Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

S ophia flew into the bedroom, bringing another empty valise with her and flinging it onto the bed.

“Gwen, hurry up, please. My father could be home any second now!” she urged, the drawers and armoires already in disarray as she charged over to add another pile of clothes to the waiting valise. “Make sure to pack the winter clothes in a separate case!”

Her maid looked absolutely flustered and overwhelmed by her frantic instructions. It was as if a devil had possessed Sophia in the night, driving her into a whirlwind of madness upon waking. There had been no time for her usual cup of rosehip tea or even to change out of her nightdress, her commands to Gwen anything but routine, insisting that they start packing her things at once.

At least I am not moping anymore. You got what you wanted.

Ever since that wretched letter arrived at the house a few days ago, Sophia had been in a state of depression that had hung heavy about her like a cloak of chainmail. The joy had been sucked out of every little thing, leaving her drained and despondent, but all that had changed thanks to whatever devil had slithered into her mind as she slept.

Now, she had her vigor back, and a purpose that could not be delayed.

“My Lady,” Gwen begged, “I’m as confused as a tortoise on a fence post. Why are we packing? Where are you going? And why are we doing it before your father comes back? Doesn’t he know?”

“No, and if he ever does, then you might as well stab me in the heart and be done with it,” Sophia said fiercely, hoping that if she sounded courageous, it would be enough to hide the terror that bristled in her veins.

Gwen edged over to the valise and began folding everything that Sophia had tossed in haphazardly. “My Lady, forgive me, but?—”

“But I have not packed enough undergarments and warm things?” Sophia interrupted, refusing to let anything slow her down. “Quite right, Gwen. More of those.”

Gwen discreetly stacked the folded garments on the bed, decidedly not in the valise where they were meant to be. “My Lady, I can’t go against your father—it’ll cost me my position at this house. I’m sorry, but?—”

“You can lie to him.” Sophia ran over with another armful of clothes. “You can tell him I told you I was leaving only temporarily, to visit some sickly friend or other, and you only realized afterward that I lied to you. Whatever it takes. I can write a note for you to ‘discover’ if that will help—but I need you, Gwen. I can’t do this without you.”

Gwen rested her hand on the pile of clothes, her gaze flitting between Sophia and the door. “My Lady, I will always do as you ask of me. I’ve promised to do so, you know this, but… Wait, I thought you were leaving temporarily?”

“I doubt my father will approve of me escaping this wedding,” Sophia replied, reaching for the garments that had been removed from the valise and throwing them back in. “So, no, it’s unlikely to be temporary.”

The maid looked doubly bewildered. “But you will be a duchess, My Lady! Why wouldn’t you want that? It’s every woman’s dream.”

“Well, it’s not mine,” Sophia shot back desperately. “Not a marriage, not an arranged marriage, and definitely not an arranged marriage with… him !”

“What can be your complaint, My Lady? I hear he’s very handsome, he’s well-stationed, he’s obviously agreeable since he made the proposal—many would call you lucky.” A bittersweet note laced the maid’s words, her eyes downcast.

Are you going to call me ungrateful, too? Are you going to call me a silly girl, like my father?

Frustration stretched through Sophia’s limbs like a rope pulled too tight, on the brink of snapping. She was not oblivious; she knew that countless ladies both in and out of Society would give anything to be in her privileged position, but did that mean she had to roll over and do as she was commanded when it was the last thing she wanted?

For once, she wished there was someone who could understand her perspective, and not call her silly for it.

She paused to catch her breath, feeling that terrible, heavy gloom snake back into her mind. “It doesn’t matter what he looks like, Gwen. What matters is that my father… has decided to sell me off like cattle to the Pratts.” Her throat tightened. “I can’t believe… he would just accept the marriage proposal. Just like that. He didn’t consider my thoughts on the matter at all . Do you know what it’s like to be ignored, your feelings cast aside like used handkerchiefs?”

Tears threatened, each strained breath refusing to fill her lungs.

“My Lady…” Gwen rested a hand on Sophia’s forearm. “It can’t be so bad…”

“No, Gwen, it’s worse.” Sophia shrugged the hand off. “To be locked in that cage they call home with nothing but other Pratts to keep me company. They will be my end. It’s all a ploy—it must be. And my father is so blinded by Samuel’s… actions that he can’t see through it! I am a sacrificial lamb, Gwen, and I am fighting for my life here!”

