Josie, the Countess of Mayne, and her husband, the Earl of Mayne appear in all four of my series about the Essex sisters. Josie and Mayne’s love story was spurred by the fact that her nickname, the “Scottish Sausage,” appeared likely to ruin her matrimonial chances—at least until Mayne taught her what men truly like about women’s figures. Their story begins with Much Ado About You, excerpted below.
And if you’re curious about the mention of “Silly Billy”—a pejorative that was not made up by Darlington and Berwick, but is in the same cruel vein—you can find a short story, “A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace,” in the Essex Sisters Companion Guide; a peek at this novella follows the excerpt of Much Ado.
Read on for an excerpt from
Much Ado About You
the first novel in the Essex Sisters quartet.
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September 1816
Holbrook Court, seat of the Duke of Holbrook
On the outskirts of Silchester
In the afternoon
“I AM HAPPY to announce that the rocking horses have been delivered, Your Grace. I have placed them in the nursery for your inspection. As yet, there is no sign of the children.”
Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook, turned. He had been poking a fire smoldering in the cavernous fireplace of his study. There was a reserved tone in his butler’s voice that signaled displeasure. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Brinkley’s tone signaled the disgruntlement of the entire household of elderly servants, not one of whom was enchanted by the idea of accommodating themselves to the presence of four small, female children. Well, the hell with that, Rafe thought. It wasn’t as if he’d asked to have a passel of youngsters on the premises.
“Rocking horses?” came a drawling voice from a deep chair to the right of the fireplace. “Charming, Rafe. Charming. One can’t start too early making the little darlings interested in horseflesh.” Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne, raised his glass toward his host. His black curls were in exquisite disarray, his comments arrogant to a fault, and his manners barely hid a seething fury. Not that he was furious at Rafe; Mayne had been in a slow burn for the past few months. “To Papa and his brood of infant equestriennes,” he added, tossing back his drink.
“Stubble it!” Rafe said, but without much real animosity. Mayne was a damned uncomfortable companion at the moment, what with his poisonous comments and black humor. Still, one had to assume that the foul temper caused by the shock of being rejected by a woman would wear off in a matter of time.
“Why the plural, as in rocking horses?” Mayne asked. “As I recall, most nurseries contain only one rocking horse.”
Rafe took a gulp of his brandy. “I don’t know much about children,” he said, “but I distinctly remember my brother and me fighting over our toys. So I bought four of them.”
There was a second’s silence during which the earl considered whether to acknowledge the fact that Rafe obviously still missed his brother (dead these five years, now). He dismissed the impulse. Manlike, he observed no benefit to maudlin conversation.
“You’re doing those orphans proud,” he said instead. “Most guardians would stow the children out of sight. It’s not as if they’re your blood.”
“There’s no amount of dolls in the world that will make up for their situation,” Rafe said, shrugging. “Their father should have thought of his responsibilities before he climbed on a stallion.”
The conversation was getting dangerously close to the sort of emotion to be avoided at all costs, so Mayne sprang from his chair. “Let’s have a look at the rocking horses, then. I haven’t seen one in years.”
“Right,” Rafe said, putting his glass onto the table with a sharp clink. “Brinkley, if the children arrive, bring them upstairs, and I’ll receive them in the nursery.”
A few minutes later the two men stood in the middle of a large room on the third floor, dizzily painted with murals. Little Bo Peep chased after Red Riding Hood, who was surely in danger of being crushed by the giant striding across the wall, his raised foot lowering over a feather bed sporting a huge green pea under the coverlet. The room resembled nothing so much as a Bond Street toy shop. Four dolls with spun gold hair sat primly on a bench. Four doll beds were propped atop each other, next to four doll tables, on which sat four jack-in-the-boxes. In the midst of it all was a group of rocking horses graced with real horsehair and coming almost to a man’s waist.
“Jesus,” Mayne said.
Rafe strode into the room and stamped on the rocker of one of the horses, making it clatter back and forth on the wooden floor. A door on the side of the room swung open, and a plump woman in a white apron poked her head out.
“There you are, Your Grace,” she said, beaming. “We’re just waiting for the children. Would you like to meet the new maids now?”
“Send them on in, Mrs. Beeswick.”
Four young nursemaids crowded into the room after her. “Daisy, Gussie, Elsie, and Mary,” said the nanny. “They’re from the village, Your Grace, and pleased to have a position at Holbrook Court.We’re all eager for the little cherubs to arrive.” The nursemaids lined up to either side of Mrs. Beeswick, smiling and curtsying.
“Jesus,” Mayne repeated. “They won’t even share a maid, Rafe?”
“Why should they? My brother and I had three nurses between us.”
“Three?”
“Two for my brother, ever since he turned duke at age seven, and one for me.”
Mayne snorted. “That’s absurd. When’s the last time you met your wards’ father, Lord Brydone?”
“Not for years,” Rafe said, picking up a jack-in-the-box and pressing the lever so that it hopped from its box with a loud squeak. “The arrangement was just a matter of a note from him and my reply.”
“You have never met your own wards?”
