The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Contents ( 25)

The Age of Innocence

Wild & Wanton Edition, Volume 2

Coco Rousseau

Edith Wharton

Avon, Massachusetts

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

Crimson Romance

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.crimsonromance.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-7493-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7493-1

eISBN 10: 1-4405-7494-4

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7494-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Cover art © istockphoto.com/Arpad Benedek; powdr_dayz

Dedicated to Edith Wharton

“The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” ~ Edith Wharton

“The air of love is the only air worth breathing.” ~ Coco Rousseau

Avec amour,

Coco Rousseau

Acknowledgments

Thank you, Crimson Romance, for enriching the world with stories of the heart. Without love, we would be mere flesh without soul. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love there is life.” Thank you, Tara Gelsomino, Julie Sturgeon, Beth Gunn, Jess Verdi, and the tireless staff of Crimson Romance who helped make this adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence another shining star in the world of romance.

Chapter 1

The day was fresh, with a lively spring wind full of dust. All the old ladies in both families had got out their faded sables and yellowing ermines, and the smell of camphor from the front pews almost smothered the faint spring scent of the lilies banking the altar.

Newland Archer, at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry and placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace Church.

The signal meant that the brougham bearing the bride and her father was in sight; but there was sure to be a considerable interval of adjustment and consultation in the lobby, where the bridesmaids were already hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms. During this unavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom, in proof of his eagerness, was expected to expose himself alone to the gaze of the assembled company; and Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as through all the others which made of a nineteenth century New York wedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history. Everything was equally easy—or equally painful, as one chose to put it—in the path he was committed to tread, and he had obeyed the flurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other bridegrooms had obeyed his own, in the days when he had guided them through the same labyrinth.