Free The Winter Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance) by Anne Gracíe

after a moment’s hesitation, she took it.
    “You don’t need to worry,” she said as they turned a corner. “I know this area. I used to work at the pottery before . . . before we came to live with Lady Beatrice.”
    “You worked here before?” It was the first he’d heard of anything she’d done before she came to live with Lady Beatrice. Her background—all the girls’ backgrounds—was shrouded in mystery. He knew there was something shady about them, that they weren’t really Lady Beatrice’s nieces, but Max had been pretty closemouthed about it all, and as far as most people knew they were the offspring of a Venetian marchese called Chancealotto. Who had been made up by Lady Beatrice.
    “Yes, and I’m working here again.”
    He wondered what had made a gently raised girl seek work in a pottery in the first place but he could see from the set of her chin that she wasn’t going to explain.
    “You’re sure you’re not in trouble from gambling or some such thing?”
    “No. I told you before, I don’t gamble.”
    “But there must be some urgency,” he persisted. “After all, in a few months you’ll be having your season and next thing you know, you’ll be married and your future will be secure.”
    He felt her shiver. “Are you cold?”
    “No.”
    He glanced at her gray cloak. It was thin and rather threadbare. “You shivered.”
    “I’m not cold.”
    She didn’t look cold. Her cheeks were quite rosy.
    “And I won’t be getting married.”
    “Nonsense, of course—”
    “I should have said, I don’t
want
to get married.”
    “You don’t want to get married?” He swung around to stare at her, then shook his head. “Nonsense. All girls want to get married.”
    “Not all girls.” They moved on.
    “Every girl I ever met did. And does.”
    “Some girls marry because they want to, because they’ve found the man they want to go through life with, but most marry because they have no other choice. A single woman has very few options in this world, so for many women it’s a compromise. They marry for security, for wealth or position, and the chance of children—the man is almost immaterial.”
    Freddy’s mouth tightened. Didn’t he know it? The muffins his mother kept hurling at him wanted him for exactly those reasons—and the fortune, lands and title that would come to him after his father’s death. Freddy himself was immaterial; a means to an end.
    She continued, “A few girls are lucky enough to be given the choice, to marry if they want or to remain single: They’re the women with money of their own.”
    They walked on a few blocks in silence. A small boy swept some horse dung out of their way as they crossed the street. Damaris nodded at the child and gave Freddy an expectant look. He fished for a coin and flicked threepence to the urchin, who caught it in a grubby fist, saying, “Fanks, pretty lady,” with a gap-toothed grin. She gave him a warm smile.
    “Don’t you want children?” Freddy asked.
    Her smile faded. “One can’t have everything in life,” she said quietly and picked up her pace.
    “You can’t possibly prefer a life of drudgery, working in a pottery for a pittance, to marriage to some wealthy member of the
ton
.”
    “Can’t I?”
    “No, it doesn’t—”
    She turned on him. “Why all the questions? It’s none of your business what I do with my life, never mind the hypocrisy.”
    “Hypocrisy?”
    “You’re famous for your aversion to marriage and yet you have the cheek to criticize me for mine.”
    “I wasn’t criticizing,” he said, stung.
    “No?” She gave a huff of disbelief and walked ahead, hugging her cloak more tightly around her. “And before you ask, yes, Lady Beatrice knows I don’t want to marry.”
    “And?”
    “She accepts it, but she wants me to have my come-out anyway. For fun, she says.”
    Very sensible, Freddy thought. The old lady obviously didn’t believe her, either. Damaris was still young, nineteen or