Prologue
January 1, 1810
Devon, England
Lady Finch’s Finishing School
* * *
The old longcase clock on the landing of Lady Finch’s Finishing School chimed the start of 1810 with a tinkle of magic.
Miss Hannah Bexley, the only child of the doting Baron and Baroness Westwich, tucked her chilled toes beneath her as she eagerly sat upright and glanced around at her roommates. In the year they’d been together at Lady Finch’s, they’d become inseparable. So it only made sense that they would each announce their resolutions for the coming year together.
The beginning of a new year was the opportunity to reinvent oneself—a chance in which Hannah was always in sore need. If only she could make her hair less red or her freckles disappear. Sadly, she lacked any control over those aspects of her life. Of what she could alter, however, there were still many things to fix.
She considered the leather-bound journal in her hands, stamped with leaves and flowers that were dyed in shades of green and blue as they crawled elegantly around the border. It had been a gift from her parents several months back for her fifteenth birthday. Lacking anything else to do with it, she and her friends had filled the cream-colored pages with their dreams and secrets. Now they would add their 1810 resolutions.
Perhaps this year, Hannah could talk less. Or laugh a little more softly. She could be dainty and elegant in a way she never had been before. Or maybe follow the rules more precisely.
But even as the silence of the room fell upon them, it didn’t lie with gentle comfort over Hannah as it did the others. No, the quiet pressed on her with an urgency to fill the gap of nothing with…well, something.
“Clearly, Lucy’s resolution will not be punctuality,” Hannah teased.
There went the chance to talk less.
The other three young women looked toward Lucy’s empty bed in the large room the five of them shared and giggled.
“Maybe she’s with Lady Alison, selecting ribbons for class.” Jillian pinned her dark waves with a pinch of her fingers as if it were a bow, then gave a wry twist to her lips.
A cackle erupted from Hannah at such a thought as their dear Lucy in the clutches of the dreadfully spoiled Lady Alison. Hannah clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the unladylike guffaw.
Laughing more quietly was now off the list as well.
Drat.
“Hopefully, she didn’t take a tumble.” Elizabeth cast a glance toward the door, worry in her pale blue eyes. While she moved with the grace of a dancer, she somehow managed to trip over every loose stone and bump into every low-hanging eave.
“I’ll wager she’s up to no good.” Amy frowned. Her blonde hair was knotted up in rag rolls that bounced about on her head as she spoke.
This, of course, only made Hannah giggle more.
And Amy most likely was not wrong. Lucy was always into some kind of trouble.
At that exact moment, the door swung open, and Lucy sauntered in, her nightgown whispering about her ankles. She tossed her head back to clear a length of dark hair from her hazel eyes and grinned at them all. “I thought this would make our resolutions a little more interesting.” From behind her back, she withdrew a corked bottle.
Hannah leapt to her feet, leaving the journal, and ran toward Lucy with a squeal of delight.
So much for being dainty and elegant…
“I don’t think we should have that in our room.” Even as Amy spoke with her usual caution, she slid from her bed to examine Lucy’s prize, her curiosity piqued. “Where did you get it?”
Brandy.
“From ole Gibbons’s private stash that he keeps behind the sofa.” Lucy wiggled the bottle, and liquid sloshed inside.
No one ever used the ruffled pink sofa with the over-fluffed cushions. No one, that was, except the butler who needed a nip from time to time to deal with “the infernal racket of so many girls” as he groused in an audible mutter at least once a day.
“And don’t fret.” Lucy pointed a finger at Elizabeth. “I left him a few coins to cover a new bottle of an even finer vintage than this.”
Elizabeth gave a bright smile of appreciation.
“What does it take to get drunk?” Jillian asked, peering around Hannah.
Amy narrowed her eyes at the bottle. “I wager it’s about seventeen jacks. Divided between the five of us, that’s exactly—”
“Now is not the time for such equations.” Lucy pulled the cork free, and the hollow thunk filled the room. “We’ll find out.” She sniffed the contents and recoiled. “I imagine not much.” With that, she put the bottle to her lips and tilted her head back. She grimaced and lowered the brandy as she wheezed out a pained exhale.
“I think you’re supposed to sip it,” Jillian mused.
“I’ve never been a rule follower,” Lucy ground out and passed the bottle to Hannah. “And neither have you.”
The glass was cool against Hannah’s palms. “I ought to take offense to that.”
“But you won’t,” Lucy replied, her husky voice restored.
While Lucy wasn’t wrong, she wasn’t entirely right either. Unlike her wayward friend, Hannah didn’t intentionally break the rules. Just as she didn’t intentionally talk too much or try to be overly loud.
It all sort of happened.
She didn’t bother to sniff the bottle as Lucy had, or her courage might falter. No, she set aside her reservations and tossed back a mouthful.
In for a penny, in for a pound…
And like that, her last option for a New Year’s resolution—following the rules better—slipped away. Or, was swallowed away, as it were.
The liquid hit her throat like punishment, all fire and hell and awfulness. She swallowed it down so as not to spit it out and felt as though she were breathing out flames as she wheezed an exhale similar to Lucy’s.
Amy immediately set to patting Hannah’s back.
“Is it really that bad?” Elizabeth asked, wide-eyed, stepping away from the offending spirits.
Jillian took the bottle in a show of her own special defiance and drank. Of the three, only she did not sputter but instead offered a shrug. “Not bad.”
She regarded their faces, then burst into a laugh, succumbing to a hacking cough, her green eyes watering. “But not good either,” she rasped.
Amy ran to her and gently thwacked her back until Jillian waved her off, still laughing.
“Let’s get to our resolutions before any one of us has to drink more of that.” Jillian pointed an accusatory finger at the brandy.
Lucy tucked the bottle against her arm, and they gathered closer to the hearth. Hannah swiftly retrieved the journal, flipping to one of the back pages as she did so. She sank in the semi-circle near the fire, and heat blossomed against her icy toes and warmed the front of her nightdress.
As they settled on the plush salmon-pink carpet, Hannah already could predict each of their resolutions, even as she handed the journal to Elizabeth. Amy dipped the quill in ink for her and held it at the ready, poised over the small metal well.
“I vow to be less clumsy this year,” Elizabeth said. “Or at least not be so intolerably awkward about it.”
Amy cast her a sympathetic look and gave her the prepared quill.