Free The Madcap by Nikki Poppen

of
his soap and morning toilet that clung appealingly to
his skin and clothes. The smell was as complex as the
man himself was proving to be.
    Was Alasdair Braden another money-hungry peer
or a genuinely ardent suitor who merely had the mishap of being surrounded by unpleasant gossip? Marianne
knew about both. The newspapers in New York had
made no attempt to dress up the reasons the Duke of
Marlborough had been courting Consuelo Vanderbilt.
She’d also experienced firsthand the power of rumors
to define one’s realities. She’d be the last one to try
and pigeonhole Alasdair into any stereotypes. Still, it
would be much easier to decide how best to respond to
him if she knew the truth about him.

    All of these speculations skirted the larger issue:
What did she want from Alasdair? Did she want him
to declare himself as a suitor? Marianne cut a vibrant
magenta bloom from an azalea bush and pushed it
behind her ear. What did it matter how indecorous it
looked? There was no one to see. No one was expected
today, which was just as well. She had too much to
ponder. Her thoughts easily drifted back to Alasdair.
    She was undeniably drawn to him, but it was safer
thinking of him as a friend, no matter how American
that notion appeared to be. Seeing London up close,
firsthand, Marianne was starting to realize there were
things for which she could not plan. The intricacies of
life among London’s peers was an entirely different
culture. If she were to cast her lot with the aristocracy,
she’d forever risk being a fish out of water. How would
she learn to function as the titled wife of a viscount or
earl? Marianne sat down on a stone bench on the edge
of a gravel path. She began picking the lingering petals
off of a wilting bloom.

    The image she had of herself as a countess like Audrey St. ClairMaddox would be humorous in some circumstances. She could imagine shocking the servants
when she went below stairs to make bread. She could
imagine horrifying the footmen when she fetched her
own vase for flowers. She would laugh at giving them
fits, but Alasdair wouldn’t find that kind of woman
amusing, at least not as a wife.
    He would need someone who could command a battalion of servants, lay out immaculate dinner-seating
charts and see that everyone got to the table in the right
order of precedence without creating tomorrow’s scandal. Marianne doubted she’d be capable of that, or that
she’d want to devote herself so tirelessly to such behaviors that were, in her opinion, close to meaningless.
    It simply wasn’t in her. She had not understood that
when she’d embarked on her impulsive campaign to
snare an English title. There’d be a husband that went
with it, and there’d be more than that. One man could
be managed. But there would be families and traditions
that went back far longer than her country had even
been on the map.
    Perhaps it would be enough to say she’d succeeded in London and to go home without a title. That
should be enough to show the snobs in New York that
they’d been wrong about her. It wasn’t like her to quit,
but she wasn’t quitting. She’d stay in London and enjoy
the Season. She would merely reshape her goal into
something more practical. There was no sense in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. In this situation,
the old adage fit perfectly. She wasn’t going to ruin her
life by taking on a burden she didn’t want just to show
the New York nobs she hadn’t deserved the cut direct.

    Marianne stood up and brushed at her skirts. Her
meanderings were getting out of hand. She hadn’t even
determined that she had a real suitor yet, and here she
was already deciding to reject his marriage proposal.
This must be what English girls on the marriage mart
did all day since they were forbidden to do anything
else.
    She made her way back to the house, basket in hand
filled with flowers to arrange, when she encountered
the object of