Lady Anne's Deception (The Changing Fortunes Series Book 4) Read Free

humiliated by the ease with which her sister had outlined one of her favorite fantasies.
    Marigold stretched lazily. “I shall. Oh, indeed I shall. Now, why don’t you run along to bed as you’ve been dying to do? The only romance you’re going to find, precious little Annie, is between the cover of that book you’ve got hidden under your pillow.”
    Annie stood over her sister, her hands clenched. “You’ve been rummaging among my things. You have no…”
    “But it’s such fun.” Marigold giggled. “‘Dear Diary, Nothing has happened today. Nothing ever happens. But one day
he
will come and I will recognize…’
Ow
!”
    Outraged, Annie was shaking her as hard as she could. Marigold rolled out of the armchair and pulled Annie down to the floor by grabbing her ankles. Both rolled, bit, and scratched until at last Annie, for once, managed to get the upper hand by taking handfuls of her sister’s hair and banging her head against the floor.
    Abruptly, she released her and sat back on her heels, laughing. “What would the Marquess of Torrance say if he could see us now?” she gasped. Seeing Marigold was ready to continue the fight, she escaped along the corridor to her own room and locked the door.
    Predictably, wild and noisy sobbing started to emanate from the schoolroom, then there was a loud banging on Annie’s door and Nanny Simpkins shouted, “You open the door this minute, my lady. Your jealousy has gone too far. Poor Lady Marigold is quite distraught. Open the door, I say.”
    “Shan’t,” said Annie, sitting on her bed and clenching her fists. It was the first time she had ever got the better of Marigold in a fight and she was sure it would be the last.
    There was a long silence. Then came Nanny’s grim voice. “I have no other alternative but to tell your mother.”
    Annie shuddered. Her mother rarely interfered in the schooling of her daughters, but when she did the punishment was long and severe.
    As Nanny’s footsteps retreated, Annie grimly remembered all the humiliations she had suffered at Marigold’s hands.
    A sudden, terrible ambition was born in her breast. “Somehow,” Lady Annie said aloud to herself, “I will marry before Marigold—to anyone who’ll have me. Just so long as I get to the altar before her.”

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Miss Agatha Winter was the Countess of Crammarth’s sister, the countess having been a plain Miss Winter of the untitled aristocracy before she married the earl.
    Aunt Agatha had never married. She had told so many people that she, Agatha, had been a great beauty in her youth that she had almost begun to believe it herself. She liked to hint at a great romance and a subsequent broken heart. She enameled her face white and painted red circles on her cheeks. Her fair hair was on the brassy side. Her dresses were always of clinging materials, and, given the slightest chance, she would wear the lowest-cut gowns possible, exposing an acreage of painted neck and bosom. Most of the time she looked like a badly stretched canvas.
    In a lower circle of society, she would be condemned for dressing and making-up like a tart, but in the ratified heights of the London Season, she merely became one with the other raddled chaperones who lined the walls.
    Her instructions from her sister were perfectly clear. Marigold must marry money. She was to be encouraged to smile on any suitor with a large bank balance and a desire to have a titled wife. If worst came to worst, an American would do, although young American males seemed to enjoy the spectacle of the London Season and then promptly went home to marry American girls. But then foreigners are so unaccountable. As Miss Winter’s friend, Miss Shuttleworth-Snyde-Crimp, had said only the other day, “Perhaps
not
an American. The English names have gone from that country, and they now have such peculiar surnames as Bloomberger or something.”
    Miss Winter’s home was as enameled as its owner. She had followed the vogue for