A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting (A Lady's Guide, #1)

by Sophie Irwin

No, Kitty was the family’s problem solver – but this was far too great an obstacle for her to overcome with will alone.

She wished desperately that there was someone who might carry this burden with her, a heavy load for the tender age of twenty, but there was not. Her sisters’ faces stared up at her, so sure even now that she would be able to fix everything. As she always had. As she always would.

Kitty had known for a long time that she would have to marry rich,

‘To start, I want you to imagine that every time you leave this house, you are at a Linfield dinner party. Stand tall and still, walk slowly – none of this bustling about, every move must be languorous and graceful. You must speak softly and enunciate clearly, strictly no slang or vulgarity, and when in doubt say nothing at all.’

your whole body had to become a corset, with indelicacies, gracelessness and character kept strictly within.

‘Is she a fool?’ ‘An intellectual,’ Kitty explained softly. Aunt Dorothy sighed. ‘I was afraid of that.’

What must it be like, to know from birth that your future was an assuredly safe and happy one?

to the men who fancied themselves great wits, she provided a ready laugh, to the vain she was admiring, and to the shy she smiled often and spoke more.

jealous of the ease with which Cecily could cast aside the worries of the day.

And even as sleep finally drew ahead, Kitty was still wondering: was it so wrong to wish that, if she had to sell herself for her family’s sake, it would at least be to a higher bidder than Mr Pears?

One made one’s own luck, in her belief – and she had a feeling she was about to be very lucky indeed.

And after all, though Dottie was a discerning judge of character and admittedly difficult to impress, Dottie was also a cat.

Kitty felt, for one awful moment, utterly seen. As if this man knew every single shameful thing she had ever done or thought, and condemned her for each one. Her breath caught, she found she was quite capable of blushing after all.

Radcliffe, ignoring Archie, regarded Miss Talbot directly. She did not look like a villain, he supposed, but then was that not the devil’s way?

They paused there for a beat, looking at each other with mutual calculation. It occurred to them both, then – though of course they did not know it – that they might equally have agreed to pistols at dawn.

She had done it. Mr de Lacy – Archie – had proposed to her. No one could take that away from her – not even Lord Radcliffe.

Two gazes of assessing calculation meeting honestly at last.

‘You are heartless,’ he accused. ‘And you are naÏve,’ she returned,

She thought of the easy way the de Lacys treated their wealth. As if it were barely worth their consideration – simply a fact of life, much like the air they breathed. What she wouldn’t give, for her sisters to have the same security …

‘You would have me as your accomplice in fortune-hunting?’ he asked, disbelieving. She gave a sharp nod. ‘Yes. Or else your blessing to mine and Archie’s engagement.’

‘Exhausting child,’ she said wearily. ‘Any time I leave you alone for more than five minutes, you are in the midst of another unwise scheme.

One of the worst things about losing one’s parents, for Kitty, had not come in the first few, raw and shocking days of grief. It had come later: it sneaked up on her daily in the frequent instances where she thought of a question to ask them – something she might have always vaguely wondered, but never thought to voice, something inane or something important – only to realise a second later that, of course, they were no longer there to ask.

London might be a man’s world, but it was these women who held its keys – it was they who would issue the invitations, spread the gossip and deliver the setdowns that could make or break her.

he instead spent several ill-at-ease hours ruminating over Miss Talbot’s effrontery, her impudence – her audacity.

Radcliffe, for perhaps the twelfth time that week, cursed Miss Talbot to hell and damnation. His family had had none of these problems until she had started putting her waspish thoughts into their heads.

‘I am a realist,’ she told him primly. Lord Arden, it was already clear to Kitty, was quite the biggest lech in the whole of London. ‘Besides, I would never set my sights upon a lord.’

‘A titled man has far less freedom to choose his own path,’ she explained. ‘It would not be a sensible move.’

‘For once we are in agreement,’ he said. ‘Any man with a title would consider it his duty to find out everything about his future wife – and not a single one of my acquaintanc...

he had found every reason he could to avoid … the whole world, really. It had felt simpler that way, to keep away from all the heavy expectation of London society, as he tried to understand who he was. Yet now he was finding every reason he could to tarry longer in the city. He could not adequately explain it even to himself.

who bowed perfunctorily before informing her, quite politely, that she was a harpy.

she was rather beginning to enjoy these little exchanges with Radcliffe – it wasn’t just that to be seen in his company couldn’t help but aid her standing in society, but also the pleasure of knowing that while the rest of society had to make do with Radcliffe’s polite mask, it was with her alone that he let loose his sarcastic wit.

‘That suits perfectly, for my answer was going to be no. I make it a general rule only to dance with persons I like – and certainly not shameless jades.’

‘Are you in the habit of being this rude to everyone you encounter?’

‘On the contrary,’ he said coolly. ‘I am considered rather charming by th...

‘Well, I’m sure we cannot blame them for that foolishness,’ she snapped. ‘So many of the ton being in the habit o...

‘It could have been mine. If things – if things had gone differently for Mama and Papa, I would have had all this without thinking about it for a second. I am not so different to these other ladies, Aunt. They are not better than me. It feels so close – I cannot help but want to reach for it.’

‘Am I the only person you have met that does not immediately do your bidding?’ he asked curiously. ‘I suppose I am used to having my way,’ she allowed. ‘I’m the oldest in my family, so perhaps it is force of habit.’ ‘Oh, that will be it,’ he agreed at once. ‘Nothing at all to do with the militant planning or iron will, of course.’

Kitty looked at him with a touch of surprise, an ember of warmth lighting in her chest.

His father had died before Radcliffe had returned home. And so, Radcliffe would never know if fighting in a war had redeemed him in his father’s eyes – finally proving him a worthy son.

the London Season was captivating him more this year than it had before. Some of the responsibility for this lay, he could admit, at the door of Miss Talbot – and the unpredictability she was bringing to matters – and now he had begun the Season he could not help but want to see where it – and she – ended up.

Except that this was a ruthless world – and blinding oneself to that served no one.

‘Please leave,’ he said plaintively. ‘You are far too exhausting. The sooner you leave, the sooner I’ll have it.’

The term ‘breeding’ should – in Kitty’s opinion – only be used for livestock, and certainly not women.

‘Love does not always equate to happiness, you know.’

They did not have to worry about what would happen to Jane and Harriet and Beatrice, about how dark a young woman’s life could so easily become without money, about the myriad fears and futures that could befall any of them if Kitty lost control for a single moment. But Kitty did – Kitty was always worrying about it. And she had too much to do without wasting time on guilt.

‘Perhaps,’ Aunt Dorothy said softly, pulling a comb slowly through the tangles, ‘we ought all to try to be a little kinder. Perhaps that is what being “good” is – trying to pass on kindness, even when it is not convenient. I’m sure you could begin now, if you so wished.’

It was not her problem, the fate of this girl – this girl who enjoyed the best start in life and yet who was still, despite it all, losing in a fight that did not seem designed for many women to win, at all.

‘You surprise me, Miss Talbot,’ Radcliffe said honestly. ‘I had thought you too heartless for such kindness.’

She felt very seen, all of a sudden – and it was not an unpleasant sensation.

as if they were under a spell that, for a brief moment, allowed them to be still and truthful with one another – rather than snarling like street cats.