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How her heart had soared when he’d asked permission of her mother to take Jessamine out for a turn in the garden. There was only one reason for a gentleman to speak alone to a lady. But his words had sounded so strange.
“I know that someday . . . soon, I imagine, a young
gentleman is going to come along and . . . desire you for
his wife.”
As his gray eyes regarded her, she had felt puzzled
at first, but as his gaze continued to pierce her with its intensity, fear had mushroomed in her chest as the meaning of his words had penetrated.

He was telling her there was no hope for the two of them. If she had been left in any doubt, his next words sounded the death knell.
“I thought for
a while that I might be that man.”
He’d drawn in a breath as if seeking courage to continue.
“But I am not that man.”

He had gone on to tell her how deserving she was, but she had not let him continue. No pretty words could erase the fact that he didn’t want her. That she was not good enough, that somehow, somewhere, he’d fallen out of love with her and his affections had been replaced by pity and compassion. She hadn’t realized then that his heart was now filled with thoughts for someone else.

That had come later, almost a year later, after the peace had been declared and Rees had found his French love across the channel.

The sobs racked Jessamine’s body. She clutched her pillow tighter. And now they would have a baby, and the portrait of a loving, happy family would be complete. Jessamine would never be that woman to Rees. She would never bear his children and watch them grow up with him as their father.

The door opened quietly and the next second Megan was behind her, wrapping her arms around her. “Please don’t cry, Jessamine, please don’t cry.” She rocked her, repeating the words. Jessamine tried to shake her off, but Megan held her fast, her words soothing.

“I-I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” Jessamine sobbed. “I k-know I sh-should rejoice for h-his happiness,” she said with a hiccup, “but I love him so, and now—now I know I can never have him.” Somehow the fact of a child added a finality to Rees’s new life without Jessamine. As long as he’d been far away in Vienna and she had never seen his bride, there had been an unreality to his love story.

“I’m so sorry too,” Megan said with feeling, smoothing the hair off her brow. “Mama and I wished for the two of you to be together, but it was not meant to be—”

Jessamine pushed away from her, turning to stare at her. “What do you mean, not meant to be! It wasn’t Rees’s fault. It was that woman—she ensnared him.”

Megan looked troubled. “I don’t know. Until I meet her and see how she and Rees are together, I can’t judge her.”

Jessamine lay back, staring at the ceiling, wiping her nose and eyes, too spent to hang on to her outrage. Emptiness filled her. The rest of the season in London held no pleasure for her. Their plans to visit the zoo today, the theater tonight . . . All she wanted was to lie there and not have to do anything ever again.

She sniffed and turned her head on the pillow to look at Megan. “What else did he write?”

Megan was silent a moment. “Not much else. He is worried for Céline’s safety but otherwise busy with diplomatic affairs. So much was still unsettled in Vienna, so he is sorry to be called away so suddenly but is happy to be on Wellington’s staff. He has found much favor with the duke and the others he worked with in Vienna, including Lord Castlereagh.”

She fell silent again. Jessamine thought how it would have been. All Rees’s hard work as a clerk in the Foreign Office was finally bearing fruit. With all that had happened during the Congress of Vienna, he would be promoted, and his career in diplomacy was all but assured. He could have married her now.

Before the tears could begin to fall anew, Megan said, her words hesitant, “He said that he hopes—depending on what transpires in Brussels—to see us soon in person here in England.”

Jessamine’s body tensed at the words “see us.” “He is coming here?” she whispered.

“Yes. He said if there’s the least sign of war, he wants to bring Céline to England, though he added that she wouldn’t want to leave him, but for the sake of the baby, she could probably be prevailed on to come here.”

The baby. A woman so in love with her husband she didn’t want
to leave him despite the dangers, who now carried another life, a precious unborn life, within her.

Another tear slid from her eyelid down her temple. She brought her handkerchief up to her face.

As if sensing her distress, Megan put her arm across her, hugging her to herself. “I know how much you cared about him, dear, but perhaps you’ll meet someone else someday.”

