Confessions of an Improper Bride
JENNIFER HAYMORE
A Donovan Novel
NEW YORK BOSTON
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Table of Contents
A Preview of Secrets of an Accidental Duchess
Copyright Page
To my husband, Lawrence, who does so much for me, it’s impossible to list it all.
I love you.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
A Preview of Secrets of an Accidental Duchess
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Acknowledgments
The Dish
Also by Jennifer Haymore
Praise for The Novels of Jennifer Haymore
Copyright
Acknowledgments
To my agent, Barbara Poelle, and my editor, Selina McLemore, who have blown me away with their patience and support through the writing of this book. Thank you so much for everything.
To all the people who held my hand, drove me to appointments, or sent me messages, cards, dinners, or supported me in other ways during the summer of 2010. Knowing people care is an amazing, empowering thing, and it was all of you who kept me going through the most difficult time of my life.
And to all the people in the world who’ve ever lent a helping or supportive or understanding hand to a person suffering from cancer. You are so special. Thank you.
Prologue
Off the coast of Antigua
1822
Serena Donovan had not slept well since the Victory had left Portsmouth. Usually, the roll of the ship would lull her into a fretful sleep after she’d lain awake for hours next to her slumbering twin. Her mind tumbled over the ways she could have managed everything differently, how she might have saved herself from becoming a pariah.
But tonight was different. It had started off the same, with her lying beside a sound-asleep Meg and thinking about Jonathan Dane, about what she might have done to counter the force of the magnetic pull between them. Sleep had never come, though, because a lookout had sighted land yesterday afternoon, and Serena and Meg would be home tomorrow. Home to their mother and younger sisters and bearing a letter from their aunt that detailed Serena’s disgrace.
Meg shifted, then rolled over to face Serena, her brow furrowed, her gray eyes unfocused from sleep.
“Did I wake you?” Serena asked in a low voice.
Meg rubbed her eyes and twisted her body to stretch. “No, you didn’t wake me,” she said on a yawn. “Haven’t you slept at all?”
When Serena didn’t answer, her twin sighed. “Silly question. Of course you haven’t.”
Serena tried to smile. “It’s near dawn. Will you walk with me before the sun rises? One last time?”
The sisters often rose early and strode along the deck before the ship awakened and the bulk of the crew made its appearance for morning mess. Arm in arm, talking in low voices and enjoying the peaceful beauty of dawn, the two young ladies would stroll along the wood planks of the deck, down the port side and up the starboard, pausing to watch the sun rise over the stern of the Victory.
What an inappropriate name, Serena thought, for the ship bearing her home as a failure and disgrace. She’d brought shame and humiliation to her entire family. Rejection, Defeat, or perhaps Utter Disappointment would serve as far better names for a vessel returning Serena to everlasting spinsterhood and dishonor.
Serena turned up the lantern and they dressed in silence. It wasn’t necessary to speak—Serena could always trust her sister to know what she was thinking and vice versa. They’d slept in the same bedroom their entire lives, and they’d helped each other to dress since they began to walk.
After Serena slid the final button through the hole at the back of Meg’s dress, she reached for their heavy woolen cloaks hanging on a peg and handed Meg hers. It was midsummer, but the mornings were still cool.
When they emerged on the Victory’s deck, Serena tilted her face up to the sky. Usually at this time, the stars cast a steady silver gleam over the ship, but not this morning. “It’s overcast,” she murmured.
Meg nodded. “Look at the sea. I thought I felt us tossing about rather more vigorously than usual.”
The sea was near black without the stars to light it, but gray foam crested over every wave. On deck, the heightened pitch of the ship was more clearly defined.
“Do you think a storm is coming?”
“Perhaps.” Meg shuddered. “I do hope we arrive home before it strikes.”
“I’m certain we will.” Serena wasn’t concerned. They’d survived several squalls and a rather treacherous storm in the past weeks. She had faith that Captain Moscum could pilot this ship through a hurricane, if need be.
They approached a sailor coiling rope on the deck, his task bathed under the yellow glow of a lantern. Looking up, he tipped his cap at them, and Serena saw that it was young Mr. Rutger from Kent, who was on his fourth voyage with Captain Moscum. “Good morning, misses. Fine morning, ain’t it?”
“Oh, good morning to you, too, Mr. Rutger.” Meg smiled pleasantly at the seaman. Meg was always the friendly one. Everyone loved Meg. “But tell us the truth—do you think the weather will hold?”
