All Dressed in White EPB Read online

  Dedication

  For Amy Hughes Thompson, who really was all dressed in white once upon a time but now wears every color. Big love for you, my dear friend.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  You May Kiss the Duke

  About the Author

  By Charis Michaels

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Tessa St. Croix was not a natural-born liar.

  She was a charmer, perhaps. A flirt. A minx-y, chattery coquette. A reckless taker of risks. But a liar? A natural liar?

  Not particularly. Not smoothly or boldly or effectively. Not without feeling as if the acid of the lie was burning a hole through the underside of her heart and her spirit was slowly leaking out.

  Lying was a challenge for Tessa, perhaps because of her parents, who had always given her everything her heart desired, and her four brothers, who had doted on her since birth. Hers was a charmed existence, simple and expected and fun. On what occasion did she have to lie, considering all this?

  The lies (or rather, the failed lies) began in October of 1830, when a trio of marriages swept the village of Pixham in Surrey like a crisp autumn wind. Tessa was one of three local girls, all friends, all with dowries well over £10,000, who sprinted down the aisle in less than six weeks’ time.

  “And married to who?” the gossips had asked. Because the men rode into Pixham, bold as you please, made the acquaintance of Tessa and her friends, and before anyone could say, “And from where do you hail, sir?” they were betrothed to the girls, then married, then . . . gone.

  The girls’ immediate removal from Surrey was perhaps the most alarming bit. The brides were uprooted after their weddings and installed in a townhome in London, in the posh new neighborhood of Belgravia, while the three grooms sailed out of the country. The friends made a life for themselves together in London, the so-called Brides of Belgravia, while the men pursued a foreign venture that promised to make them richer than their wildest dreams.

  The first girl to marry and leave Surrey was Miss Sabine Noble, Pixham’s great beauty. Sabine had always been sharp-tongued and proud, and in the scheme of things, her hasty marriage caused the least alarm. It was said that she had not been the same since her father died, and when a domineering uncle moved in to look after Sabine and her mother, no one expected her to remain in Surrey for long.

  The next friend to marry was Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut, the daughter of Pixham’s highest-ranking peer. As such, Lady Willow married the only titled gentleman of the lot, an earl from Yorkshire, with a castle and ancient ruins and mines of coal. Despite the speed of their union, a young earl marrying the daughter of a peer was not so very odd, after all.

  But the last of the friends to marry was our own failed liar, Miss Tessa St. Croix, and the gossips of Surrey struggled with the whys and hows of this marriage for years to come.

  Some said Tessa had grown weary of courting country gentlemen, of their hunting and horses and dogs. Some said she cast one glance on her handsome groom-to-be and fell in love at first sight. Others said her father influenced the match, because the young man she married was a London shipping merchant with grand plans, and Tessa’s father was a lucrative shareholder in the West India Docks.

  But the real reason Tessa St. Croix married a man she barely knew (and the reason the gossips would never learn) was that she was ten weeks pregnant on the day she walked down the aisle.

  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say Tessa assumed she was ten weeks pregnant. Ten weeks was her most prudent guess. In truth, she was vague about the date. Vagueness was, in fact, the pervading view of her pregnancy overall. She could no more understand the schedule of her changing body than she could explain how the pregnancy came about. One moment she had been up against a tree, kissing Captain Neil Marking, handsome and charming and newly garrisoned in Surrey; and in the next, her skirts were hitched up and the kiss had gone sloppy and toothy and she was trying to find the breath to cry out.

  By the time she found her voice, it had been altogether too late. The captain was beyond hearing. Her attempts to push him away were as futile as pushing away the tree. Five minutes later, he had whispered what a good girl she had been and how happy she had made him.

  The irony of those affirmations had been Tessa’s clearest memory. Because six weeks later, when she sought him out to inform him of the baby, he had said the opposite.

  “You’re a very bad girl, aren’t you?” he said. “And I’m very disappointed. Why, you’re just like all the other very bad, very disappointing girls, Miss St. Croix.”

  After that, he had bowed briskly, backed away carelessly, and softly closed the door in her face. Three days later, his regiment left Surrey for the Isle of Wight.

  In Tessa’s estimation, the conception of the child plus Captain Marking’s rejection had taken, all told, ten minutes. In the months that followed, as Tessa’s petite body had swelled into pregnancy, she could not really say what had happened—not during that strange mix of fear and shame against the tree, and not in the cold, breathless shock of the garrison stoop.

  The only thing she knew for sure was that the man she married two months later was not the father of the baby, and that he knew nothing of her condition.

  And that had felt like a very great shame—a larger shame, perhaps, than the troubling predicament of the captain and the tree and the baby. It was a shame because she had ended up liking her new husband, Mr. Joseph Chance, very much.

