The Wallflowers To Wives Collection. Bronwyn Scott
href="#litres_trial_promo"> Chapter Eleven
Bronwyn Scott
Out of the shadows, into the marriage bed!
In Regency England young women were defined by their prospects in the marriage market. But what of the girls who were presented to Society … and not snapped up?
Bronwyn Scott invites you to
The Left Behind Girls’ Club
Three years after their debut, and still without rings on their fingers, Claire Welton, Evie Milham, May Worth and Beatrice Penrose are ready to leave the shadows and step into the light. Now London will have to prepare itself … because these overlooked girls are about to take the ton by storm!
Read Claire’s story in
Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss
Available now!
And watch for more
Wallflowers to Wives stories—coming soon!
Nothing will change until we do! This is the motto of The Left Behind Girls’ Club.
Claire’s story is the first in Wallflowers to Wives—a series of four books featuring four women who decide to change their circumstances. This is no small feat for a woman in Regency England. The higher born a lady is, the harder it is to challenge Society and families who have had expectations for you since the day you were born. Yet these four young women find the courage to be themselves without living outside polite Society—which, they discover, is a very fine line to walk!
More importantly, Claire finds a way to be herself. She doesn’t have to change who she is—just her situation.
This was a fun book to write because it takes advantage of some lesser known destinations in London. I especially loved the parts where Claire and Jonathon sneak off to the French neighbourhood of Soho. There really was one! There was a French market too, but Claire and Jonathon never quite get there—you’ll see why.
Happy reading!
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BRONWYN SCOTT is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and is the proud mother of three wonderful children (one boy and two girls). When she’s not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travelling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website, bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.
For all my PEO sisters! This is a series about women who decide to make their own destinies. Their ambition to remake themselves is not all that different from the ambition held by our seven founders. With special love, of course, to my chapter of outstanding women.
Thanks for all your support.
London—May 1821
It all started with two words. ‘I’m pregnant.’ The phrase jerked Claire rudely out of her own admittedly rather self-centred thoughts and thrust her into the horrifying present of someone else’s reality. Had Beatrice truly said she was pregnant? Claire stared at her friend in abject confusion as the words settled. Pregnant, as in going to have a baby. Enceinte. Her brain switched to its fail-safe coping mechanism, French. In a crisis, everything always sounded better in French.
Then the shock came, waves of it. Having a baby implied certain other things had taken place prior unless one was the Virgin Mary. Beatrice, one of her best friends since childhood, whom she had played with as a girl, whom she’d come out with, whom she’d not thought kept any secrets from her, had taken a lover and hadn’t told her. Hadn’t told any of them if the looks on the faces of Evie and May were anything to go on. They looked much like she suspected her face did—all pale emotion and bewilderment, while their brains picked through all responses possible for such a situation.
All the while Bea sat still, equally pale, waiting for an answer, watching each of them expectantly and patiently while their emotions rolled. This was not at all what Claire had been anticipating today. Today’s meeting in the tiny attic garret of Evie Milham’s town house was supposed to be like all the other meetings: secret and commiserative. They would bemoan the lack of male attention and/or intelligence, eat some cake and go home, only to meet the following week and do it all over again. It was a comforting ritual they’d sustained over the last three years since they’d come out, when hopes had been, if not high, certainly higher than they’d become after three years on the marriage mart and no takers.
Someone had to say