Page 1 of The Heiress Gets a Duke
Prologue
I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all.
Queen Victoria
NEW YORK CITY
SEPTEMBER 1874
A feminine wail floated through the crowded ballroom of the Bridwells’ newly built Fifth Avenue mansion. The soft cry hovered beneath the notes of the waltz, its ghostly fingers touching everything it passed. The efforts of an army of musicians did nothing to drown out the sorrow inherent in the sound. It settled like a fog of despair over the glamorous evening, dusting it with melancholy. August Crenshaw shivered as if the icy fingers had stroked down her spine.
Before her eyes, the engagement party continued in full swing, not the least bit concerned with the rather unremarkable fact that the bride-to-be was not a willing participant in the festivities. There was a momentary hitch in the happy amusement—a brief pause in conversation, a minute hesitation in the steps of a few of the couples twirling on the dance floor—but not one of them stopped. No one appeared willing to acknowledge the cry. In fact, they all seemedlivelier, propelled forward by a new purpose to appear as joyful as possible with the intention of hiding the depth of the sadness upstairs.
August glanced up at the frescoed ceiling as if she could see Camille in her bedroom, but instead a bright-eyed cherub stared back at her, a silent witness to the atrocity that was about to occur. The champagne went flat on her tongue and slid down her throat to settle heavy in her belly. The sad fact was that no one cared about Camille’s reluctance. New York Society thrived on financial and social matches made in marriage, and one unwilling bride wasn’t going to change anything. A hundred unwilling brides wouldn’t change anything.
August’s stomach churned, so she set her unfinished champagne on the tray of a passing servant. There was something unspeakably disturbing about the scene. A compulsion to do something to stop it pushed her forward, but a sharp bark of laughter pulled her up short. Camille’s fiancé, Robert Emerson, seventh Duke of Hereford, stood inside one set of open balcony doors, glass of champagne in hand, his gray whiskers impeccably groomed in the muttonchop style. The apples of his cheeks were pink as he laughed at something Camille’s father had said.
The two had been thick as thieves the entire evening. The impoverished duke stood to make a fortune on his marriage to Camille, while Mr. Bridwell gained a much-needed social ally. Rumors were that the duke would be given one hundred thousand dollars outright on the marriage, with an annuity of ten thousand dollars. It was hardly surprising that he was in such good spirits. He probably hadn’t noticed that his fiancée had yet to make an appearance. She was the least important aspect of their agreement. Camille was the only one who stood to suffer from the arrangement. She was also the only one who’d had no say in the matter. There could be no mistaking the anguish in that wail.
Turning from the maddening scene, August made her way through the crowd to the wide hallway that bisected the house and led to the front rooms, nodding to the small groupsof people she passed. An insistent sort of panic had begun to claw at her as she walked, pushing her forward until she was almost running. At the mansion’s elegant front doors, she turned abruptly, grabbed a handful of her silk skirts, and took the wide marble staircase to the second floor.
The mahogany-paneled doors to Camille’s bedchamber swung open when August reached the top of the stairs, revealing the debutante in full evening apparel. She was gorgeous in pale pink silk embroidered with golden thread. Her gold curls had been arranged atop her head with elaborate diamond-encrusted combs, and a few curls had been left to cascade over a partially exposed shoulder. Her neck and fingers dripped in diamonds, making her look every bit the American princess her parents wanted her to be. But the comparison ended there. From her red-rimmed eyes to the sallowness of her complexion, it was obvious that she’d been crying for hours... maybe days.
This was madness.
August opened her mouth to speak, to offer some objection on her friend’s behalf, but Mrs. Bridwell stepped out from behind her daughter, her expression dark and forbidding. Three maids along with August’s younger sister, Violet, spilled out of the room behind them to arrange her skirts. Camille looked as if she was only held together by the strength of her corset, ribbon ties, and grim determination. The last thing August wanted to do was to say something that would break down her composure.
“Come, my darling,” her mother was saying. “Make me proud tonight, and we can go over to Tiffany’s tomorrow and pick up that emerald you’ve had your eye on.” As if that alone could make up for selling her daughter’s future to a man who offered her nothing beyond social standing.
Unable to hold herself back a moment longer, August said, “Camille—” Mrs. Bridwell’s stern glance cut off her words.
Speechless, August stepped to the side as they shuffled past. Camille did not glance her way. She walked as if she were made of stone, spine rigid and gaze focused straight ahead. Violet followed close behind their lifelong friend,her hands out as if she wanted to help but had no idea how to go about it.
“August?” Violet’s voice was a harsh whisper as she paused at the top of stairs, her face ashen and her wide eyes brimming with concern as mother and daughter descended.
“It’s a travesty.” August mouthed the words, so that no one would hear.
August slid an arm around her sister’s waist, and they both watched solemnly as Camille glided gracefully toward her fate. The girl had not yet reached her nineteenth birthday, but her future had been sealed. A future that would see her ensconced on some estate in the English countryside, far away from her family, friends, and everything that she knew.
Aware of the maids who had lined up at the railing to observe their mistress, August made eye contact with one of them. She could not have been older than Camille, but her eyes reflected pity. The maid, who was forced to work for her living, pitiedthem and their Society marriages. August could not maintain the eye contact.
“It’s horrible of me, but I cannot help but be grateful that Mother and Papa would never do such a thing to us,” Violet whispered as the pair turned at the bottom of the stairs and disappeared from their view.
August tightened her arm around her sister’s waist, but she couldn’t forget that pitying look. She turned her head to discreetly look at the maid again, but the trio had disappeared back into Camille’s room to tidy up.
She told herself the maid had no reason to pity them, but a niggling doubt in the back of her mind refused to go away. Their grandfather, Augustus Crenshaw, had made the Crenshaw fortune in the railroad and iron industries. Their family would want for nothing for generations to come, so they would never be forced to marry for money. But status was something else entirely. Railroad money—newmoney—closed more social doors than it opened.
The Crenshaws, like the Bridwells, had never set foot into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, the only ballroom that mattered to the Knickerbockers of old New York. No matter howmuch money one family possessed, dirty money recently earned wasn’t welcomed in those established social circles. Augustus’s ostentatious reputation had further confirmed their family’s status as outcasts. He’d been rumored to be a drunkard and a philanderer. His most renowned fete had involved a traveling troupe of French dancing girls clad only in petticoats for entertainment. If there had been any spark of hope for the Crenshaws to achieve respectability after that, he’d extinguished it when he’d married one of those dancers.
A duke in the family could open up doors that had been sealed tight for decades. Mrs. Bridwell had confided in them only last week how Mrs. Astor had paid a surprise call and discreetly hinted at an invitation to the engagement ball. In fact, the woman was downstairs now with everyone else, blissfully ignoring the atrocity. It wasn’t very often that a duke presided over a Fifth Avenue ball, social classes be damned. That revelation had created a gleam of interest in her mother’s eye that August couldn’t forget.
But would their mother dothisto them? Would she marry one of them off to a stranger old enough to be their father? August knew very little about the English aristocracy, but she knew there weren’t very many dukes among them. The odds were that they would all be as old as Hereford, or worse.
August glanced at her sister’s pretty face, for if one of them would be forced to that fate, it would be Violet. She was everything August was not: charming, graceful, biddable... a lady.
Sensing an underlying meaning in her hesitance to answer, Violet glanced over at her. “Our parents would never do that... would they?”
For the first time in her life, she lied to her sister. “The Crenshaws have no need for a duke in the family.”
