

"Come in," Agatha called out as a footman entered her room with a letter.

"For you," he said with a quick bow. Her breath caught. And it wasn't his words or his presence that had her heart reaching for its next beat. That simple tray with that deceptively plain missive held all the power.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Her heart had found its next beat and the ones following it, and they were abnormally loud.

The footman obviously had no inkling as to the weight of that missive because he held it as though it weighed nothing.

And yes, all right, scientifically it did weigh next to nothing, but to Agatha…it felt like she was trying to pick up an elephant between her thumb and index finger. In the same way that no amount of exercise could have built up enough strength for such a task, no amount of mental exercises could have prepared her for reading its contents.

This missive meant everything to her.

So somehow, miraculously, she picked up the elephant and held it to her chest. Dismissing the footman with a nod of her head, she sat as still as the open field she gazed upon outside her window.

A bead of sweat dripped down her back. Her heel started to shake and her foot began bouncing on the floor. There was a lion pacing in her stomach and a teasing monkey hanging from a tree.

A veritable safari had taken over her body, though she had never been on one. It remained a dream. Yes, a dream. Not a plan. Never could she imagine in her wildest dreams actually venturing out on a safari and seeing those animals in the wild. No. They would remain a daydream, an escape, and apparently today an infliction upon her body.

The missive crinkled under her touch. She needed to know what it said, yet somehow reading the reply felt as though it were making her future paths too final.

One answer would open innumerable doors for her.

The other answer would keep them closed to her .

And well, there, that was the thought she needed to stumble upon to incentivize her to open the letter. Being a lady, the doors were already shut, so she might as well open the letter. Since the latter response would change nothing, she had only a present to maintain or a future to gain.

At that conclusion, her fingers tore into the missive as she felt the erratic beat of her heart.

Her eyes scanned the words until she saw what she needed to find.

We regret to inform you that we will not publish your book.

Slam. Doors shut. But why the sound? The doors were already shut.

And then the stab to her heart twisted its knife. It shouldn't have hurt though. The doors had always been closed. This was just formally telling her what she already suspected. What kind of publisher would want to publish a female author?

But then that sniffling voice of Hope dared to speak up. She knew published women, like Mary, the Duchess of Wellingford. Now a famous playwright. Lady Felicity, a published gossip columnist. And by no means did Agatha think herself of their caliber, but they were female writers that she aspired to be like. Though she would never admit that aloud.

So why? Why not her? Why had she been passed over? Again. This was the tenth rejection letter she had received.

She scanned the note for some clue as to their reasoning.

At this time, we feel you do not have the relevant life experience to make your writing realistic.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

And then the words blurred because the worst part of it was that they weren't wrong .

She had no experience to back up her stories. The couples she wrote about lived exclusively in her mind. She had no firsthand knowledge of kissing…nevermind more than that. She hardly knew anything about courting. Had certainly never had her heart fling itself upon a man. Had never known the sensation of a man's touch or desired it more than her next breath.

Yet she wrote about all of those things because she longed for them. In some ways, perhaps more than she cared to admit, she wrote about the dreams—in some form or another—that she had for her own life.

Being a lady meant that her future was decided for her. She would marry a man with wealth and a title, and she would be taken care of for the rest of her life. That was the plan because it was all that mattered.

Except it wasn't.

***

"Stand up straight," her mother huffed, "it's as though you've shrunk." She tsked for the fifty-fourth time in fifteen minutes. It was a sound that Agatha no longer really acknowledged to have any meaning. It was merely a sound that accompanied her mother wherever she went.

Agatha was on display in front of the floor length mirror as her mother primped and prodded her. Which is to say, she literally poked at her various fleshy spots to check that Agatha hadn't gained weight and also that she was indeed standing as tall as her natural height permitted.

"Oh dear," her mother, Beatrice, muttered, "this will not do." Clicking her tongue and snapping her fingers at the lady's maid made for all kinds of music. But not the kind that was pleasant to the ears, definitely more the kind that was put on by amateurs and which no one really appreciated, except—ironically—their mothers.

"What's wrong, mother?"

Another tsk of the tongue just to prove how tsk-worthy this dress really was. "This gown used to fit you, Agatha. What have you been doing? Stuffing your face with pudding late at night?"

"Of course not, mother," fell on deaf ears.

"I can't believe this. What a disaster." Beatrice's hand fluttered to her forehead, as if she were about to faint, and not Agatha, who was tied tighter in her corset than any animal should ever be.

"I can just wear another dress—"

The sentence was cut off by the murderous look in Beatrice's eyes.

"I apologize."

"Agatha, really. I know I've told you not to parade your intelligence around, but must you be such a beacon of imbecility?"

There was no winning. That was clear. Just let her mother decide what to do and what to say for now.

"You're right, Mother. You always know best." She hoped she was disguising her sarcasm as well as she thought she was…sometimes it was hard to tell how thick to lay on the honey. "You will make me a success at this masquerade ball, I'm sure."

Oh dear, Agatha fought not to roll her eyes. That was almost more difficult than taking a deep breath through the tightness of her corset.

"Hush. Let me think." Her mother's hand was on her forehead, as if she were in great pain. But at least Beatrice neither acknowledged nor chastised Agatha's words, so…there was that.

Beatrice stared at the mirror, then back at Agatha, flicking her eyes back and forth slowly as if conjuring up an answer to life's greatest problems. As if an ill-fitting dress was the difference between life and death, disaster or a future, and not just the difference between You look lovely , and You look beautiful. Both compliments Agatha would hope to receive in equal proportion at a ball. Not that she was conceited, she just knew that those were the phrases people threw around.

And it was all about this upcoming masquerade. Beatrice was set on making a match for at least one of her daughters.

For now, she knew that Beatrice wasn't holding out too much hope for Clara, Agatha's elder sister.

Just then Beatrice snapped her fingers and started prattling off instructions to more than one person in the room, even though only one lady's maid was present. Those were the kind of expectations her mother had. For worse and the worst.

The only saving grace in Agatha's mind was that at least this evening's party was going to be a masquerade and she could hide her rejection and shame behind a physical mask tonight, rather than the fake smile mask she habitually presented to society.

There was no escaping the ball tonight. That would be out of the question. But hiding in plain sight was the next best thing.

Yes. She just needed an evening to lick her wounds.

All the wounds. The rejection. The criticism. The dashed dreams. That's all.

And then she would be able to bounce right back to her old self.

Her old, fake self. The same self she had always been. The same self that wrote pieces of work that were unrealistic, unrelatable, unreceivable, and ultimately unreadable.

Well, now…that was an unbelievably depressing thought.