“That’s what he said! I’ll never meet anyone like Rees.” She sniffed again. “It’s been over a year and a half, and I still feel the pain of that last interview.”

Megan’s eyes were filled with sadness and compassion. “He’s my brother and I love him, and I understood why you should love and admire him too, but Jessamine, what if the Lord has someone better for you?”

At those words, well-intentioned but so hurtful to hear, Jessamine sat up. “Then why did He have me wait so long for Rees?”

“I don’t know. Yours is a faithful nature. God made you so, but perhaps you fixed your affections on the wrong man.”

“So it’s my fault!”

“No, dear Jessie. I know we can’t control with whom we fall in love—”

Jessamine glared at her friend. “I had a father who instilled me with the notions of patience and resignation, and you and your mother encouraged me in my affections to your brother.” She knew her words were unreasonable, but she couldn’t help herself. For too long, she’d kept everything bottled up inside, putting on a brave face to her family and Rees’s mother and sister, who all meant well. But all it had meant was keeping the bitterness brewing inside her. She knew Megan and her mother must be overjoyed to finally see Rees and his bride, and now a grandchild.

Megan flushed. “Perhaps Mother and I did wrong, but you two seemed so right for each other. We felt keenly how much Rees had sacrificed all these years in order to provide for us. We knew how
lonely he must be. We hoped so much for a woman as faithful and true as you for him. You seemed God-ordained for him, apart from the difference in your ages.”

Jessamine blew her nose again. “If I had only been born a few years sooner, or he a few years later, perhaps we would have been married before he ever met that—that Frenchwoman!”

Abruptly, she turned away from Megan and swung her legs off the bed. “Well, we were all wrong about ‘God’s will.’ I sometimes think God must be laughing at all our petty hopes and schemes.”

“Jessamine!” Megan sounded truly shocked.

Jessamine did not take her words back, although they shocked her as well. It was the first time she expressed aloud what had simmered below the surface all these months. The thoughts that had plagued her the night before resurfaced. “I can tell you this,” she said, standing and facing her friend. “I will not make the same mistake again. I will not pledge my heart to a man who gives nothing in return. The next time a heart is broken, it shall not be mine!”

She crossed the room to her dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. The face staring back at her looked awful—eyes swollen, hair tumbling down, nose red, skin splotchy.

She yanked at the rest of her hairpins, allowing her hair to fall down past her shoulders, then grabbed up her hairbrush and pulled it through her locks, welcoming the pain.

Feeling calmer with her resolution taken, she sat at her dresser and twisted her hair into a knot. As she held it up in one hand to repin it, she paused, picturing Lady Dawson’s fashionably cropped curls.

“I am going to cut my hair.”

“What?” Megan scrambled off the bed and came to stand behind Jessamine, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

“Do you remember Lady Angelica Dawson last night?”

“The lady you were asking Lady Bess about?”

“I want to fashion my hair like hers. She looked very smart.”

Megan nodded slowly as if afraid that disagreeing with her would bring on a new storm of tears. But Jessamine could have told her the time for crying was over.

“It did look nice on her,” she conceded.

“Do you think the style would suit me?” Jessamine looked at herself in the mirror again.

Megan took up her hair from her, considering. “I think so. Your hair is so pretty, it seems such a shame to cut too much off.”

Jessamine loosened her hair. “Well, I think it’s time for a change. High time for a change.”

6

W
hen she left the hairdresser’s salon, Jessamine’s head felt lighter, freer than she could ever remember. She kept putting her hand up to the nape of her neck to feel her hair. As promised, the hairdresser had cut the back portion of her hair to a length slightly past her shoulders, long enough to still draw up in a knot, which he had done. But the sides and top were very short.

She still marveled at how it curled around her head and forehead like a boy’s.

“How does it feel?”

She smiled at Megan. “Light.”

“It looks quite boyish, a bit like a gamin.”

They left the side street they were on and turned onto Bond Street. Jessamine stopped in front of a shop window and looked at her reflection.

“I hope not a street urchin.”