  The notion that Mr. Chance might want Tessa and another man’s baby had not even crossed her mind. In this, Captain Marking had taught her the lesson she would never forget. No one, Tessa thought, could know of her pregnancy. Not Joseph Chance, not her parents, not the doctor who had been summoned to treat the unexplained nausea that plagued the early days. And so she endeavored to lie. And if Tessa had been able to sustain the lie of her unborn baby—if she were a natural-born liar—her new husband never would have known.

  But Tessa St. Croix was not a natural-born liar.

  Chapter One

  Before . . .

  The first time Joseph Chance saw Tessa St. Croix, he was leaning against the fence post across from Gibson’s Mercantile, trying to guess which young woman coming and going was his future potential wife.

  His business partner Cassin had provided her name, and his other partner Jon Stoker had learned her schedule for the day. This included delivering flowers to sick villagers, some errand to do with a church
piano, and ribbon procurement in Gibson’s shop. It was an innocuous list, virtuous even, but Joseph elected to view it as matronly and boring and expected to see a short, spotted spinster with flat feet and a limp.

  He missed her arrival to the mercantile by ten minutes, and now he had no choice but to wait. The delay grated, as his trip to Surrey had amounted to little more than awkward failure, and there was so much real work to be done in London.

  They’d come to Surrey at the prompting of an advertisement that promised “a modest fortune” in finance capital for their next import venture.

  “Wealthy investor seeks suitable candidates for dispersal of modest fortune,” the advert, posted on the docks in Blackwall, had read.

  But when they sought out the “wealthy investor” in Surrey, they had discovered it was not one man—not a man at all—but three young women. And the “modest fortune” was their dowries.

  Joseph had no interest in marrying for money—hell, he had no interest in marrying at all, not at the moment—but after traveling all this way, he’d grown curious. Before they returned to London, Joseph would have one quick look. His partners, Cassin and Stoker, had done the same.

  It was impossible, of course, to watch a young woman emerge from a shop and know whether or not he might marry her, but certainly he could know whether he could absolutely not marry her. That is, he could quickly rule her out, which he absolutely intended to do. Just one quick look, that’s all it would take.

  “Pray do not punish her, Mr. Gibson. She is only doing her job.”

  Joseph looked up. A woman’s voice spilled from the open shop door, followed by musical laughter. Not the polite tinkling of mild amusement, but an honest-to-God laugh, full-bodied, surprise and delight spun together. Joseph shoved off the fence post.

  The shop door was vacant except for a large cat. The animal marched into the sunlight with a rodent in her mouth. Behind the cat came a corpulent shopkeeper, light on his feet despite his size, with a broom held high. The laughter persisted from inside the shop, more of a giggle now, and then Tessa St. Croix stepped into the bright light of the Autumn sun.

  She wore a pink dress and red bonnet, and her arms were laden with parcels. Joseph stepped toward her as if someone had called his name. He stared. The sunshine was suddenly too bright and he shielded his eyes.

  Her laughter had stopped but her face was lit with a relaxed smile. She watched the cat disappear around a corner. The shopkeeper grumbled and waved his broom. She made some comment, laughing again. The older man turned away and applied the broom to his stoop.

  Joseph forgot his position of anonymity and walked to the edge of the road. All thoughts of boredom and matrons fled. He was . . . riveted. This girl was like an actress, bathed in light, standing on a stage. The combination of the bright dress and the easy smile and the stack of parcels cast her in the role of Village Beauty. No, Gentleman’s Daughter. Damsel. Fair Maiden.

  She had creamy, fair skin, carefully protected by the brim of her bonnet and high gloves. Her eyes were light—summer blue—with blond hair, two smooth braids looping like thick yellow ropes.

  The pink of her dress was almost too sweet, and the crimson ribbons were a garish contrast, and yet somehow it was the prettiest dress and bonnet Joseph had ever seen. She looked like a confection. A birthday present. She looked like something Joseph had not expected but that he suddenly wanted very much.

  Joseph glanced down at his own rumpled suit and dusty boots. He’d brought a change of clothes, of course, a fine suit—they’d planned to meet a proper investor in Surrey—but when the investment came to nothing, he had not bothered. He swore in his head. Of all the times to look like a plowman. Cassin and Stoker teased him about his Italian barber and expensive tailor, and yet look at him now.

  The bell on the shop door jingled again, and the shopkeeper retreated inside. He and the girl were alone with only the road between them. Joseph swallowed hard. He swiped his hat from his head and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. He considered and rejected ten different greetings. He wondered if she might greet him. Could anyone so radiant on the outside, he wondered, be tedious or petty or simple within? The answer, of course, was absolutely.

  The likelihood of radiant beauty and tedium or pettiness or simplicity was quite high.

  Even so, Joseph’s heart raced. He said nothing, he watched her look up and down the street. Finally, she turned her head, and their eyes locked.

  Her smile was instantaneous, an open, guileless, authentically happy smile. The smile of someone who had just found something she’d been looking for.

