Page 1 of To Steal a Kiss

Chapter 1

My dear Prue,

I’m so happy for you. You and Bedwin are a perfect match. I shall miss you while you are away. Do write, if you can tear yourself away from your handsome husband for long enough! No, by the way, I never did complete my dare. At least… not yet.

―Excerpt of a letter from Miss Alice Dowding to Prunella Adolphus, Duchess of Bedwin.

13th June 1814, London.

“They looked terribly happy, didn’t they?” Alice said with a wistful sigh as the carriage rumbled through London.

Alice was returning home with Matilda after the marriage of their dear friend Prunella to the Duke of Bedwin. That Prue was now a duchess was extraordinary and so at odds with her friend’s character she could not help but smile. What a bold young woman she was. She would not be your everyday duchess, that was for sure.

Alice turned to look across the carriage to her friend, who was staring out the window with a frown creasing her brow.

“What?” Matilda looked around and then sat up a bit straighter, as if tearing her thoughts from a dream. “Oh! Yes,” she said, smiling now. “Yes, indeed. They did. I think that marriage will be a great success. Lucky Prue.”

Alice nodded and gave a wistful sigh. She wasn’t jealous. Not really. That would be unworthy of her. Prue deserved her happiness and Alice was completely, wholeheartedly delighted for her.

Dash it.

Well, maybe a tad envious, then.

“Chin up, Alice. Your time will come.” Matilda’s voice was soft, her expression warm. She would make a good mother, Alice thought. The young woman had certainly taken to mothering the Peculiar Ladies, taking everyone under her wing. Alice especially.

With a disparaging sound, Alice indicated her thoughts on the likelihood of that prediction.

“Oh, it will indeed,” she said, surprising herself a little with the bitterness of her words. “In the form of the Honourable Mr Edgar Bindley.”

Alice didn’t bother hiding her dejection over the idea. Matilda had become one of her closest friends over the past weeks, and an ally in the war to thwart her parents’ plans. They were social climbers of the most ferocious kind and saw their daughter as fair game for their own advancement, no matter her ideas on the subject.

The honourable Edgar Bindley, youngest son of the Earl of Ulceby had shown an interest in Alice, and they were keen for her to make an advantageous marriage. That Alice not only found him physically repugnant, but could find nothing good to say about him, seemed of no importance. There was something cold, something lacking in Edgar Bindley, and Alice had no wish to discover what it was.

Matilda grimaced and shook her head.

“No, no. We’re not giving up yet, Alice. They gave you to the end of the season.”

Alice gave a snort and shook her head. “It’s the middle of June, Tilda.” A fact which was driven home to her each evening as she crossed another day from the calendar. “Time is running out. I can’t even get up the nerve to speak to a man in public, let alone tempt him into completing my dare. What chance do I have of getting one to propose?”

“Faint heart,” Matilda scolded, wagging a finger at Alice.

As a member of The Peculiar Ladies’ Book Club, an establishment for wallflowers, oddities, and the unmarriageable—Alice had been one of the first to take part in a series of rather outrageous dares. Not that she had yet completed her dare, only taken one from the hat in a rare display of courage, or perhaps insanity.

Her actions had shocked her as much as the other ladies of their number. Alice was shy. So shy she had trouble speaking to people outside of her immediate family or friends without stuttering, blushing, and making a fool of herself. That she had been the second to pipe up and take a dare from the hat was still something she was a little perplexed by. Yet, she was desperate: desperate to change her life, to change herself, to live.

Prue’s dare—to dance in a garden at midnight—had culminated in marriage to the Duke of Bedwin, the man with whom she’d danced. Silly as it might have seemed, Alice clung to the hope that such a romantic fate might await her.

Alice’s dare was to kiss a man in the moonlight. A lovely idea, if there were a single man of her acquaintance, outside of the revolting Mr Bindley, willing to do the honours. As she could hardly accost a man in the middle of a ballroom and ask him to help her complete a dare—even if she had an ounce of the nerve required for such a feat—she was rather stuck.

“Did you mean what you said?” Matilda asked, drawing Alice’s attention away from such gloomy musings.

“What was that?” Alice frowned, trying to recall, and then felt a jolt of apprehension as she remembered her rather spur-of-the-moment comment earlier at Prue’s wedding.

“You said you weren’t going to sit on the sidelines any longer, but that you would go out and get your happy ever after.”

Anxiety stirred in Alice’s chest at the thought of doing anything other than sitting about and waiting for her fate to change, but she had so little time left. Her parents had determined she would have Mr Bindley if no better offers were forthcoming, and she had until the beginning of September. Little more than six weeks. She had to do something.

“I-I,” she stammered, before taking a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, wondering if she ought to stop the carriage. She felt rather ill.