Page 3 of The Earl’s Hoyden

“To be as wicked as possible,” they all finished for her in chorus.

She blinked in surprise as they all laughed. “Apparently, I ought to resolve to be less predictable.”

“Don’t you dare,” Elizabeth said with a giggle. “We’d be at a loss as to what to do with you.”

Lucy grinned and drank from the bottle again.

All eyes turned on Hannah.

Well, the year wasn’t exactly starting on fine footing, considering how many potential resolutions she’d already blundered within the short side of an hour. She sighed. “To be more patient.”

“Isn’t that what you tried last year?” Amy asked gently.

Lucy scoffed. “And only made it a week if I recall.”

Immediately Hannah regretted having shared this information with her friends. Perhaps she truly did talk too much. “To be fair, patience does take a while,” she protested.

Lucy tilted her head at the point well made.

And patience did take a long while to master. An eternity.

Time stretched before Hannah, dreadfully dull and hopelessly bleak. But still, she held onto the thought that patience might eventually be the key to everything she needed.

Her answer officially written beneath Lucy’s scratched script, the book found its way into Jillian’s hands.

Of the five of them, Jillian’s answer would be the most difficult to predict. Much like the young woman herself.

One never knew what thoughts danced about behind her crystal-green eyes. She saw the world in a different hue of light, her thoughts like winding tendrils that concocted insights no one might otherwise consider.

“I resolve…” She brushed the page with a tapered finger. “To never wed.”

The girls all sucked in a breath. Well, except Lucy, who snorted an unladylike laugh.

“What?” Elizabeth gasped.

Jillian’s chin lifted slightly, and she got that dreamy look on her face as when a notion struck her. “What if none of us ever wed? We wouldn’t have to cede ourselves or our property to a man. We wouldn’t be forced into a poorly matched union with a disagreeable man.”

“I don’t want to wed either,” Lucy said with a derisive scoff.

“Perhaps we could all live on a country estate together when we become spinsters, and our parents have given up on us,” Jillian said slowly as the idea came to her. “And we can make the ballroom into an extra library stacked to the ceiling with books.”

“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth breathed.

Hannah’s heartbeat quickened at the idea of living in the country forever. To think of never having to fret over the disinterested stares of the opposite sex again or bear the suffocating rules of society.

She was to have her debut in several years, she knew. And she did not wish to. It would be far better to enter her first season with no expectations of a match, secure in the knowledge that she would never wed.

“I shouldn’t like to wed either,” she said, grabbing Lucy’s bottle for another searing drink. Her head was already spinning, not only from the blazing alcohol but also the freedom of never having to worry about marriage.

Or, rather, the rejection that would lead to her inability to wed. For that was her biggest fear, more than a disagreeable man to marry; it was the very real possibility of there being no man at all willing to have her as his wife.

A smile brightened Jillian’s face as she wrote on a fresh page—The Vow of the Wallflowers with the s blooming into a perfectly drawn rose. Beneath that, she wrote, “The wallflowers who will take their freedom and never wed.” She signed, then passed the journal to Lucy, who signed, and then on to Hannah.

“No man wants a wife who trips over air.” Elizabeth blew at a lock of brown hair that had fallen over one eye. “And I should love that library filled with every novel ever written.” She nodded firmly. “I’m in too.”

“I want a curricle of my own,” Hannah said. “Perhaps a phaeton.”

“You’ll have it,” Jillian said emphatically. “And there will be a music room for Lucy with every instrument imaginable. And an art room for me, glowing with sunlight and overlooking the garden.”