“Never. I haven’t been over the border in years, and Brydone only came down for the Ascot, the Silchester, and, sometimes, Newmarket. To be honest, I don’t think he really gave a damn for anything other than his stables. He didn’t even bother to list his children in Debrett’s. Of course, since he had four girls, there was no question of inheritance. The estate went to some distant cousin.”
“Why on earth—” Mayne glanced at the five women standing to the side of the room and checked himself.
“He asked me,” Rafe said, shrugging. “I didn’t think twice of it. Apparently Monkton had been in line, but he cocked up his toes last year. And Brydone asked me to step in. Who would have thought that ill could come to Brydone? It was a freak accident, that horse throwing him. Although he was fool enough to ride a half-broken stallion.”
“Damned if I thought I’d ever see you a father,” Mayne said.
“I had no excuse to say no. I have the substance to raise any number of children. Besides, Brydone gave me Starling in return for acting as a guardian. I told him I’d do the job, as soon as he wrote me, and no bribe was necessary. But he sent Starling down from Scotland, and no one would say nay to adding that horse to their stables.”
“Starling is out of Standout, isn’t he?”
Rafe nodded. “Patchem’s brother. The core of Brydone’s stable is out of Patchem, and those are now the only horses in England in Patchem’s direct line. I’m hopeful that Starling will win the Derby next year, even if he is descended from Standout rather than Patchem himself.”
“What will happen to Patchem’s offspring?” Mayne asked, with the particular intensity he reserved for talk of horses. “Something Wanton, for example?”
“I don’t know yet. Obviously, the stables aren’t entailed. My secretary has been up there working on the estate. Should Brydone’s stable come to the children, I’ll put the horses up for auction and the money in trust. The girls will need dowries someday, and I’d be surprised if Brydone bothered to set them up himself.”
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br /> “If Wanton is for sale, I’m the one to buy him. I’d pay thousands for him. There could be no better addition to my stables.”
“He would do wonders for mine as well,” Rafe agreed.
Mayne had found a little heap of cast-iron horses and was sorting them out so that each carriage was pulled by a matched pair. “You know, these are quite good.” He had all the cast-iron horses and their carriages lined up on the mantelpiece now. “Wait till your wards see these horses. They won’t think twice about the move from Scotland. Pity there’s no boy among them.”
Rafe just looked at him. The earl was one of his dearest friends, and always would be. But Mayne’s sleek, protected life had not put him in the way of grief. Rafe knew only too well what it felt like to find oneself lonely in the midst of a cozy nursery, and cast-iron horses wouldn’t help, for all he found himself buying more and more of them. As if toys would make up for a dead father. “I hardly think you—”
The door behind him swung open. He stopped and turned.
Brinkley moved to the side more nimbly than was his practice. It wasn’t every day that one got to knock the master speechless with surprise. “I’m happy to announce Miss Essex. Miss Imogen. Miss Annabel. Miss Josephine.”
Then he added, unable to resist, if the truth be known, “The children have arrived, Your Grace.”
Read on for an excerpt from
A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace
from The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide
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June 21, 1819
A House Party
Kent
Seat of the Duke of Ormond
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND what I did wrong,” Lady Bellingworth moaned, wringing her hands. “You had the best governesses money could buy, and I took you to church often, and certainly every Easter!”
“You did your best, Mama,” Cecilia replied. She spun in place, causing her new gown to swirl around her feet. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The gown was better described by what it wasn’t: it wasn’t white, demure, or ruffled. It didn’t have the new gathered sleeves; in fact, it didn’t have any sleeves. There wasn’t much of a bodice either.
A fold of strawberry-colored silk wound around Cecilia’s bosom and draped over her arms. Rather than following the line of her narrow skirts—made from a darker shade—the transparent overskirt clung to her hips before belling out around her toes. A row of embroidered strawberries around the hem weighted the overskirt so it swirled around her as she moved, emphasizing her curves.
And she had them.
Cecilia considered her curves to be her best feature, with golden hair the color of old guineas a close second.
Coaxed into tight ringlets by a curling iron, her hair took on an oddly metallic gleam. But tonight her maid had styled it in a frothy pile of natural curls, stuck about with ruby-tipped hairpins.
“What are you wearing on your feet?” her mother cried, sounding rather like a kettle coming to boil.
Cecilia lifted her skirts and looked happily at her toes. “New shoes.”
Lady Bellingworth turned purple. “Those are your great-aunt Margaret’s diamond buckles!”
Her shoes were made of strawberry silk embroidered in a silver crosshatch pattern that went splendidly with diamond buckles. But the pièce de résistance was her heels. They were covered in strawberry-colored silk and guaranteed to catch the eye.
Generally speaking, ladies drifted around the ballroom in soft slippers, just as Cecilia had throughout the season. But she had carefully planned—in collusion with a brilliant modiste—to change her appearance from head to toe.
In the past two seasons, she had dutifully worn white (which didn’t suit her), sat demurely at the sides of ballrooms (which didn’t suit her), and smiled rather than spoke (which really didn’t suit her).
