Page 1 of Dare to be Wicked

Chapter 1

It is so unfair!

Why does everyone else get to see the coronation of the new queen but me? I promised to be good and not fidget, and I’m certain my brothers were bored to tears. I cannot wait to be a grown-up like Eliza and Lottie. At least they will tell me all about it when we’re all at Holbrook. Pip and Tom probably fell asleep.

―Excerpt of an entry to the diary of Lady Catherine ‘Cat’ Barrington, youngest daughter of the Marquess and Marchioness of Montagu.

28th June 1838, Beverwyck, London.

“Oh, my feet hurt!” Lottie wailed as Eliza dragged her up the steps to the front door. “I’ll never dance again.”

“If only you’d never speak again,” Eliza muttered. After a tedious carriage ride home, the excitement of their long day had given way to exhaustion, and her legendary patience was unravelling with speed.

“If only you’d not lost my favourite hair clasp.”

“I apologised for that,” Eliza said calmly and with admirable restraint in the circumstances, forcing herself not to snap. Lottie was tired and irritable, that was all. “I shall replace it.”

Lord, but her feet hurt! Her head too, and she longed for the sanctuary of her own room and her comfortable bed. Not that she would have missed the coronation of the young Queen Victoria for anything, though if anyone involved had possessed the slightest idea of how the ceremony ought to have proceeded, Eliza was quite certain the thing could have been done in little more than an hour. The five hours it had taken had been interminable and fraught with anxiety, as no one had seemed to know what was going on. There were already mutterings about ‘yet another botched coronation.’ Not a murmur of complaint had passed her lips, however. Whilst her parents had been invited, her father had paid a staggering twenty guineas apiece for the three tickets to admit his eldest children. In his view, such an historic event was not to be missed. Despite her aching head and feet, not to mention her posterior, Eliza was grateful to have been a part of it, even if moments of utter chaos had punctuated all the pomp and ceremony.

Farce had almost become tragedy as poor Lord Rolles—who was eighty if he was a day—fell down as he attempted a flight of stairs. Miraculously he’d been unhurt, but only the actions of the queen, who had kindly moved towards him to stop him making another attempt, had saved him from further harm and humiliation.

“I wasn’t the one complaining about being squashed just because I fell asleep.”

Eliza sighed. Lottie was still harping on, seemingly determined to wear out Eliza’s temper. Lottie was the only person capable of ever undermining Eliza’s unflappable calm, but somehow, she accomplished it with remarkable ease.

“You drooled on my shoulder,” Eliza said tartly.

Lottie blushed, glared at her, and opened her mouth to retaliate.

“Oh, do stop bickering, children,” their brother Jules protested, though at nineteen he was younger than Eliza by four years and Lottie by two. “Honestly, it makes a fellow’s head hurt to be in your company for five minutes together, let alone a day like today. Mama, make them stop.”

“Children?” Lottie retorted. “I believe you were the one who kept demanding to know when you could go home.”

“Yes, yes. It has been a trying day,” their mama said, her tone soothing and not quite in line with the pointed look she sent them all. “We are all tired and quarrelsome, so why do we not hold our tongues long enough to shed our hats and coats and go to bed?”

“Oh, but Mama, I’m starving!”

Jules snorted and opened his mouth to make some comment about Lottie’s capacity to eat at any moment of the day or night, before catching his mother’s glacial look and changing his mind.

“I shall have a tray sent to your room, dear.”

Lottie favoured her brother with a smirk before smiling prettily at her mother. “Thank you, Mama.”

“If you could remain silent for the time it takes you all to reach your own rooms, I should be enormously grateful,” their father remarked, the amusement in his green eyes quite taking the sting out of the reprimand.

Age had not softened the Duke of Bedwin’s harsh, if handsome, countenance, nor his uncompromising profile, which was the sort that might put one in mind of villains and dark deeds. Though his thick black hair was greying, he was hale and hearty and a force to be reckoned with. Unless, of course, you were their mama. One look from her and he turned to mush. Eliza smiled to herself.

“Of course, Papa,” she said.

“Angel,” he murmured fondly as Lottie huffed.

“You never call me angel,” she grumbled, handing her hat and gloves over to a footman as their butler, young Jenkins, greeted them.

“I wonder why that could be,” Papa said with a lift of one dark eyebrow. He laughed at her disgruntled expression and bent to kiss her cheek. “Go to bed, my dearest hoyden. I shall send you hot chocolate and cake. Does that soothe your temper?”

Lottie grinned at him and cast her cloak at an amused looking footman.

“Of course!” she said and danced up the stairs as if she hadn’t been about to collapse from fatigue just seconds earlier.