Katharine Ashe
How to Be a Proper Lady
The second book in the Falcon Club series, 2012
JUVENAL,
(QUOTED IN
Family Tree
Prologue
The girls played as though nothing could harm them. For nothing could on the crest of the scrubby green Devonshire hill overlooking the ocean where they had played their whole lives. Their father was a baron, and they wore white quilted muslin to their calves and pinafores embroidered with silk.
The wind was mild, blowing their skirts about slender legs and whipping up their hair, dislodging bonnets again and again. The elder, twelve, tall and long-limbed like a boy, picked the most delicate bluebells, fashioning them into a bouquet. The younger, petite and laughing, swung her arms wide, scattering wild violets in a circle about her. She ran, dark ringlets streaming behind, toward the edge of the cliff. Her sister followed, a dreaming glimmer in her eyes, golden locks swishing about her shoulders.
A sail appeared upon the horizon leagues away where azure sky met glittering ocean.
“If I were a sailor, Ser,” the younger sister called across the hillock, “I would become captain of a great tall ship and sail to the ends of the earth and back again simply to say that I had.”
Serena shook her head fondly. “They do not allow girls to become sailors, Vi.”
“Who gives a rotten fig for what they allow?” Viola’s laughter caught in the breeze curling about her.
“If any girl could be a sea captain, it would be you.” Serena’s eyes shone warm with affection.
Viola rushed to swing her arms about her sister’s waist. “You are a princess, Serena.”
“And you are an imp, for which I admire you greatly.”
“Mama admires sailors.” Viola skipped along the edge of the sheer drop. “I saw her speaking with one when we were in Clovelly for the ribbons.”
“Mama is kind to everyone.” Serena smiled. “She must have been giving the man an alms.”
But it had not looked like Mama was giving him alms. She had spoken with the sailor for many minutes, and when she returned to Viola, tears teetered in her eyes.
“Perhaps he wished for more alms than Mama could give him.”
The ship came closer and lowered a longboat, twelve men at oars. The sisters watched. They were accustomed enough to the sight, living so close to a harbor as they did, yet ever curious as the young are.
“Do you think they are smugglers, Ser?”
“I suppose they could be. Cook said smugglers were about when she went to market Wednesday. Papa says smugglers are to be welcomed because of the war now.”
“I don’t recognize the ship.”
“How would you know to recognize any ship?”
Viola rolled her dark eyes. “Its banner, silly.”
The boat came toward the beach fifty feet below, knocking against the surf, its bow jutting up and down like a butter churn. Men jumped out, soaking their trousers in the waves. They pulled the craft onto the pebbly sand. Four of them moved toward the narrow path that wound its way up the cliff side.
“It looks as though they mean to climb straight up,” Serena said, taking her lower lip between her teeth. “Onto Papa’s land?”
Viola grasped her sister’s fingers. To be so close to real smugglers was something she had only dreamed. She might ask them about their travels, or their cargo. They could have something truly precious aboard, priceless treasure from afar. They would surely have stories to tell of those far-off places.
“Hold my hand, Ser,” she said on an excited quaver. “We shall greet them and ask their business.”
The sailor in the lead was a stocky man and well-looking in a dark fashion, not in the least scabrous or filthy as one might expect. He and his companions came along the crest of their father’s land directly toward Viola and Serena.
“Why,” Viola exclaimed, “that is the same sailor Mama gave alms to the other day.”
But nothing concerned the girls in this, or in the sailor’s greeting, broad and smiling as he glanced at their locked hands. For they had the love of sisters, fierce and tender, and nothing could harm them.
Chapter 1