“Aye,” the sailor said, a grin splitting his wind-chapped cheeks. “Just a bit o’ the overcast.” He looked to the sky. “A splash o’ rain, but nothin’ more to it than that, I daresay.”
Meg breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”
Serena pulled her sister along. She probably would have tarried there all day talking to Mr. Rutger from Kent. It wasn’t by chance that Serena knew that he had six sisters and a brother, and his father was a cobbler—it was because Meg had crouched on the deck and drawn his life story out of him one morning.
Perhaps it was selfish of her, but Serena wanted to be alone with her sister. Soon they would be at Cedar Place, everyone would be furious with her, and Mother and their younger sisters would divide Meg’s attention.
Meg went along with her willingly enough. Meg understood—she always did. When they were out of earshot from Mr. Rutger, she squeezed Serena’s arm. “You’ll be all right, Serena,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll stand beside you. I’ll do whatever I can to help you through this.”
Why? Serena wanted to ask. She had always been the wicked daughter. She was the oldest of five girls, older than Meg by seventeen minutes, and from birth, she’d been the hellion, the bane of their mother’s existence. Mother had thought a Season in London might cure her of her hoydenish ways; instead, it had proved her far worse than a hoyden.
“I know you will always be beside me, Meg.” And thank God for that. Without Meg, she’d truly founder.
She and Meg were identical in looks but not in temperament. Meg was the angel. The helpful child, ladylike, demure, moral, and always unfailingly sweet. Yet every time Serena was caught hitching her skirts up and splashing at the seashore with the baker’s son, Meg stood unflinchingly beside her. When all the other people in the world had given up on Serena, Meg remained steadfast, inexplicably convinced of her goodn ess despite all the wicked things she did.
Even now, when she’d committed the worst indiscretion of them all. When their long-awaited trip to England for their first Season had been cut sharply short by her stupidity.
“As long as you stand beside me,” Serena said quietly, “I know I will survive it.”
“Do you miss him?” Meg asked after a moment’s pause.
“I despise him.” Serena’s voice hissed through the gloom. She blinked away the stinging moisture in her eyes.
Meg gave her a sidelong glance, the color of her eyes matching the mist that swirled up behind her. “You’ve said that over and over these past weeks, but I’ve yet to believe you.”
Pressing her lips together, Serena merely shook her head. She would not get into this argument with her sister again. She hated Jonathan Dane. She hated him because her only other option was to fall victim to her broken heart and pine over him, and she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t sacrifice her pride for a man who had been a party to her ruin and then turned his back on her.
She’d never admit—not to anyone—that every time she looked over the stern of the Victory, she secretly hoped to see a ship following. And Jonathan would be on that ship, coming for her. She dreamed that it had all been an enormous mistake, that he really had loved her, that he’d never meant for any of this to happen.
She dragged her gaze to the bow of the ship. The lantern lashed to the forestay cast a gloomy light over the fog billowing up over the lip of the deck.
Smiling, she turned the tables on her sister. “You miss Commander Langley far more than I miss Jonathan, I assure you.”
Meg didn’t flinch. “I miss him very much,” she murmured.
Of course, unlike her own affair, Serena’s sister’s had followed propriety to the letter. Serena doubted Commander Langley had touched her sister for anything more than a slight brush of lips over a gloved hand. They danced exactly twice at every assembly, and he’d come to formally call on Meg at their aunt’s house three times a week for a month.
In the fall, Langley was headed to sea for a two-year assignment with the Navy, and he and Meg had agreed, with her family’s blessing, to an extended courtship. He’d done everything to claim Meg as his own short of promising her marriage, and Langley wasn’t the sort of gentleman who’d renege on his word.
Unlike Jonathan.
Serena groaned to herself. She must stop thinking about him.
She patted her sister’s arm. “I wager you’ll have a letter from him before summer’s end.”
Meg’s gray eyes lit up in the dimness. “Oh, Serena, do you think so?”
“I do.”
Meg sighed. “I feel terrible.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems unfair that I should be so happy and you…” Meg’s voice trailed off.
“And I am disgraced and ruined, and the man who promised he’d love me for all time has proved himself a liar,” Serena finished in a dry voice. It hurt to say those words, though. The pain was a deep, sharp slice that seemed to cleave her heart in two. Even so, Serena hid the pain and kept her face expressionless.