But she had arrived at the Duchess of Ormond’s house party this afternoon without a single white gown in her baggage. When a Bellingworth decides to change her appearance, she doesn’t hold back.
She was not going to drift around the ballroom: she would sway, and her hips would sway right along with her.
“You won’t be able to dance in those shoes,” her mother moaned.
“I shan’t need to dance,” Cecilia said, adroitly avoiding the issue, because in her opinion, the shoes turned a simple country dance step into an invitation. “The duchess announced a musical evening, remember, Mama? By the way, if we don’t go down to the ballroom immediately, we shall be late for the concert.”
Lady Bellingworth was slumped against the high back of the settee, hand over her heart. “I feel ill, positively ill. I cannot believe that my daughter is so lost to impropriety that she would consider wearing this . . . this costume better suited to the demimonde than a house party given by one of my oldest friends.”
“If I were one of those ladies,” Cecilia pointed out, “I would take off this corset, which is horribly uncomfortable.”
“Do you think to find a husband this way?” her mother demanded. “To entice a gentleman to wed you because your gown is small enough to cram into his pocket?”
“Marriage would be desirable outcome, don’t you think?” Cecilia asked. “My second season as a wallflower was more than enough.”
She was tired of being ignored, tired of sitting at the side of the room watching other girls curtsying. She was tired of pity dances with male relatives, and whispered advice from girls younger than she was.
She had an idea that gentlemen didn’t bother to look very closely at the rows of debutantes, because every young lady was dressed precisely the same. Swathed in white and trained to docility, they were no more distinct than one sheep in a flock.
“I know why you’re doing this,” her mother said, reaching up to pull Cecilia down onto the settee at her side. Her eyes had turned misty. “It’s because of that dreadful nickname, isn’t it? It’s because poor James is called ‘Silly Billy.’ It’s all my fault! There must have been something I could have done.”
There was no question but that Cecilia’s failure on the marriage market was wrapped up with the cruel, persistent jest about her brother, Lord Bellingworth, who had been dropped on his head as a baby. No one believed the truth about his injury. They thought that the Bellingworth blood was tainted and her babies would be silly as well.
She had a respectable dowry, excellent lineage, and even better teeth. She had shining hair, a slender waist, and slightly larger breasts than were normal for a young lady. But her second season had just drawn to a close, and she had had no suitors, not even one. “It’s all just so foolish,” her mother continued, mopping her eyes. “Poor James was perfectly normal until he suffered that terrible blow. Perfectly normal!”
“There’s nothing you could have done, Mama,” Cecilia said, wrapping her arm around her mother. “You have no control over the fools who rule the so-called Beau Monde. Darlington and his ilk.”
“Charles Darlington didn’t create that despicable nickname. It came from a horrid fellow known as Eliot Thurman, who was part of his circle a few years ago.”
“I’ve heard as much,” Cecilia said absently. She caught sight of her gown in the dressing table mirror and eased her bodice a bit lower, tugging down that blasted corset while she was at it.
It was French and hoisted her breasts in the air like a gift, but it was deucedly uncomfortable.
Luckily, her mother didn’t notice what she was doing. “Thurman dropped out of society, and then of course, Darlington married Lady Griselda . . .”
Lady Bellingworth kept talking and talking until Cecilia finally intervened. “I think that people are fools to pay attention to people like Darlington. He published that fictional memoir about Josie’s husband, the Earl of Mayne, after all. Josie says the earl doesn’t
mind, but I think it was rude.”
“I know Josie, I mean the Countess of Mayne, is one of your closest friends, darling, but you should also remember that Lady Griselda is married to Darlington, and she is something of a stepmother to Lady Mayne,” her mother said, tracing the twisty paths of society connections. “Besides, I like Darlington. He’s apologized to me a hundred times, if not more, for having brought Thurman into society.”
“Thurman may have invented ‘Silly Billy,’ but it took a whole herd of simpletons to repeat it over and over, turning my brother into a pariah.”
“I am not defending Thurman,” her mother said. “I loathe the man. Someone told me that he’d been shipped off to the Antipodes, though I don’t know how accurate the rumor is.”
“Mama, if we don’t go downstairs, we’ll be late,” Cecilia said again, drawing her mother to her feet. She picked up a wisp of silk tulle and wound it around her shoulders.
“You’re not pretending that scrap of fabric is a shawl!”
Cecilia put on an innocent expression. “Whatever can you mean? Madame Rocque fashioned it specifically for this gown.”
“I recognize that look, you know,” her mother said suddenly. “You had the same expression when you stole out of the house at twelve years old and begged that violin player to take you with him to Vienna.” Her mother shuddered. “I’ve never forgotten the horror of it.”
All Cecilia remembered was the disappointment. The violin player in question was Franz Clement, one of the best violinists in the world. Her attempt to persuade him to take her with him, back to Europe, had been the only time in her life, before this, that she had attempted to live life on her own terms.
She had failed, and in retrospect, she had to agree that the whole idea had been mad. Clement allowed her to play a Beethoven adagio and then promptly escorted her back to their London townhouse. “She’d be good enough if she were a man,” he had told her mother.