CHAPTER1
Miss Eleanor Fairbanks dropped onto the bed, bouncing a bit and laughing at the sheer feeling of happiness that enveloped her. This morning she had witnessed one of the most spectacular, beautiful, and just lovely weddings. The couple’s love had been a palpable force and not for the first time, Ellie felt an ache of want went through her heart. How happy the bride, her sister Fanny, had been, and the groom, Viscount Havisham, had stared at his bride as if she were the most precious creature he’d ever seen.
“And I suppose you were my dear Fanny. The most precious creature his eyes have ever beheld,” Ellie whispered in the room, hugging the pillow tightly to her chest. “Should I have a gentleman look at me so I would be most happy indeed.”
Loud laughter filtered through the door from her sisters, who ran unchecked down the hallway. Absent was Lily, Fanny and the Viscount’s love child, who normally ran and shouted the loudest. Eleanor sat up when the door opened, and Ester dressed in her white cotton nightgown sauntered inside the chamber that had once belonged to Fanny.
“I thought this room was to be mine, and only mine,” Eleanor said, grinning and shifting until she sat up with her back pressed against the headboard and curled her feet beneath her.
Emma entered behind Ester, and they came over to the bed and jumped onto it without an ounce of decorum in their bodies. They were identical triplets and had always shared a chamber until today. Eleanor supposed they missed her presence. A silly idea, for she was only a few rooms down in the palatial townhouse their brother owned in Mayfair. A pang went through her heart at the awareness she might now miss all the late-night whisperings and naughtiness they had gotten up to over the years.
“I do not see why it is you that must have Fanny’s room,” Ester growled, grabbing several pillows, and tucking them behind her as she found her comfortable spot on the large bed. Though she sounded grumpy, her dark blue eyes glittered with good humor.
“You can share it with me,” Ellie said, laughing. “It would be a strange thing indeed to have a room for myself.”
“As you are the eldest triplet, I declare this room to be yours and only yours,” Emma said with staunch support. “Ester and I shall have a grand time with our wicked shenanigans all to ourselves, and we won’t have you to scold us or threaten to report us to our brothers.”
The girls laughed, and Ellie joined them, but she knew they often referred to her as only a ‘slightly Fairbanks’ or ‘slightly wicked’ for she was not at all improper like the lot of them with their dubious reputations. They were only one and twenty, but Ester and Emma had been embroiled in their fair shares of scandals back home in their idyllic village of Penporth. Even since they had come to town for Colin to take his place as the new Earl of Celdon, they had gotten into more than one scrape that had seen their grandaunt, the Dowager Countess of Celdon, growing a few more gray hairs.
“Fanny is so very fortunate,” Ester said with a dreamy murmur and a faraway look in her eyes. “Did you see how happy and ravishing she looked today?”
“Yes,” Ellie said with a sigh. “Fanny could not have been more in love, and to our grandaunt’s distress, she wore that love on her sleeve for all the world to see and comment on it.”
Ester snorted in an unladylike manner. “Apparently, being so obviously in love is not done.”
The sisters shared a glance and then laughed. They often found the lessons the dowager duchess imparted daily to give them town polish ridiculous. Ellie did not think them so awful, and she said so.
“Surely you jest,” Ester cried. “Theyareridiculous, and for our new sister-in-law to be so insistent on giving us decorum lessons makes me so mad I could…”
Clearly at a loss for a word to adequately express her anger at that, she groaned and thumped the pillows.
“I do not think it so bad,” Ellie said soothingly. “We are not just the Fairbanks living in a small village in Cornwall anymore. Our brother is an earl. Think about that.” The dowager countess and her husband only son died of a wasting illness several years ago, and when the late earl died and their brother had been the nearest male heir the crown could establish, their lives had changed in the blink of an eye. They could no longer be the wild and irascible young men and women they had been in the small and obscure town of Penporth, Cornwall.
Smiling gently at their annoyed expressions, she said, “We are now heiresses, and I might marry someone other than Mr. Devon Rundbull, who actually wrote me here in town to repay his addresses.”
“He is terrible,” Emma agreed. “Pompous. Arrogant. He looked down his bony noses at us and made his offer of marriage seem as if he was doing you a great favor, Ellie. You deserve much better in a husband. Someone who cares for you…someone who likes that you enjoy sculpting and that our brother indulges your interest. Someone who admires your wit and intelligence.”
“We should all have that in our future husbands,” Eleanor said.
“Do you think we could be as lucky in love as Colin and Fanny?” Ester asked, wrinkling her nose
“Yes,” Ellie said empathically. “I think there are many love matches in society, and they were not made by chance.”
“I am not interested in love,” Emma said. “There is so much more to life than simply marrying and having a brood of children like our mother.”
“Emma,” Eleanor and Ester cried together.
“What?” she said innocently. “She did havetwelveof us. I heard someone mention it at Hatchards recently that mama was inelegant and crass to birth so many children.”
“Who dared?” Ester breathed, her eyes narrowed with anger.
Out of the Fairbanks brood, she was the one quicker to revenge for when she perceived a slight against those she loved. And when Ester loved, she did it fiercely, loyally, and with her entire heart. Unfortunately, she hated with the same intensity.
“Some cow,” Emma said with a tight smile. “And I am certain you can understand why I am not eager to be a part of theton. Those ladies can be viperous and mean. Why should I be trained to act and behave like those hypocrites? I much prefer to focus on doing the things I want.”
“Those are the old Fairbanks ways.” Ellie rebuked gently. “Even Colin has said our family must reform. He wants what is best for us.Allof us. And that is to see us make suitable matches and connections.”
“Oh yes,” Emma said, her eyes twinkling. “And he did that by ruthlessly seducing in a matter of weeks the woman he hired to be our decorum teacher.”