Wallflower (Old Maids' Club, Book 1) Read online

  Wallflower

  Catherine Gayle

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Wallflower

  Copyright © 2011 by Catherine Gayle

  Cover Design by Adrienne Thorne

  Published by Night Shift Publishing at Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  For more information: [email protected]

  Dedication

  To Mom, for teaching me to read, and to Dad, for telling me so many stories—over and over and over again.

  Prologue

  Summer, 1798

  Ainsworth Court, Cotehill, Cumberland

  “Aunt Rosaline is smoking a cheroot,” Bethanne said from her perch by the window, carefully hidden from outside view by the draperies. From a few feet away, Tabitha saw her cousin as plain as day, as could anyone walking past them in the corridor. Bethanne’s big, green eyes—eyes almost too large for her face—somehow widened further than normal as she rounded on her two cousins. “A cheroot!”

  “Aunt Rosaline smoking a cheroot hardly signifies as newsworthy, Bethie,” Jo scoffed, sending her blonde curls flying. She always shortened everyone’s name, whether they wanted their name shortened or not. It was a long ingrained habit—one Tabitha doubted Jo would ever be broken of. “I’ve caught her doing far worse than that on more occasions than I can count.”

  Tabitha had to laugh at Jo’s assessment. Then she laughed again at Bethanne’s dejected huff of defeat, though she at least took care to conceal her snicker behind a hand. Bethanne would not appreciate the humor of the situation, particularly since it came at her expense.

  The youngest of the three cousins at the ancient age of eleven, Bethanne Shelton never quite managed to win at anything against the much longer in the tooth, much wiser, much more indomitable thirteen-year-old Josephine Faulkner. Jo’s father, Viscount Hazelwood, might occasionally choose to describe his daughter as determined, or perhaps as merely stubborn-to-a-fault if he felt generous on the particular day one asked. Tabitha knew better: Jo was as obstinate as a mule. This was one of the reasons Tabitha loved her so.

  Jo could always best Tabitha too, particularly if a talent such as playing the pianoforte were involved or anything else requiring one to take center stage. At twelve years old and precisely in the middle of her two dearest cousins, Lady Tabitha Shelton despised having a room full of people staring at her for any reason at all. It always made her think they were disgusted by her, that they were staring down their haughty, aristocratic noses upon her because she had never managed to lose the chubbiness generally acceptable at infancy, yet perpetually frowned upon once a child no longer wore nappies. Already at this early age, her hips had begun to widen and her bosom had started to round itself out, and she tended to attract far more attention than she should ever have liked.

  Quite perplexing, that. If she did not already believe herself destined for a lifetime spent alone, the sheer girth of her frame would convince her of it in the infinitesimal span of a moment. What gentleman, after all, would be attracted to a girl who appeared more like a rounded, pink pig than an elegant and refined lady?

  “Such as?” Bethanne demanded, startling Tabitha out of her ruminations. The youngest girl plopped down onto the sofa in the front parlor, sending a whoosh of air over Tabitha. “What on earth could she possibly have done that is worse than smoking cheroots?”

  “Well, perhaps worse is not strictly the correct term,” Jo mused. “Certainly more scandalous, though.”

  Tabitha merely raised an eyebrow in question. Jo could not possibly think to hold back on them now. Not after raising their mutual curiosity in such a manner.

  Indeed, their elder cousin did not keep them in suspense for longer than a trifling moment. “Well, to start, I saw her riding over the hill the other day. Astride.”

  “No!” Bethanne responded. “But her skirts would be all bunched about her legs. She couldn’t possibly have done that. I don’t believe it for one second.”

  Tabitha held her tongue. Jo had left something out as surely as the sky was blue—a rather important something, it would seem. Tabitha wanted every detail before forming her own assessment.

  “Yes, she did,” Jo said. “But her skirts were hardly a concern, seeing as how she wasn’t wearing any. Aunt Rosaline wore breeches.”

  And there was the rub.

