Chapter One

      ‘I would rather be outside, too, Lavinia, but you said it was too cold to learn as we walked this morning. Now we’re inside you still won’t listen,’ Eleanor Hancourt said sternly. ‘Remind us how many rods make a furlong.’

      Nell’s eldest pupil went on staring out of the high schoolroom window and it took Caroline’s nudge to jolt her cousin out of a daydream. ‘Archbishop of Canterbury, Miss Court,’ Lavinia said triumphantly.

      ‘We have moved on from Plantagenet kings and troublesome priests, Lavinia Selford. British history was this morning.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Lavinia listlessly. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?’

      ‘Kindly explain how the fate of Kings and measuring God’s creation are unimportant, Lavinia,’ Nell said softly, although she wanted to let her temper rip.

      ‘Because I don’t care. Knowing such rubbishy stuff won’t get me a husband and a fine house in London,’ Lavinia replied defiantly.

      ‘Being a well-bred mother to his children will be enough for you, then?’

      ‘No, he will adore me and when I make my debut I’ll dance and have fun while you sew for the poor and read improving books out loud of an evening.’

      Nell mentally conceded the girl could be right about the dullness of their current lives, even if everything else she had to say showed how immature Lavinia was. It was dull in this half-closed-up house at the back of beyond. Even she, the girls’ governess, was only three and twenty and sometimes longed for more and now it was temptingly within reach. Except nobody else really cared if they were happy or miserable, so long as they didn’t cause trouble. So she would have to stay until the Earl of Barberry came to take responsibility for his wards and the estate, but that seemed about as likely as pigs learning to fly.

      Her authority felt fragile even after two years teaching the man’s orphaned wards, but at least he wasn’t here to challenge it. He had never been here to see if she was doing her job properly. He hadn’t even bothered to meet his young cousins during the decade he’d been head of the Selford family. The Earl left the country as soon as he heard his grandfather was dead and had stayed away ever since. Even two years on from being brought in to try and drive knowledge and ladylike behaviour into the Misses Selford, Nell was too young for such a role. Now she was an heiress to add to her puzzles, but she could think about that when Lavinia wasn’t as slyly confident she was going to win their latest battle.

      ‘I am well born and pretty and I have a good figure and a fine dowry,’ the girl listed smugly, the difference between them sharp in her light blue eyes.

      ‘A true gentleman requires more than looks and a large collection of vanities in a wife,’ Nell replied coolly, pushing the unworthy argument she was well born and a lot wealthier than her eldest charge to the back of her mind. ‘A talent for flirting and dancing won’t fascinate the fine young man you dream of marrying when every second debutante has that as well. Wit and charm, a sincere interest in those around her, a well-informed mind and a compassionate heart make a true lady, Lavinia. Youthful prettiness fades; do you want to end up lonely and avoided since you have no conversation or common interest to keep your husband at your side when you are no longer as young as you were?’

      ‘Oh, no, Vinnie, imagine how awful it would be to end up like that lady who stayed at the manor last year. The one who bored on and on about imaginary illnesses and how hard her life was until her husband went out of his way to avoid her,’ Caroline exclaimed with genuine horror.

      ‘What sane gentleman would marry an empty-headed creature for aught but her money?’ Caroline’s elder sister Georgiana added with a sideways look at her least favourite cousin.

      ‘That’s enough, Georgiana,’ Nell said firmly.

      Lavinia was the daughter of the last Earl’s eldest son and senior in status and years, but what did that matter when all four of the old Earl’s granddaughters were stuck here in the middle of nowhere? None of them could inherit the earldom and Nell counted herself lucky that she could only imagine the last Earl’s fury when his youngest son made a runaway marriage to Kitty Graham, still whispered of as the loveliest actress of her generation. Hastily doing some mental arithmetic, Nell supposed Kitty and the Honourable Aidan’s son hadn’t mattered to his paternal grandfather for over a decade. The fifth Earl’s eldest son had a robust heir and never mind if his wife refused to share his bed after the boy was born and she declared her duty done. Since the lady was the daughter of a duke the old Earl didn’t challenge her until the boy was killed in some reckless exploit at Oxford. Then he’d ordered his heir to mend his marriage and even the Duke agreed, so Lady Selford gave birth to Lavinia a year after she lost her son and was declared too fragile for further duty by the doctors. According to local gossip, the lady turned her back on her baby daughter and returned to her family. Nell marvelled at her indifference, but Lady Selford died when Lavinia was seven and Nell doubted the child had set eyes on the woman above once or twice.

      At least Georgiana and Caroline seemed to have been loved by their parents, but a sweating fever killed Captain Selford and his wife and Nell imagined the girls had had a stony welcome from their grandfather, since the servants still gossiped about how bitterly he resented his granddaughters for daring to be born female. Only Penelope had escaped the fury of that bitter old man by being born three months after the Earl died, but as a posthumous child of his third son she had been his last hope of keeping the offspring of an actress out of the succession. The latest Earl of Barberry had carried off the family honours in the teeth of his grandfather’s opposition then, but the sixth Earl had done precious little with them. Nell supposed it was better for the girls to grow up without another angry lord glowering at them when he recalled their existence. Lavinia’s old nurse once told her how the old Earl cursed whenever Lavinia crossed his path, so little wonder if she grew up imagining a rosier future for herself. Nell hoped the girl would make a good marriage, but misery awaited her if she wed the first young man who asked her to so she could escape her lonely life.

      ‘Forty, Miss Court,’ Lavinia said casually at last.

      Nell wondered what she was talking about, then remembered the rods and furlongs. ‘Very good, Lavinia. So, Georgiana; how many feet in a fathom?’

      ‘Even a land sailor knows there are six and we were at sea until Papa died.’

      ‘You and your stupid sister insist on telling us about him all the time. As if we care,’ Lavinia said, quite spoiling the novelty of joining in a lesson for once.

      ‘Then why don’t you go and count your rubbishy ribbons, or gaze at