The School for Heiresses by Sabrina Jeffries

Author:Sabrina Jeffries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2006-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Two

Grace’s first day back in the bosom of her family turned out to be as miserable as she’d anticipated. Her father paced the hearth, his lanky stride eating up the carpet as he verbally reviewed his suspicions as to why she hadn’t received an offer of marriage, while her brothers, Frederick and Stephen, sat idly by, both of them visibly bored by the proceedings.

Her mother, as usual, was silent and very solicitous of her husband, rarely speaking except to agree with him.

That left Grace to fend for herself. “I swear to you, Papa, I did nothing wrong,” she said for the hundredth time since arriving home.

“But Gracie, love—surely you will agree thatsomething is amiss, or else you would have received an offer. Just this morning, your mother was told that her cousin’s daughter, who has been out only one Season, has gained an offer.”

Grace looked at her mother.

“It’s quite true,” she said. “Mary is marrying abaron. ”

“By your own admission, Gracie,” her oldest brother, Frederick, chimed in behind a yawn, “three young ladies who attended Mrs. Harris’s school received offers this Season. Add those three to the four who received offers last year, and you have seven of Mrs. Harris’s charges who have received offers. How do you account for it?”

“Idon’t account for it,” she said briskly, chafing at her brother’s remark. When they were children, her brothers had treated her as an equal. But as soon as she’d sprouted a bosom, they had started to act like men who had a say in her life. “I am not in the habit of tallying the number of offers made to graduates of Mrs. Harris’s school, nor am I privy to their unique situations.”

“Don’t you want to marry, Gracie?” her father asked.

The question surprised her. Ofcourse she wanted to marry. She wanted to have children and to be mistress of her own house, and to know a man’s kiss whenever she wanted. But she wouldn’t encourage the interest of a man merely because he was of noble birth. She’d encouraged Lord Billingsley, and look what had happened. She’d encouraged Lord Warren, as well, until Mrs. Harris confided in her that he was perhaps too fond of his drink. She had encouraged both men for the wrong reasons. Now she knew better and believed that she should at leastesteem her future husband.

“Well? Do you?” her father demanded, and four pairs of Holcomb eyes turned to her.

“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “But I—”

“And don’t you want to marry well, to a man of means and importance whose connections will help better your family?”

“Ofcourse —”

“Then why haven’t you encouraged a proper courtship with a young aristocrat? Mrs. Wells tells me you have had callers.”

She was really beginning to despise Mrs. Wells, the chaperone her father had hired to stay with Grace in London. She’d believed her to be a kind, grandmotherly woman until she had discovered Mrs. Wells was reporting her every word and deed to her father. Then she’d really begun to dislike the old bag.

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