  “Josephine Faulkner, if your father knew you were telling such a fudge...” Bethanne’s scold trailed off as a herd of their brothers and the boys’ friends tromped past them down the corridor. She followed them with her eyes before returning to her diatribe. “He’d banish you to the outer bailey for a year.”

  Jo’s family lived in King Water Castle, an old fortress everyone thought to be haunted that was situated only a few miles from Tabitha’s ancestral home of Ainsworth Court. The outer bailey seemed to have more spirits than the rest of the castle combined, at least as far as the imaginations of the three girls were concerned.

  “He would not, because it isn’t a story. It’s the truth.” Jo readjusted on the mauve settee, settling her skirts about her legs again, and then looked over her shoulder to the hallway before continuing in a conspiratorial tone. “Do you want to know something else that’s the truth? The next day, I caught her kissing a gardener behind Uncle Drake’s mews when I was on my way over for a visit. She looked at me for a moment with a rather triumphant grin, I must say, and then shooed me away, telling me to mind my own affairs and stay out of hers.”

  One of Father’s gardeners? Surely not. Drake Shelton, the Earl of Newcastle, would never stand for such an impropriety. He had indulged his sister in many ways over the years—as had the entire family, truth be told—but he would never allow her ruin at the hands of a member of his own staff.

  Tabitha simply couldn’t believe such a thing.

  “How positively sinful,” sputtered Bethanne.

  “I’d say more delicious than sinful,” Jo countered after a thoughtful moment. “But certainly scandalous.”

  Indeed, everything about Aunt Rosaline seemed to scream out scandal. Perhaps in all capital letters. SCANDAL! With an exclamation mark. The added emphasis was a must.

  Yet despite how the townspeople rushed their children along, so as to avoid the influence of ‘That Bluestocking, Lady Rosaline Shelton,’ despite the whispers in corners about her being an Old Maid (according to Tabitha’s mother, the worst thing that could be said of a lady, save perhaps for being a lightskirt), and despite the on-dit Tabitha had read in the gossip rags that Jo’s older sister, Lavinia, always managed to secure from London, Aunt Rosaline did not seem to care one iota.

  Instead, she almost rejoiced in the negative attentions.

  Be yourself, Tabitha, no matter who is watching, had become Aunt Rosaline’s nearly constant refrain in recent years. In fact, she’d even written it to her in a piece of correspondence only a few months previously. It had come as part of a birthday letter, sent after Tabitha had despaired of Father and her brothers’ continued disparaging remarks—about her unrelenting state of plumpness and how she would never find a suitable match if she did not make drastic changes, and soon. The beauty you have on the inside is ten times more luminous than the world could handle seeing on the outside. We’d all be blind in an instant.

  Tabitha had merely set the letter aside. Be herself? Who else could she be? She wasn’t altogether sure s
he understood what her aunt had meant. Certainly, Aunt Rosaline had not intended to encourage Tabitha to be overweight by half, nor plain and boring to boot. Yet that, as far as Tabitha could tell when she had received the letter, was the sum total of all that she was.

  But now, as she slipped off the sofa and moved over to take a peek out the window for herself (and yes, Aunt Rosaline was, indeed, smoking a cheroot), perhaps she had a better understanding. Maybe Aunt Rosaline simply meant to do what was right for her, and not to worry about the consequences. Or at least not overmuch. Still, how could one do that and still have a chance at being accepted by society?

  “What would it be like not to care what people thought?” Tabitha mused aloud, not truthfully expecting an answer. Indeed, her voice had been so soft she hoped perhaps no one else heard her.

  “Precisely as it ought to be, Tabby,” Jo replied with a cluck of her tongue, within half a breath of the question. Her tone held an air of adamancy, as usual.

  Yes, perhaps that was how things should be. Not wondering what the world thought of her excessive, unwanted curves. Not worried about whether she spoke rather more than was appropriate or quite less than was acceptable.

