Jane liked London; there were benefits to staying there, of course, one being close proximity to her cousin Edward. But Bradgate Park was her home. She loved the fresh air, the blue sky, the old oak trees standing on distant knolls. Her grandfather had intended the park to be the best deer-hunting ground in all of England—and it was, so it frequently received prestigious royal visitors, but that hardly mattered to Jane. (She didn’t hunt, though Edward was quite good, she’d heard.) To Jane, walking through Bradgate Park was the second-best way to escape any problem of Real Life.
The first-best way, of course, was through books. So as she left Bradgate behind, she allowed herself to become enraptured by the unabridged history of beets. (Did you know the ancient Romans were the first to cultivate the beet for the root, rather than just the greens?)
Jane, as we mentioned earlier, loved books. There was nothing she relished more than the weight of a hefty tome in her hands, each beautiful volume of knowledge as rare and wonderful and fascinating as the last. She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of the letters before her eyes. And most of all, she loved the way that books could transport her from her otherwise mundane and stifling life and offer the experiences of a hundred other lives. Through books she could see the world.
Not that her mother would ever understand this, Jane thought after she finished the last page of her beet book and closed it with a sigh. While Lord Grey had encouraged her studies when he’d been alive, Lady Frances had never accepted Jane’s hunger for knowledge. What could a young lady possibly need to know, she’d often said, besides how to secure herself a husband? All that Jane’s mother ever cared for was influence and affluence. She loved nothing more than to remind people that she was of royal blood—“My grandmother was a queen,” she was fond of saying, over and over and over again. Too bad that the late King Henry had written Lady Frances out of the line of succession years ago. Probably because he just didn’t like her attitude.
Power and money. That was all that mattered to Lady Frances. And now she was selling off her own daughter the way one barters a prized mare. Without so much as asking her.
Typical.
Jane shook away the familiar resentment toward her mother and put her book aside, cringing at a bend in one corner, likely sustained when Lady Frances had abducted the book and hurled it to the bed. The poor book. It didn’t deserve to be hurt just because Jane had to get married.
Married. Uck.
She wished people would stop trying to marry her off. It was such a bother.
Jane’s first engagement had been to the son of a silk merchant. Humphrey Hangrot had been his name, and since Hangrot Silk had been the only silk merchant in all of England, they controlled the prices. Humphrey’s parents were not shy about reminding the Grey family of their exciting new wealth. Most notably this was done by draping their stick-figure son in layers and layers of their most expensive brocade available. Jane had lost count of the number of balls she’d been forced to attend at the Hangrot family home; she’d survived by always having a book in hand.
As for Humphrey, he’d introduced himself to her as the “future king . . . of silk,” and instructed her to touch his sleeve. No, really touch it. Feel it. Had she ever beheld such fine cloth? She’d asked him if he realized the worms were boiled in their own cocoons in order to degum the silk, and he refused to speak to her after that. The engagement had dissolved thanks to the sudden arrival of a second silk merchant, one who was willing to undercut Hangrot Silk’s prices enough to take all of their business, which led to the immediate destitution of the family. No one, it turned out, wanted to pay Hangrot Silk’s outrageous prices, and the family retreated to a small home in the country where they faded from the public memory.
The second engagement had been to Theodore Tagler, a virtuoso violinist from France. He’d been touring England with the Oceanous Orchestra when his family came to visit London. Several highborn families had heard about the Taglers’ desire to find a wife for their son—a lady of refined taste and good family, and who wouldn’t mind her husband’s long absences, should she decide not to accompany him on tour. Lord and Lady Grey had immediately suggested Jane—they were still trying to recover from the Hangrot scandal—and the match was approved.
Jane had a fair ear for music and enjoyed many sonatas, minuets, and symphonies. She even liked the occasional opera—her favorites being the tragedies in which the lovers both died in the end as punishment for a small act of mercy—but she hadn’t been fond of her new fiancé’s style of playing, which she found rather boisterous. Theodore himself turned out to be rather boisterous as well. The saying “bull in a china shop” came to mind. How he’d been able to handle such a delicate instrument had been a mystery to her, and it had been the instrument that dissolved this engagement as swiftly as the last.
The violin, a one-of-a-kind Belmoorus from the late violin maker Beaufort Belmoor, had been stolen. Snatched. Thieved. Taken from its place in the home of Beaufort Belmoor’s children. It had been tracked across France and through Spain, all the way to England. The “owner” who’d loaned the violin to Theodore Tagler—as all non-musician owners of instruments do to ensure their possessions are played regularly—had been arrested and, in spite of Theodore’s innocence in the matter, he and his family had also gone into immediate destitution.
The third engagement had been to Walter Williamson, the grandson of a famous but reclusive inventor, though what it was he had invented was said to be a state secret. If it hadn’t been for the whole marriage thing, Jane wouldn’t have minded Walter; he appeared intelligent and well read, and spoke often of the legacy his grandfather had left. He, too, had aspirations of invention. It was in his blood, he said, not that he had ever shown a hint of creativity.
Only a month into the engagement, papers were released revealing Walter’s grandfather had been a thief, imprisoned these last fifteen years. Public regard of the Williamson family plummeted, and (as you can surmise) the result was immediate destitution.
And the fourth engagement—well, the young man turned out not to exist. Jane’s mother (for Jane’s father had died between the third and fourth engagements) had received a miniature painting of a handsome fellow, not realizing it had been a sample work—an advertisement for the artist’s skills. And while Jane’s mother was typically intelligent, she’d been desperate to marry Jane off to someone by now, and had misunderstood the note accompanying the miniature. “I present to you an opportunity fit for someone of Lady Jane’s rank” had meant the skill of the artist, not the imaginary—though incredibly handsome—fellow in the painting. Her mother had announced the acceptance of the proposal before the artist could write back to inquire about travel for Jane’s portrait and a reminder that his fee was non-refundable.
In a fit of anger and embarrassment, Lady Frances told a revised story in which she was the victim of a vicious prank—and so soon after her own husband’s tragic death. This time it was the artist who fell into immediate destitution.
It seemed that agreeing to marry Lady Jane was a very risky business.
If her track record with fiancés was anything to go by, Gifford Dudley’s days—and the days of his family’s prosperity—were numbered.