Meg’s arm slid from her own, and tears glistened in her eyes. It didn’t matter that Serena struggled so valiantly to mask her feelings, Meg knew exactly what she felt. Meg always knew. She always understood. It was part of being a twin, Serena suspected.
Gently tugging Serena’s arm to draw her to a stop, Meg turned to face her. “I’ll do whatever I can… you know I will. There is someone out there for you, Serena. I know there is. I know it.”
“Someone in Antigua?” Serena asked dubiously. Their aunt had made it quite clear that she would never again be welcome in London. And Meg knew as well as she did that there was nobody for either of them on the island they’d called home since they were twelve years old. Even if there were, she was a debauched woman now. No one would want her.
“Perhaps. Gentlemen visit the island all the time. It certainly could happen.”
The mere idea made Serena’s gut churn. First, to love someone other than Jonathan Dane. It was too soon to even allow such a thought to cross her mind, and every organ in her body rebelled against it. Second, to love anyone ever again, now that she was armed with the knowledge of how destructive love could be. Who would ever be so stupid?
“Oh, Meg. I’ve no need for love. I’ve tried it, and I’ve failed, through and through. A happy marriage and family is for you and Commander Langley. Me? I’ll stay with Mother, and I will care for Cedar Place.”
A future at Cedar Place wasn’t something she’d been raised to imagine—from the moment they had stepped foot on the island, the Donovans had told one another that Antigua was a temporary stop, a place for the family to rebuild its fortune before they returned to England.
But now Cedar Place was all they had left, and it was falling into ruin. Long before her father had purchased the plantation and brought the family to live in Antigua six years ago, Cedar Place had been a beautiful, thriving plantation. Nine months after their arrival, Father died from malaria, leaving them deeply in debt with only their mother to manage everything. And Mother was a well-bred English lady ill equipped to take on the responsibilities of a plantation owner. Serena had doubts Cedar Place could ever be restored to its former glory, but it was the one and only place she could call home now, and she couldn’t let it rot.
Meg sighed and shook her head. “I just think—oh!”
The ship dipped into the trough of a wave and a boom swung around, trailing ropes behind it. A rope caught Meg’s shoulders, and as the boom continued its path to the other side of the deck, it yanked Meg to the edge of the deck and flipped her over the deck rail.
Serena stood frozen, watching the scene unfolding before her in open-mouthed disbelief. As if from far away, she heard a muffled splash.
With a cry of dismay, she jerked into action, lunging forward until her slippered toes hung over the edge of the deck and she clung to the forestay.
Far below, Meg flailed in the water, hardly visible in the shadowy dark and wisping fog, her form growing smaller and finally slipping away as the ship blithely plowed onward.
After living for six years on a small island, Serena’s sister knew how to swim, but the heavy garments she was wearing—oh, God, they would weigh her down. Serena tore off her cloak and ripped off her dress. Clad only in her chemise, she kicked off her shoes, scrambled over the deck rail, and threw herself into the sea.
A firm arm caught her in midair, hooking her about the waist and yanking her back onto the deck. “No, miss. Ye mustn’t jump,” a sailor rasped in her ear.
It was then that she became conscious of the shouts of the seamen and the creaking of the rigging as the ship was ordered to come around.
Serena tried to twist her body from the man’s grasp, roaring, “Let me go! My sister is out there. She’s… Let me go!”
But the man didn’t let her go. In fact, another man grabbed her arm, making escape impossible. She strained to look back, but the ship was turning and she couldn’t see anything but the dark curl of waves and whitecaps and the swirl of fog.
“Hush, miss. Leave this one to us, if ye please. We’ll have ’er back on the ship in no time at all.”
“Where is she?” Serena sprinted toward the stern, pushing past the men in her way, ignoring the pounding of sailors’ feet behind her. When she reached the back of the ship, she tried to jump again, only to be caught once more, this time by Mr. Rutger.
She craned her neck, searching in vain over the choppy, dark water and leaning out as far over the rail as the sailor would allow, but she saw no hint of Meg.
“Never worry, miss,” Mr. Rutger murmured. “We’ll find your sister.”
The crew of the Victory searched until the sun was high in the sky and burned through the fog, and the high seas receded into gentle swells, the ship circling the spot where Meg had fallen overboard again and again.
But they never found a trace of Serena’s twin.