Miss Fortescue's Protector In Paris. Amanda McCabe

       Prologue

      Miss Grantley’s School for Young Ladies—1888

      It seemed like an ordinary day. Not completely ordinary, of course—it was the day families came to visit at Miss Grantley’s School for Young Ladies. Lessons were suspended and games of tennis and croquet were played on the wide green lawns, tea served in shady groves, while teachers were dispatched to answer parents’ anxious questions about their daughters’ progress.

      The red-brick Georgian mansion that housed the school gleamed in the bright spring sunshine, as if the weather was specially ordered for the day, and girls streamed in and out in their fluttering white dresses. Laughter was light and musical on the warm breeze.

      Emily Fortescue twirled her tennis racket as she took in the whole pretty scene. It was her last spring at Miss Grantley’s. In only a few weeks, she and her friends would graduate and scatter out into the world to find their destinies. She knew what surely awaited her best chums, Lady Alexandra Mannerly and Diana Martin—marriage to a suitable gentleman, a place in society. For Alex, the daughter of a duke and the goddaughter of the Princess of Wales herself, a high place indeed was expected, despite her shy reservations. She was beautiful and connected. Diana, too, came from a respectable family, with her father retired from the India station, and could be expected to find someone of similar stature, a life helping her husband in his career, even though she truly wanted to be a writer.

      But what lay ahead for Emily?

      She held up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. She studied the families who were gathered around the tea tables, who strolled the garden paths, mothers arm in arm with daughters, fathers peppering the teachers with questions. But her own father, her only family, was not there. He seldom was.

      Not that she blamed him, she thought with a sigh. Albert Fortescue had a business to run, a business that grew larger and more complex every year. Ever since Emily’s mother died when Emily was only a toddler, her father had been determined to give his only daughter a good life. He had expanded a small wine distribution and import-export company into a very lucrative concern, with many different departments and accounts all over Europe.

      His hard work had given them a large house on Cadogan Square, Emily’s education at Miss Grantley’s, travels abroad and lovely clothes. And she had far more freedom than most of her friends. She was not hemmed in by chaperons, except for those dictated by the school, and had few expectations heaped upon her beyond doing well in her studies. Her father talked of her helping him in the company and that would surely suit her well. Being a delicate, retiring fine lady would be suffocating.

      But, just once in a while, she wished her father could just—be with her. Come to a families’ day at Miss Grantley’s, look at her schoolwork, sit with her in the shade. Or, even more achingly, she wished her mother could be there, elegant in a fashionable feathered hat and pearls, comfortingly rose-scented like the other mothers, taking Emily’s arm as they strolled through the gardens. Smiling, giving her advice, listening to Emily’s doubts about the future.

      But then again—her mother might not have been like the sweet, understanding, light-hearted being Emily held in her imagination. She might have been more like the Duchess of Waverton.

      Emily watched as Alex’s mother gave her one more lecture before climbing into the glossy black carriage with its ducal crest on the door and finally leaving Miss Grantley’s. Alex looked pale against her sky-blue dress, her hands twisting in her skirt as she nodded at whatever the Duchess was saying. It was no doubt a stern list of proper behaviour for a duke’s daughter.

      Yes, Emily thought. Maybe she was lucky after all. Her future was an open question, whatever she wanted to make of it. Alex’s was set.

      ‘Poor Alex,’ she heard a voice say behind her, low and slightly rough, a hint of suppressed laughter hidden in its depths. ‘I always thank my lucky stars the Duchess is my aunt, and not my mother.’

      Emily smiled. Christopher Blakely. Alex’s cousin always livened up the school when he came to visit. Handsome, funny, light-hearted, always up for a game of tennis or a quick quarrel about whatever issues of the day happened to strike like a match between them. Yes, they always argued, but Emily had to admit it was fun.

      She turned to look at him and was almost knocked over by her dazzlement. He really was ridiculously good looking; it was no wonder all the girls at the school were in love with him. Tall, slim, golden-haired like an Apollo, with vivid blue eyes and a perfect blade of a nose, sharp cheekbones, always moving with a quick, loose grace that matched the careless, yet somehow always elegant, way he dressed. She had heard such gossip about the trouble he got into in town and she quite believed it all.

      ‘Do you escape the famous Waverton lectures, then?’ she asked.

      ‘Of course not. Anyone in my aunt’s orbit is fair game for lectures on the proper way to live and I have much to correct,’ he said with a grin, a flash of white teeth and sunshine that made her smile, too. ‘She and my mother are like two peas in a pod. Organising lives is their reason for being.’

      ‘And what do they tell you that you should do?’ She thought of the whispered tales, of his trouble at Oxford, how he was almost sent down; the gambling and late nights in London.

      ‘The usual things. Find useful work, get married. But not too soon. And only to the most suitable girl. Cease my rackety ways and finish my degree.’

      Emily laughed. It was hard to picture Chris married to a ‘suitable’ pale, aristocratic girl, going to an office every day in a grey suit. He seemed to have been born too late. He should have been an Elizabethan explorer, not a Victorian aristocrat. ‘And do they tell your brother that, too?’

      Chris glanced at his brother William who was talking to Emily’s friend Diana near the house. Will looked so different from Chris, dark and solemn, always so perfect. ‘Of course not. Will is always serious and responsible. It’s hard to live up to his good name at Oxford, I can tell you. He knows what he wants out of life. He does what he should do.’

      Emily was suddenly caught by something in Chris’s tone, something strangely wistful and sad. She had never heard that from him before. ‘And you don’t know what you want to do?’

      ‘Certainly not. What normal young man of my age does? Will is unnaturally solemn. It will get him into trouble some day. I intend to take my time deciding on things. Exploring the world.’

      Emily sighed. ‘At least you have the time. I feel like mine is running out.’

      Chris tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean? You’re still in school.’

      ‘But ladies can’t try things, can’t take their time to decide who they are. We have to find someone to marry immediately and then our lives are set. No more exploring. No more—deciding.’

      ‘Oh, Emily. You’re so pretty, you’ll have no worries there. You’ll find a very good husband and have a very good sort of life.’

      He thought her pretty? Emily studied him carefully, feeling a little flustered, a little pleased and a little exasperated that he had missed her point. She almost laughed. She saw he was trying to help, to be kind, but he didn’t understand. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps no man could. ‘What if being married isn’t what