In retrospect, people said it was a Cinderella story. The wedding of Stuart Ralston Somerset and the Lady Vera Drake, daughter of the ninth Duke of Arlington, was certainly a fairy tale wedding. The radiant bride wore a gorgeous confection of satin and tulle the exact blue of her eyes. The bridegroom, for overcoming her dragon of an aunt in the name of True Love, had been elevated by popular imagination into a latter-day Prince Charming.
The happy couple chuckled over it on their wedding night—after they first spent half of it making delicious love, of course, as they’d hardly had a chance to see each other in the whirlwind weeks before. They were on a decidedly un-fairy-tale-like bed at a decidedly nondescript inn on Balham Hill, in Clapham, because of the groom’s troubled conscience over a little lie he’d told more than a decade ago to the innkeepers: that he was the husband of the lovely lady staying with them, and that he’d done her wrong and must see her immediately, before it was too late, before she boarded the steamer that was leaving for Australia first thing in the morning.
“Are fairy tale princes allowed to grow bald and rotund?” asked the bridegroom. “Bertie was going bald. I could very well too, in a few years.”
“What about me? The public would be aghast to see Cinderella with a sagging bosom and a wrinkly face,” said the bride, “which, I warn you, might not be that far off.”
“This happily-ever-after concept is somewhat problematic,” mused the bridegroom. “Will we have to be deliriously happy every day? Are we allowed to have lackluster days, or, God forbid, days when we look daggers at each other?”
Verity laughed and snuggled closer to him. “Yes, we are, we are. And this is not an end, but a beginning—the first day of the rest of our lives together.”
“Amen,” said Stuart. “You fancy another shag, your ladyship?”
About the Author
Sherry Thomas arrived on American soil at age thirteen. Within a year, with whatever English she’d scraped together and her trusty English-Chinese dictionary by her side, she was already plowing through the 600-page behemoth historical romances of the day. The vocabulary she gleaned from those stories of unquenchable ardor propelled her to great successes on the SAT and the GRE and came in very handy when she turned to writing romances herself. Sherry has a B.S. in economics from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in central Texas with her husband and two sons. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, playing computer games with her boys, and reading some more.
Visit her on the web at www.sherrythomas.com.
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Prologue
In the course of her long and illustrious career, Bryony Asquith was the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, almost all of which described her appearance as distinguished and unique, and unfailingly commented upon the dramatic streak of white in her midnight-dark hair. The more inquisitive reporters often demanded to know how the white streak came about. She always smiled and briefly recounted a period of criminal overwork in her twenties. “It was the result of not sleeping for days on end. My poor maid, she was quite shocked.”
Bryony Asquith had indeed been in her twenties when it happened. She had indeed been working too much. And her maid had indeed been quite shocked. But as with any substantial lie, there was an important omission: in this case, a man.
His name was Quentin Leonidas Marsden. She’d known him all of her life, but never gave him a thought before he returned to London in the spring of 1893. She proposed to him within seven weeks of meeting him again. Another three months and they were married.
From the very beginning they were an unlikely pair. He was the handsomest, wildest, and most accomplished of the five handsome, wild, and accomplished Marsden brothers. By the time of his wedding, at age twenty-four, he’d had a paper read at the London Mathematical Society, a play staged at St. James’s Theatre, and a Greenland expedition under his belt.
He was witty, he was popular, he was universally admired. Bryony, on the other hand, spoke very little, was not in demand, and was admired only in very limited circles. In fact, most of Society disapproved of her occupation—and the fact that she had an occupation at all. For a gentleman’s daughter to pursue medical training and then to go to work every day—every day, as if she were some common clerk—was it really necessary?
There have been other unlikely marriages that defied Society’s naysayers and prospered. Theirs, however, failed miserably. For Bryony, that was; she’d been the miserable one. Leo seemed scarcely affected. He had a second paper read at the mathematical society; he was more lauded than ever.