CHAPTER 1: A Very Proper Spinster and an Improper Registry
Agatha Primrose Bellweather adjusted her spectacles and regarded the punch bowl as one might eye a diseased badger that had wandered into a christening. The ruby liquid sloshed about, catching the light of a hundred candles while harboring secrets no decent beverage should keep. She mentally rearranged the furniture, placing herself far away from it, preferably in another county.
“Punch?” inquired a hopeful young man whose mustache appeared to have been drawn on with a shaky hand.
“I’d rather drink the bathwater of seventeen sailors,” Agatha replied with a smile that could curdle milk at twenty paces.
The Marchmont ballroom heaved with humanity, each person more determined than the last to achieve matrimony through the strategic deployment of dance cards and weaponized small talk. The chandeliers hung too low—much like everyone’s expectations for her future. At thirty-two, Agatha had cultivated her spinsterhood with the same attention most women devoted to their complexions.
She smoothed her gray-streaked hair, coiled tightly enough to withstand a naval attack. Her gown—a shade of green that suggested an alliance with mossy tombstones—had been selected for its ability to repel both compliments and suitors. The neckline rose to her chin in open defiance of fashion, while her sleeves boasted enough fabric to shelter a family of four.
“Cousin Agatha! You came!” squealed a voice that violated several ordinances on public disturbance.
Daisy Marchmont, eighteen and cursed with the buoyancy of an untethered hot air balloon, bounced toward her. The girl’s blonde curls defied gravity and good taste in equal measure, while her pink gown released glitter with each movement, as though she were molting joy.
“Daisy,” Agatha acknowledged. “I see you’re wearing… enthusiasm.”
“Oh, but you must dance! There are so many eligible gentlemen!” Daisy scattered adjectives like birdseed. “Handsome! Wealthy! Available!”
“Yes, and so are several communicable diseases.” Agatha lifted her teacup to her lips. “Yet I avoid those too.”
Daisy pouted, an expression she had perfected to collapse the willpower of fathers and dancing masters alike. “You’re intentionally being difficult.”
“No, I’m effortlessly being difficult. There’s a distinction.” Agatha took a fortifying sip. “If I were trying, your ribbons would be on fire.”
Daisy huffed but was distracted by a passing lieutenant whose epaulets had hypnotic properties. She flounced away, leaving a trail of glitter like breadcrumbs marking her romantic campaign.
Agatha exhaled. Spinsterhood was not a condition to be pitied but an achievement to be celebrated, like surviving smallpox or an afternoon with one’s relatives. She had built emotional armor from bone china and withering remarks, polished daily and rarely dented.
Yet optimism lurked everywhere, a persistent weed in the garden of sensible thoughts. Marriage. Love. The stubborn hope that someone might look at her and see not a sharp-tongued spinster but a woman worth choosing. Such thoughts were dangerous, like leaving scissors around toddlers or Daisy near flammable objects.
She circled the perimeter of the ballroom, a reconnaissance mission conducted with military efficiency. Her destination: a conveniently shadowed alcove containing an unoccupied chaise lounge—the promised land for those who preferred observation to participation. Three more steps and—
The dancers parted like the Red Sea having a moral crisis.
A man stood across the ballroom, tall enough to make the ceiling nervous. His face appeared carved from something expensive and possibly illegal to import. Dark hair fell too long against his forehead, perpetually damp as though his thoughts were so intense they caused localized weather systems. His jacket strained across shoulders built for carrying burdens, regrets, and possibly small carriages.
Agatha’s stomach performed maneuvers not recommended by medical professionals.
The stranger’s eyes—hazel galaxies containing multitudes—locked onto hers like a duelist selecting his mark. They widened slightly, as though he’d discovered something unexpected and vaguely alarming behind the potted palm.
Which was ridiculous. Men like him didn’t notice women like her, except perhaps to request directions to more decorative females. Yet his gaze held hers prisoner with shocking disregard for habeas corpus.
Agatha became uncomfortably aware of her heartbeat, which had apparently decided to audition for a military drum corps. Worse, her cheeks warmed with the betrayal of a blush, that most treasonous of bodily functions.
“Who,” she muttered to her teacup, “is that monument to masculine disquiet?”
Mrs. Fitzherbert, a woman whose gossip could outpace carrier pigeons, materialized beside her. “Colonel Lucien Hargrave,” she supplied, though Agatha hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. “Just returned from the Peninsula. They say he’s… complicated.”
Complicated. The word people used when they meant “interesting enough to ruin one’s life over.”
“He looks like he argues with furniture,” Agatha observed, trying to reclaim her composure.
“Widower,” Mrs. Fitzherbert continued, undeterred. “They say his wife was French. Or possibly Spanish. Or perhaps imaginary. No one’s quite certain.”
“Fascinating,” said Agatha, who found it irritatingly so. “Does he always look like he’s contemplating the violent overthrow of joy, or is that reserved for special occasions?”
