Color leached from the young woman’s cheeks. Oh, dear. She’d said too much. “Forgive me,” Sylvia said quickly. “I don’t know what came over me.” Actually, she did. She knew scoundrels everywhere who were still attempting to swindle young women out of their hearts and then carry on as her own late husband had.
“No,” Emma whispered. “Please, do not apologize.” The young woman came to her feet, and Sylvia winced, bracing for the lady to storm off.
Instead, the girl began to pace. “I have attempted to snare his attention. I’ve wondered as to my failings. And for what?” Her strides grew increasingly frantic. “Why? And”—Emma abruptly stopped midpace—“I love everything you’ve said here,” she whispered. “I’d not thought of it, but that . . . You are right. For seventeen years, I have been lamenting his lack of interest.”
For . . . seventeen years? Sylvia studied the young woman before her, reassessing her youthful looks. Her self-possession made a bit more sense now.
The lady’s sister interrupted Sylvia’s musings with an admirable display of loyalty. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “He is the one.”
“Yes!” Emma exclaimed, her spine growing more erect with every word of truth she spoke. “Why should I change and seek his approval? Or be different? Or proper or . . . any of it?” Her jaw hardened. “When all along I should have been asking, ‘How might I live an independent life, free of some cad?’ It is just that it is—”
“Ingrained in us?” Sylvia supplied.
“Exactly,” Emma said with a firm nod. “And I appreciate the society you’ve formed for opening my eyes to this grievous fault that exists amongst society.”
Sylvia was nodding in agreement until that last statement registered. She stopped mid–head bob. “Come again?”
Valerie leaned in. “I believe she called us a society,” she whispered.
Confusion creased Emma’s brow as she returned to the sofa she’d vacated. “Do you prefer a different name?”
Hopelessly, Sylvia looked to Annalee. “What are we?” she mouthed.
Her friend gave a little shrug.
Sylvia turned back to her suddenly enthusiastic guest. “Forgive me, I believe you’re mistaken. We are not a society.”
“You’re not?” Emma asked, bewildered. “A club, then?” She continued before Sylvia could disabuse her of the notion. “And here I thought a society a more officious and elevated group than a club.” Her nose wrinkled. “Those clubs that all those men spend their time at.”
Sylvia shook her head. “We’re not either.”
Emma’s face fell for a moment, and then she brightened. “Well, you should be.” The young woman folded her arms across her chest. “We should be. All of us. After all, I gather we’re of a like opinion on . . . men. It would be worthy of us to help not only one another in seeing the light, as I have done with your guidance, but also other women, as well.”
Silence met Emma Gately’s declaration.
A society. It was . . . a peculiar thought. And yet, an interesting one. One that, the more Sylvia turned the idea around in her head, grew upon her.
“What are you thinking?” Valerie asked.
“That perhaps we might be an accidental society, after all,” Sylvia murmured. “A mismatch society.”
Miss Emma Gately started, laughing brightly. “I like that very much! The Mismatch Society. After all, there are so very many women who are in need of similar saving.”
It was certainly a truth that resonated with Sylvia.
Annalee looked questioningly over at her. “What say you, Sylvia?”
This was . . . preposterous. The height of absurdity. Assembling here with her friends, and now strangers, to debate. But mayhap . . . mayhap it could be more than that. Mayhap it could be a way of helping young women find their voices and assert themselves in a world so very determined to keep them silent.
“Welcome to the Mismatch Society, ladies.” Sylvia smiled. “It is an honor to have you amongst our ranks.”
Chapter 2
One Month Later
Every girl from age four up to twenty-four had gathered.
Given the sheer size of the Kearsley family, it was a rarity to have all six ladies assembled. Seven, when including the mother of their impossibly large brood.
It was even rarer to have the utmost silence from any of them, let alone all of them, at the same time.
Something was decidedly amiss.
With a wariness born of knowing just how much trouble each lady present was capable of, Clayton eyed the collection of his kin, crammed three sisters per Louis XV Marquise settee, with their mother at the head chair.
Each woman and child stared back innocently, saying absolutely nothing.
There wasn’t a tangle of words all rolled together as they vied to have their story, request, or question put to Clayton first.
There wasn’t screeching and squealing over having another sister’s story, request, or question addressed first.
And they may as well have replaced the ringing of St. Lawrence’s bell with the one now clamoring away loudly in his head, for the sheer enormity of its power.
His littlest sister, Eris, at very nearly five, and also the most tempestuous of the lot, would be the first to break the silence. She shot a hand up. “I’m getting—”
Sixteen-year-old, Shakespeare-loving Delia, an identical twin, slapped a hand over the mouth of the youngest of the Kearsleys. More babe than girl, his littlest sister waved her hands about excitedly in a bid to speak whatever words had now been silenced.
Delia whispered something into the little girl’s ear . . . that managed to penetrate her eagerness.
Eris promptly lowered her hands to her lap, and in a foreign display of primness, she folded her chocolate-stained fingers upon her once immaculate white, and now chocolate-stained, skirt.
Clayton’s suspicions . . . and fears . . . deepened.
Had he been simply an observer and not the one summoned, he would have been endlessly fascinated by just what Delia had said to manage to silence the chatterbox.
As it was, as the summonee . . . all he knew was a healthy dread.
His mother came to her feet and motioned to the lavender-upholstered gilt-wood armchair beside hers. “We have summoned you today, Clayton.”
He made his way through his gaggle of sisters, none of whom rose, and all of whom looked up at his approach. “I see that,” he drawled after he’d settled into the chair.
Except again, that dread-inducing silence met his response.
He looked from sister to sister to sister.
But for the lone leather book resting on one of his sisters’ laps, everything from their expressions to their blinking was a perfect match.
Clayton squirmed. When he’d been a young man at university, he’d been set upon by footpads and had his purse and fob snatched before suffering a cuff to the head for resisting giving over his timepiece. Even with all that, he always said he’d take a turn with even the most ruthless pickpocket over the whole of the Kearsley sisters together.
His mother smoothed her wrinkled grey skirts. “Shall we begin?”
“The suspense is killing me,” he said, and that response was met with a bevy of identical frowns from his less-than-pleased siblings. He shifted. “I was not being sarcastic.” And he wasn’t. He was terrified.