LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 1

      October 1899

      Why does it always happen that just when I begin to feel life simply couldn’t get any better, fate drops a disaster into my path to prove me right?

      While I have no idea how common this phenomenon may be among people in general, it happens to me with rather exasperating frequency. For example, a little over ten years ago, when I was merely Miss Frances Price, I married the man of my mother’s dreams and became Frances, Countess of Harleigh. A joyous occasion. I’d done my family proud. My husband was dashing and handsome. I learned too late he was also feckless and philandering. After making me miserable for nine years, he had the audacity to die in the bed of his lover. Once I’d emerged from mourning, I found myself similarly buoyant and optimistic. That period also ended in death, or more precisely, murder.

      This cycle of highs and lows weighed on my mind because my life, at the moment, was purely idyllic and I couldn’t help but wonder if disaster loomed right around the corner. Regardless, I carried on as usual, taking breakfast in the nursery with my eight-year-old daughter, Rose, while we made plans for an upcoming visit to the country. When the time came for her lessons, I slipped downstairs to my library, where Mrs. Thompson, my housekeeper, had left a pot of coffee next to the morning mail on my desk, and waxwings trilled outside the window looking out over the garden. While enjoying my first sip, I learned that was the moment fate would drop the other shoe.

      Aunt Hetty and my sister, Lily, slipped into the room, both looking far too distressed for such a fine morning. Lily was soon to be married, and she’d been floating through the past two months as the happiest of brides-to-be. But with her blue eyes red-rimmed and watery, her complexion blotchy, and her golden hair spilling from its coiffure, she looked rather like a ghoulish version of her usual, sunny self.

      The first twinges of apprehension tickled the back of my neck like icy fingers. “Dearest, is something amiss?”

      She burst into tears.

      Hetty wrapped her arms around Lily and cast a scowl my way. “Now look what you’ve done.”

      I must admit the exchange left me baffled. And concerned. I swept around the desk and leaned over my sister. “Lily, please, tell me what happened.”

      As her tears continued to flow, Hetty settled her in a chair and gave me the news. Lily was with child. I reeled back against the desk and uttered the first word that came to mind.

      “Disaster!”

      This brought on renewed wailing and a fresh bout of tears from Lily, and a peevish huff from Aunt Hetty.

      “Honestly, Frances, you are no help at all. Lily turns to you with her troubles,

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