  “Hello!” she called cheerfully. Her voice was confident but casual. She sounded very much at home, comfortable in the sunny street, in her bright dress, in the role as greeter of the mute man who gawked at her from the center of the street.

  “Hello,” Joseph finally said.

  He should also say how do you do? he thought. Gallantry was as important to him as fine clothes and good boots. He should introduce himself. He should take her parcels. Instead, he stared silently, barely breathing, waiting to see what she would do next.

  “I seem to have misplaced my brothers,” she called and she laughed again. “They were meant to drive me home in our carriage. Clearly I spent too much time in Mr. Gibson’s shop.” She shrugged and the ribbons on her bonnet fluttered.

  “May I assist you with your parcels?” he called. His plan to observe her from afar now seemed irrelevant.

  “Oh, but I could not trouble you.” Her smile grew brighter. He began walking to her, crunching on the gravel of the road in long, sure strides. She watched him with what felt like anticipation. She watched him like someone waiting in line to meet the king. Joseph had experienced many reactions from women in his life, but no one had ever stared at him like that.

  When he reached her, she said, “But I’ve not had the privilege of making your acquaintance, sir.”

  Her face was even lovelier at close range. And she smelled like a flower. Every flower. She smelled like every flower and the very best flower.

  “Are you, by chance, Miss Tessa St. Croix?” he said.

  “But I am the very one,” she laughed, looking up at him. Joseph’s heart stopped.

  He began to unburden her of her parcels, and she relinquished them easily, no suspicion or faux protest.

  “But you’ll forgive me because I cannot say I know your name,” she said. “Or have we met?”

  “No,” he said. He shook his head gravely. He felt suddenly, deeply serious. He shuffled the boxes. All at once, the weight of the moment seemed too important and life-changing to be cheerful.

  “My name is Joseph Chance,” he said. “My partners and I have just arrived in Surrey from London. We are . . . responding to an advert.”

  Her smile dissolved and she made a little gasp.

  Yes, he thought. Gasp. That reaction seemed exactly, perfectly right. Whatever you do, please do not go.

  He said, “My partner, the Earl of Cassin, has already spoken to your friend, I believe. Likewise, I could not resist seeking you out. Forgive me. There was meant to be a formal introduction, but . . .”

  Slowly, her smile changed. She looked . . . delighted. His name was familiar to her. She knew why he’d come. And her reaction was delight. His heart surged.

  She said, “Mr. Joseph Chance. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. But are you . . . ?” She let the sentence trail off.

  The next words were out of his mouth before he’d fully thought. “Your future husband,” he said.

  “Are you, indeed?” she laughed. Her voice was a frothy combination of a gasp and smile and something else.

  Falling back on years of practiced charm and manners, Joseph winked. He smiled down at her with what he knew to be a very popular smile. “Shall we discuss the advertisement while I help you locate these brothers?”

  Chapter Two

  The potential of Joseph Chance-Future Husband hinged on whether he would call to Berymede the ne
xt day. If he called, Tessa would allow herself to hope. If he did not, the momentum would be lost, the attraction they felt in Pixham would dissolve, and Tessa would . . .

  Well, Tessa was not sure what she would do. The worst thing about Tessa St. Croix’s condition was the persistent, terrifying question, What am I to do?

  She lay awake at night, heart pounding, and tried to predict what would happen if she did nothing at all, if the pregnancy became obvious and her family discovered what she had done.

  Banishment immediately. Disinherited completely. Turned out with no way to provide for her baby or herself.

  Such specific threats had never been made—who could have ever guessed she’d find herself in this situation—but Tessa knew. She knew in the same way she knew she would not survive a fall from a high cliff. She’d had a girlhood of stumbles to prove her mortality.

  Only a harlot would find herself in this situation.

  We would never recover from the shame.

  A condition worse than death.

  Not in this family.

  She’d heard years of comments about village girls, cautionary tales of distant shamed cousins, reactions to certain young women brought around by her brothers. No one had to say the words; Tessa was well aware.

  Purity had always been her parents’ highest goal for their only daughter, followed closely (and ironically) by allure. Tessa was meant to be a paragon of chastity and beauty, with no partial credit for beauty alone. What was beauty if she could not hold at bay the men she attracted? Beauty used in service to baser instincts was not beauty, it was craven. It was ruined.

  Considering this, perhaps Tessa was more desperate than confident that Joseph Chance would call the morning after they met. Perhaps she willed it to happen. Really, she had few other choices.

  And anyway, he’d said he would. Calling had been his idea. Even so, they had only spoken for twenty breathless moments as they walked the high street of Pixham, looking for her brothers.

  Although twenty minutes had been long enough.

  On the walk from Gibson’s store to Alabaster’s Tea Emporium and back, they had established two very promising things: a mutual interest and a loose plan.