An Offer from a Gentleman with 2nd Epilogue Read Free Page B

live a day of Posy’s humdrum life. Well, perhaps she wouldn’t want Araminta for a mother, but she wouldn’t mind a life of parties, routs, and musicales.
    â€œLet’s see,” Posy mused. “There was a review of Lady Worth’s recent ball, a bit about Viscount Guelph, who seems rather smitten with some girl from Scotland, and then a longish piece on the upcoming Bridgerton masquerade.”
    Sophie sighed. She’d been reading about the upcoming masquerade for weeks, and even though she was nothing buta lady’s maid (and occasionally a housemaid as well, whenever Araminta decided she wasn’t working hard enough) she couldn’t help but wish that she could attend the ball.
    â€œI for one will be thrilled if that Guelph viscount gets himself engaged,” Posy remarked, reaching for another biscuit. “It will mean one fewer bachelor for Mother to go on and on about as a potential husband. It’s not as if I have any hope of attracting his attention anyway.” She took a bite of the biscuit; it crunched loudly in her mouth. “I do hope Lady Whistledown is right about him.”
    â€œShe probably is,” Sophie answered. She had been reading Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers since it had debuted in 1813, and the gossip columnist was almost always correct when it came to matters of the Marriage Mart.
    Not, of course, that Sophie had ever had the chance to see the Marriage Mart for herself. But if one read Whistledown often enough, one could almost feel a part of London Society without actually attending any balls.
    In fact, reading Whistledown was really Sophie’s one true enjoyable pastime. She’d already read all of the novels in the library, and as neither Araminta, Rosamund, nor Posy was particularly enamored of reading, Sophie couldn’t look forward to a new book entering the house.
    But Whistledown was great fun. No one actually knew the columnist’s true identity. When the single-sheet newspaper had debuted two years earlier, speculation had been rampant. Even now, whenever Lady Whistledown reported a particularly juicy bit of gossip, people starting talking and guessing anew, wondering who on earth was able to report with such speed and accuracy.
    And for Sophie, Whistledown was a tantalizing glimpse into the world that might have been hers, had her parents actually made their union legal. She would have been an earl’s daughter, not an earl’s bastard; her name Gunningworth instead of Beckett.
    Just once, she’d like to be the one stepping into the coach and attending the ball.
    Instead, she was the one dressing others for their nights on the town, cinching Posy’s corset or dressing Rosamund’s hair or polishing a pair of Araminta’s shoes.
    But she could not—or at least should not—complain. She might have to serve as maid to Araminta and her daughters, but at least she had a home. Which was more than most girls in her position had.
    When her father had died, he’d left her nothing. Well, nothing but a roof over her head. His will had ensured that she could not be turned out until she was twenty. There was no way that Araminta would forfeit four thousand pounds a year by giving Sophie the boot.
    But that four thousand pounds was Araminta’s, not Sophie’s, and Sophie hadn’t ever seen a penny of it. Gone were the fine clothes she’d used to wear, replaced by the coarse wool of the servants. And she ate what the rest of the maids ate—whatever Araminta, Rosamund, and Posy chose to leave behind.
    Sophie’s twentieth birthday, however, had come and gone almost a year earlier, and here she was, still living at Penwood House, still waiting on Araminta hand and foot. For some unknown reason—probably because she didn’t want to train (or pay) a new maid—Araminta had allowed Sophie to remain in her household.
    And Sophie had stayed. If Araminta was the devil she knew, then