“And where will you go? A young lady all by herself?”

Sophia marched over to the armoire, wiping the tears from her eyes, and grabbed the last of her ‘necessary’ belongings. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. Anywhere else will be better. I’ll take a boat to the Americas if I have to, but I will not go quietly to a prison of the Pratts’ making.”

“My Lady…” The pity in Gwen’s voice was a twist of the knife in Sophia’s back, calling her silly without saying it outright.

Sophia whirled around, her eyes ablaze. “I hate him! I hate him, do you understand? Him and his family and everything they stand for. Do you understand? I will not marry him—not now, not in a year, not in a million years would you find me dead in the same bed as that man, sharing his wretched name!”

The maid stared at her as if she had taken utter leave of her senses, the quiet of the bedchamber filled with her sawing breaths as panic overtook her entirely. If Sophia could not get her lady’s maid—a trusted confidante and sometimes friend—to see things from her perspective, then she was doomed.

So, it came as a calming surprise when Gwen straightened up, pulled back her shoulders, and announced, “Well, you can’t travel anywhere with all of this.” She began pulling things out of the valises again. “Two carpet bags with a rope tied between ought to work without worrying the horse. Your jewels and trinkets in the saddlebags.”

“Thank you,” Sophia wheezed, her hand flying to her racing heart. “Oh, Gwen, thank you.”

Sophia looked back at the house as her horse, Meadowsweet, pawed impatiently at the cobbles of the stable yard. Her family home, the house she had grown up in, the garden where her mother read her stories beneath the apple trees in the summer, the flowers she loved to smell… the lawns where there was always some competition or another underway, be it Pall-Mall or hurling snowballs or racing for the singular prize of being the winner.

Her doubts were welling up. Did she really want to leave all of this behind?

Yes. Yes, she did.

Anything to escape a life under that madman’s thumb. Anything.

She placed a foot in the stirrup and got ready to step up and mount her horse when a figure appeared at the stable doors behind her—one she recognized and one that made her groan.

“Going somewhere, Sister?” It was James, her older brother, standing tall against the frame of the doorway.

He had a sensible smile on him, as he always did, and one that annoyed her. She felt that he could get her to agree to anything, always presenting logical arguments and good points in conversations, until she often wondered why she had been on the opposing side, to begin with.

Not this time.

“I am not marrying him, James,” she said crisply, heaving herself into the saddle.

He moved quickly, coming to stand in front of the horse under the pretense of wanting to stroke its nose. “I’m surprised the poor thing can still stand with those bags as stuffed as they are. You might have made room if you had put one of your gowns on the horse. A tiara, perhaps. Some bracelets around her shins.” He flashed her a warmer grin. “I think she would look very fetching, don’t you?”

Sophia stared at him, annoyed, refusing to believe she wanted to chuckle at the comment.

“Did Father send you?”

“No. Rest easy. He does not know about this.” James made soothing sounds to the eager mare. “Your maid sent me. She’s worried about you.”

“That little?—”

“She cares about you,” James interrupted in that ‘noble’ voice he used when someone had misbehaved. Usually Samuel. “Do you know what trouble she would be in if the Lady under her care disappeared forever? She’d never find a house to work in again. She’d be lucky to find employment as a… Well, the less said about that, the better.”

Twinges of guilt writhed in Sophia’s heart. Gwen had pretty much grown up with her—her lady’s maid since she was fifteen. They had shared a life together, in essence, and Sophia felt horrible now, realizing how much her maid had been willing to risk to give her mistress what she wanted. How much Sophia had been asking.

It had not sunk in until that moment.

“I don’t want to marry him, James,” she said quietly.

“I know, dear sister. I know.” He smiled warmly. “How good are you with a gun?”

“What?”

“Well, since you don’t want to marry him… there’s always another option. We all grab the biggest gun we can find, and we challenge each other to a duel. The survivors then challenge each other, ad nauseam ,” he explained in a self-satisfied tone, shrugging as if it were nothing. “At some point, the problem will solve itself. The feud between the Kendalls and the Pratts will continue to be one for the history books until there are no more of either left.”