  “Blissful,” Bethanne breathed. “I think it might be a little slice of heaven.”

  Blissful. Heavenly. That it would certainly be, also.

  But for Tabitha, there was something more. Something weightier. Something far more profound. “It would be freeing,” she whispered. She hurriedly dashed the tear that had escaped aside, not wanting either cousin to see her distress.

  Jo came up alongside Tabitha, taking her free hand into her own with a gentle squeeze, one that brooked no bosh. If she saw the tears, she mercifully ignored them. “Then the three of us must make a pact,” she said.

  Tabitha wanted to laugh. She could never be free, despite any pact, despite any desire on her cousins’ parts, despite any need on her own. No matter how desperate. She must do everything in her power to become an agreeable lady as suited her station. The only daughter of the eighth Earl of Newcastle must somehow find a gentleman who would offer for her, despite the fact that no gentleman her father found acceptable would ever think of her as beautiful—and certainly not worthy of the grotesquely large dowry he intended to settle upon her, in order to offset this rather lamentable circumstance.

  Tabitha would never be considered a diamond of the first water, not in her present state. The thought was utterly ridiculous.

  “A pact?” Bethanne cut in with obvious glee as she darted across to join them by the window. “What sort of pact? I do so love secrets. Might we form a secret pact?”

  “Yes, I think it must be a secret,” Jo continued. “We’ll each strive to become just like Aunt Rosaline. We must do what we want, what is right for us, even if it is not what others think is right for us. We must become old maids. Together.”

  Tabitha slowly but deliberately pulled her hand away. Her cousin clearly had no earthly idea what she was suggesting. Jo ought to have a better understanding of things. Her father was a viscount—a position not all that alien from an earl, after all. Jo had the same expectations upon her shoulders as Tabitha did, aside from the fact that Jo had another sister with whom to share the burden of securing an acceptable marriage.

  Jo frowned at her. “Hear me out before you refuse. Bethie has excellent connections, but her father certainly has limited funds for a dowry. That will undoubtedly make it more difficult for her to marry.”

  Bethanne wrinkled her pert nose. “Very true.”

  “You have what might possibly be unlimited funds for a dowry,” Jo continued, “but, as your father has made it all too clear, you have physical hindrances for finding that suitable match. And as for me?” Jo returned to the sofa and landed upon it in a frustrated flop. “I think I’ve made it profusely clear to everyone I know that I will not be seen as beneath anyone. Especially not a husband.”

  Tabitha sighed all the way to her toes. Jo was right. “But Father—”

  “But nothing,” Jo interrupted. “None of our fathers will be particularly pleased, to be sure. But they will never force us to do something against our will. They’ll treat us just like they treat Aunt Rosaline.”

  A smile threatened to overwhelm Bethanne’s impish face. “They will, won’t they? Oh, how wonderful. What can we call it?”

  “Call what?” Tabitha asked cautiously. This whole charade might not the best idea, but what else was she to do? After all, thinking of the type of gentleman who might actually want to offer for her someday caused her to shudder quite vehemently. They’d have to be fortune hunters or...or what, exactly? She didn’t know.

  Bethanne’s eyes shone with her excitement. “Our pact, silly. We need a name for it.” She lowered her voice and glanced over to the open door of the parlor before continuing. “A secret name.”

  Jo made a show of examining her fingernails. “Well,” she drawled, “they do tend to call Aunt Rosaline an old maid, and we will be just like her. Why not the Old Maids’ Club? We can be free and blissful, and grow old together as old maids.”

  A nervous titter escaped Tabitha’s lips at that suggestion. “What, call ourselves the very thing they will say about us?”

  “Exactly,” Jo said. “We can take away the power of that nonsensical phrase by choosing it for ourselves.” Her blue eyes sparkled with the intensity of the midnight sky.

  Take away the power? But it was only words. Just a phrase.

  Just a phrase. Oh, precisely. Words held no meaning if one afforded them none. Tabitha’s heartbeat roared to life. “Old Maids’ Club?” she asked.