“Oh no, like a charming young fawn.” She gave her an impish grin. “A bit like Caroline Lamb.”

Jessamine brightened, liking the notion of being notorious. Of course she wouldn’t be fool enough to fall in love again and make a cake of herself the way Lady Caroline had for Lord Byron. They
resumed walking. “I want to get some new gowns made.” Since taking a decisive step toward a new life, a new outlook, she felt better.

“But we brought so many new dresses with us,” Megan said.

“Have you noticed how simple they appear beside those of the ladies of fashion like Lady Dawson?” When Megan considered, Jessamine added, “I want to find a seamstress.”

Megan’s brow puckered. “It could prove expensive to compete with someone like Lady Dawson.”

She nodded glumly. “I know. Perhaps Lady Bess or one of her friends knows of a good seamstress. I don’t want a woman who makes up the fusty old gowns they wear, however.”

Megan laughed, probably glad to find her in a better mood than she had been in earlier. Jessamine shuddered, not wanting to go back to that pathetic, sniveling figure she had cut. “I want someone who can give me a new style. I don’t want to look like every young miss on the marriage mart.” She paused again before a shop window and twirled a curl around a finger.

Megan stood beside her. “It would be nice to stand a little apart from them, but what can we do? Only the most pale pastels and whites are allowed us.”

Jessamine didn’t reply. Instead, she said, “Perhaps a French seamstress, an émigré, with a Parisian sense of style but who would be grateful for our patronage.”

“Still, how can you afford it? I know you don’t want to ask your father for any more pin money.”

Jessamine touched the pearl drop pendant that hung from a gold chain around her neck and swung it between her fingers. “I have spent very little of my allowance. Let us first price some muslins and see how much a gown or two would cost.”

She began walking again, picking up her pace. “Come, let’s look at bolts of material at the Bond Street Bazaar.” With a lighter step, she skirted past the pedestrians, eager to put her plan into action.

Lancelot walked back from Soho Square a few days later on his return from one of Sir Joseph Banks’s “mornings.” While abroad Lancelot had missed those informal gatherings of botanists and naturalists in the great naturalist’s library, where a variety of British and foreign periodicals were laid out for their perusal and discussion. The latest findings of those commissioned to collect plant specimens from their voyages around the world were eagerly disseminated and discussed.

As president of the Royal Society, Dr. Banks had invited Lancelot to become a member after Lancelot had sent him his first treatise on plants, and later nominated him as a fellow of the society.

Now, he had greeted Lancelot with enthusiasm and insisted he regale the company present with a description of all he’d brought back from India. Sir Banks had promised to help him find a publisher for the work he and Delawney were compiling. He’d also asked him to speak the following evening at the meeting of the Royal Society at Somerset House and to give a lecture to the public at the Royal Institute at a later date.

His mind bubbling over with ideas for these presentations, Lancelot turned onto King Street and halted at the sight of Miss Barry across the street. He was usually so deep in thought that he rarely noticed anyone, even with his spectacles on, until he was upon them. But he had been intending to cross the street so had been scanning the opposite side.

He frowned, noticing Miss Barry was alone. She had just emerged from a rundown shop in a part of town he would not expect to see an unaccompanied young lady. He narrowed his eyes to read the sign above the window. Harris & Sons, Pawnbrokers.

He crossed the street, lengthening his stride to reach her before she disappeared.

“Good afternoon,” he said, drawing abreast of her.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Marfleet.” She nodded to him, unsmiling, and looked away.

She looked different to him but he wasn’t quite sure how. Perhaps it was her hair, which looked curlier around her face but was mostly hidden by her bonnet. Remembering the reason he had hailed her, he indicated the shop behind her. “What are you doing here?”

She turned around as if not sure what place he was referring to. “Where?”

“At a pawnbroker’s shop,” he added helpfully.

She swallowed. “Nothing.” Her hand went to her throat and then she brought it back down again to clutch the strings of the reticule she held in her other hand.

His concern grew. Only people in financial straits frequented pawnbrokers. “Do you find yourself in the hatches, having to pawn your mother’s jewels?”