Sophia felt unsteady, her hands clammy as they held the reins. She had always had a colorful imagination, and she did not like the picture he had just conjured in her mind. It was hideous… but was it really so far from reality?

We are just doing it more slowly.

“You can end it, Sister.” James moved to her side, taking one of her hands in his. “It’s not a price you have to pay, for this is not a women’s quarrel, but there is a reason why it is the dove that brings peace. Be our dove, dear sister. Be the gentle heart that brings us all to heel, at last.”

He was not holding the reins, not forcing her to do as she was told, not barring the gates that would lead her to freedom. He was asking, with all his heart, his hope shining in his sad eyes. If she gave Meadowsweet the command and squeezed her thighs, she knew her brother would not stand in her way.

The realization was as unnerving as it was encouraging.

“If I did not think it was a trick, I might have been more amenable,” she said, thinking out loud. “They will laugh themselves into a stupor if I do this, applauding themselves for their ingenuity in devising a new, cruel way to seek vengeance.”

James wrinkled his nose, frowning. “I don’t think that is their intention, Sister. I think the duel scared both sides in a way it has not before.”

“Then you don’t know the Pratts, particularly His Grace , as well as you think you do,” she remarked. “You don’t simply get over the disgust he harbors for us because of a duel.”

She had been on the receiving end of that disgust at least a handful of times, at gatherings where they had unfortunately crossed paths. Whenever he saw her, he sneered at her as if he was looking at vermin in his larder. Even at her debut, where she had worn what the scandal sheets called the most exquisite gown in Christendom , he had soured it with his nasty scowl and turned-up nose.

She had never forgotten the insult.

So, perhaps I am as bad as everyone else, perpetuating the feud in my own way.

“I know what everyone says about me, Brother,” she continued haltingly. “I know that the ton will think me mad if I refuse this—my last hope, in their eyes, of ever being a wife. But no matter how many times I heard them whisper unkind things about my manners, my etiquette, my awful dancing, my clumsiness, my opinions, my thoughts on marriage, it pales in comparison to the way he has treated our family. How he has treated me .”

“We would never have you any other way, duckling,” James responded.

He hadn’t called her that in ages. It was a nickname that harkened all the way back to their childhoods.

What the ton had never realized in their scathing assessment of her was that she had not always been averse to the idea of marriage. By the time she debuted, she had the same dream as every other lady of the ton: to marry for love, to marry someone who would take proper care of her and truly love her.

The years after, realizing that she did not fit gentlemen’s opinion of a good prospect—being too loud, too coarse, too opinionated, too unladylike—had soundly trounced that dream, turning it into a determination to remain a spinster.

“ He does not want me that way, I assure you,” she said. “I approached him a few times, did you know that?”

James nodded.

“I thought I could be the dove once. I tried to get our families a bit closer together. I’d engage him in conversation, ask him if he was enjoying himself, say something nice about his attire, and every time he’d look at me like I had just spat on his shoes. He… he always has that expression on his face, like he’s saying, ‘I am better than you,’” she said, imitating the Duke’s voice and coaxing a soft chuckle out of James. “Besides, if you think he’s not that bad, then why don’t you marry him?”

“If only it were so simple, dear sister,” he replied, holding his hands up to her—presumably to help her down from the saddle.

Sophia squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t do it, Brother. I am not strong enough.”

“My dear duckling, that is nonsense. You are the strongest of us,” he insisted, his tone genuine, thrumming with feeling. “That is why we are asking you to save us. Because only you have the ferocity, the will, the might to do it. We have proven that, to our shame. And… should the worst come to pass, and you feel like you must escape, you send word and I will personally come up there and get you out.”

Her eyes opened. “You promise?”

“A Kendall’s promise.” He took hold of her hands, and before she knew it, she was turning in the saddle, letting him help her down. Letting him persuade her yet again, not with an argument this time, but with quiet desperation.

As her feet touched the ground, he pulled her into a hug that felt a lot like an apology. She put her arms around him in kind, resting her head on his shoulder the way she did when they were children. He held her tightly and kissed the top of her head, murmuring against her dark locks, “I’ll keep practicing with the pistol until then—just in case.”

“And I will learn how to shoot,” she whispered back. “Just in case.”

It seemed she was to be the dove after all, and she did not trust that the Duke of Heathcote would not raise his rifle to blow her out of the sky.