The colonel moved through the crowd with surprising stealth for a man his size. People shifted from his path unconsciously, like small animals sensing an apex predator. His cravat hung around his neck in a state of open rebellion, tied with what appeared to be active contempt for the entire concept of neckwear.
“He’s coming this way,” Mrs. Fitzherbert hissed, then evaporated into the crowd like dew under judgment.
Agatha’s mind emptied of all useful thoughts, replaced by the observation that Colonel Hargrave smelled of gunpowder and bad decisions from fifteen feet away. Her lungs executed a partial strike, refusing to process oxygen until their demands for explanation were met.
He stopped before her, and Agatha discovered a new crisis: he was even taller up close, forcing her to tilt her head at an angle that exposed the vulnerability of her throat. His eyes contained shipwrecks and sonnets and something that might have been humor, had it not been buried under several layers of manly repression.
“You’re staring at my cravat,” he said, voice like distant thunder wrapped in velvet.
Agatha’s tongue unstuck itself from the roof of her mouth. “It appears to be seeking asylum from your neck.”
A sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, more the ghost of amusement that had died tragically young.
“It refuses to cooperate,” he admitted, one corner of his mouth twitching upward in what, for him, probably constituted wild abandon.
“Perhaps it objects to being strangled before dinner,” Agatha suggested, wondering when she had developed the ability to speak to attractive men without running away or pretending to be mute.
“You don’t care for dancing.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement delivered with unsettling certainty.
“What gave me away? The fact that I’m hiding behind a potted plant, or my expression of barely contained horror?”
“Both,” he said, “and the way you watch the dancers as though cataloging tactical errors.”
Agatha blinked. People rarely noticed her observations, let alone correctly identified them. “The blonde in blue has stepped on her partner’s foot seventeen times,” she said. “I’m keeping count.”
“Eighteen now,” Colonel Hargrave corrected, his gaze never leaving her face. “You missed one while you were adjusting your spectacles.”
Heat climbed Agatha’s neck like an invading army. This was unprecedented. Men didn’t notice her. They certainly didn’t count footwork errors alongside her. And they absolutely never looked at her as though she were a puzzle they urgently needed to solve.
“Do you always observe so closely, Colonel?” she asked, trying to sound unaffected and failing spectacularly.
“Only when something interests me.” His voice dropped lower, a sound felt rather than heard.
The room wobbled dangerously. Agatha blamed the punch, though she hadn’t touched it.
“And what interests you about a spinster hiding from dancers?” The word “spinster” flew from her lips like a shield, daring him to flinch.
He didn’t.
“Everything,” he said simply.
Agatha’s internal organs rearranged themselves in panic. This was not how conversations with handsome men proceeded. They were supposed to make polite inquiries about the weather, realize she possessed opinions, and retreat to safer conversational partners. Colonel Hargrave, it seemed, had not read the manual.
“I don’t recall introducing myself,” she managed.
“You didn’t.” A shadow of something crossed his face. “Miss Agatha Bellweather, if I’m not mistaken. Your reputation precedes you.”
“How alarming. What reputation would that be?” The walls seemed to be breathing in a manner walls generally avoided.
“They say you’ve rejected more proposals than most women receive.”
“Gross exaggeration. It was only seven.” She straightened her spine. “Eight if we count Lord Pemberton, but as he was actively dying at the time, I consider it more of a reflex than a proposal.”
His mouth twitched again. “They also say you’re the most intelligent woman in three counties.”
“Another exaggeration. It’s at least four counties.” Agatha’s heart hammered against her ribs like it was trying to escape and introduce itself properly.
“They failed to mention your modesty.”
“It must have slipped their minds, along with my renowned beauty and docile temperament.”
This time, he did laugh—a sound like rusty machinery remembering its purpose. “You’re everything they said you weren’t.”
Before Agatha could demand clarification of this bewildering statement, Colonel Hargrave leaned closer. The scent of him—woodsmoke and leather and something indefinably male—wrapped around her like an embrace. His eyes, this close, contained universes. Dangerous ones.
“Miss Bellweather,” he said, voice dropping to a rumble that seemed to vibrate through her bones, “would you do me the honor of—”
The world tilted.
Agatha’s vision tunneled to a pinpoint centered on his face. Her knees, those treacherous hinges, chose this moment to resign their post. Blood rushed from her head with the enthusiasm of French aristocrats fleeing the Revolution.
“Are you suggesting—” she began, but never finished.
The last thing Agatha saw before unconsciousness claimed her was Colonel Hargrave’s improperly tied cravat—a sartorial cry for help if ever she’d seen one—and his eyes widening in alarm as she crumpled toward the floor like a marionette whose strings had been severed.
She toppled sideways, taking down a floral arrangement of such aggressive cheerfulness it deserved its fate. A passing footman, caught in her trajectory, went down with a squawk of surprise.
The darkness claimed her with the cool efficiency of a naval blockade.
The mortification, Agatha knew with absolute certainty, would be waiting when she awoke.