  “Old Maids’ Club,” Bethanne said, grinning like an imbecile.

  Jo came back across the room to join them, taking their hands into her own. “Old Maids’ Club.”

  Yes. She would claim her future as whatever she wanted it to be. She would follow her aunt’s advice and be herself, whatever that entailed. Tabitha took Bethanne’s free hand and completed the circle.

  She would be free.

  Chapter One

  Spring, 1815

  London

  “It’s obscene, really.” This came from Lady Kibblewhite, who leaned over until her near-bluish hair virtually assaulted her companion. The massive aubergine feathers adorning her headpiece finished the attack where her hair had left off. Not that she needed to lean in at all. Her wobbly voice carried halfway across Lord Scantlebury’s ballroom. One would have to exert a valiant and sincere effort in order not to hear the sprawling whine of a voice.

  From Lady Tabitha Shelton’s chosen location, safely ensconced behind an array of potted plants and hidden from the view of the majority of the ballroom, she couldn’t possibly avoid the ancient society matron’s words. She was, after all, merely a few feet behind the two and several positions down the wall. Tabitha remained where she was for two reasons: first, to avoid the possibility of dancing with any gentleman whatsoever; and second, to avoid the notice of Lord Oglethorpe, the blasted fortune hunter currently attempting to pay her excessive attention of the unwanted variety.

  As luck would have it, Tabitha had selected a green shade of silk for her gown that evening, one that fortuitously fell somewhere between the hues of the verdant ivies in pots before her and the somewhat softer Pomona green draped over the walls. She thought she blended in quite well, all things considered.

  “Do keep your voice down. She’ll hear you.” And this came from said feather-assaulted companion, Lady Plumridge, as she searched about to find the obscenity in question. Lady Plumridge was younger, yes. And also much squatter.

  She was no less a gossipmonger, however.

  Lady Kibblewhite’s head popped up, with the feathers bashing around atop her head until they created a breeze almost strong enough to cause Tabitha to shiver. “I don’t care one whit if she does. Even she couldn’t deny the indecent dimensions her dowry has taken on this Season. How disgraceful, that Lord Newcastle has had to resort to such measures. Pathetic, really...if one
should ask me, that is.”

  “And we all know that one ought to do precisely that,” Lady Plumridge said with far more gusto than Tabitha thought necessary.

  The two dragons were right, of course. Tabitha harbored no disbelief that she was the subject of their current discussion, and she was also forced to agree with them—at least on one point. Father had, yet again, increased her preposterously large dowry to near epic proportions.

  He was desperate to find her a suitable husband before she reached her thirtieth birthday—a feat his brother-in-law, Viscount Hazelwood, had not managed with Tabitha’s cousin, Jo. This was likewise a task in which he was certain to fail, however much it pained Tabitha to disappoint him with regard to any matter.

  Sadly, Father refused to listen to her arguments. The way he continually increased her dowry did manage to attract a potential suitor or two from time to time. Regrettably, these gentlemen all held one commonality which Tabitha simply could not abide: a propensity for fortune hunting. They wanted her for her money, not for herself. Who would want her for herself, after all? Certainly not Oglethorpe or any of his ilk.

  At less than a month shy of nine-and-twenty, she had never been considered an Incomparable. Tabitha could not boast excellent skill at playing the pianoforte, or an aptitude for painting watercolors, or cleverness in embroidery or stitchery, or expertise in any other traditional feminine pursuit. Additionally, she was rather more plump than could be considered fashionable and rather more plain than pretty, with straight hair of some muddy, brownish hue and eyes of a lackluster grey that turned downright stormy when she was in a temper, as Jo was frequently keen to inform her.

  There was, to be blunt, nothing to recommend her save her disproportionate dowry and a superb proficiency at remaining a wallflower. Tabitha couldn’t convince even herself otherwise, so how on earth could she be expected to convince the beau monde? It was simply one of the sad facts of who she was.