Contents ( 52)
- praise for
- The Siren of Sussex
- Also by Mimi Matthews
- belles of london novels
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Epilogue
- Author’s Note
- Literary Inspiration
- Victorian Views on Novel Reading and Bloodletting
- False Names, Marriage, and the Law
- The Fall of Sebastopol
- Acknowledgments
- Discussion Questions
- What’s next on your reading list?
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The Lily of Ludgate Hill
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London, England
June 1862
Lady Anne Deveril flattered herself that she had many outstanding qualities. Chief among them was her willingness to do anything for a friend. And Julia Wychwood was her best friend in the whole world. She had been thus ever since the pair of them had endured a first season together; two unwilling wallflowers—one in unrelieved black and one in over-flounced blue—left to languish, unadmired, at the back of every fashionable ball, society musicale, and amateur theatrical on offer.
One disappointing season had followed another in rapid succession. Three altogether. It had only served to strengthen the bond Anne and Julia shared. No longer wallflowers, they were comrades in arms. Fellow horsewomen. Sisters.
Yes, for Julia, Anne would do anything, even face the devil himself.
Tucking her folded copy of the Spiritualist Herald more firmly under her arm, she marched up the freshly swept stone steps of the Earl of March’s stately town house in Arlington Street and firmly applied the brass knocker to the painted door.
Lord March was no devil, but he was currently housing one.
The door was promptly opened by a young footman.
“Good morning,” Anne said briskly. “Be so good as to inform his lordship that Lady Anne Deveril is here to see him.”
The footman didn’t question her identity. Indeed, he appeared to recognize her. And why not? She was herself an earl’s daughter, and one of some notoriety thanks to the conduct of her famously eccentric mother. A widowed countess couldn’t garb herself entirely in black for years on end, traipsing about the city to consort with crystal gazers and mediums, without drawing some degree of attention to herself. Anne had long accepted that she must bear some guilt by association.
“Yes, my lady.” The footman stepped back for her to enter. “If you would care to wait in the library, I shall see if his lordship is at home.”
Of course he was at home; in his greenhouse, no doubt. Anne had little intention of actually seeing the man. She nevertheless permitted the footman to show her into the earl’s spacious library while he trotted off to find his elderly master.
The twin fragrances of pipe smoke and parchment tickled her nose. Lemon polish, too, though there was no sign that the maids had done any recent tidying up. The library was a place of spectacular clutter.
Bookcases lined three of the walls; leatherbound volumes on botany, agriculture, and natural history pulled out at all angles as if an absentminded researcher had wandered from shelf to shelf withdrawing tomes at random only to change his mind midway through extracting them.
The fourth wall was entirely covered in framed sketches of flowers and greenery. Some images were produced in pencil and some in delicately rendered watercolor. They were—along with the teetering stacks of botanical journals and drooping maps that spilled over the sides of the earl’s carved mahogany desk—evidence of his prevailing passion.