Free The Incomparable Miss Compton by Regina Scott

“then perhaps you should marry him.”
    “Perhaps I should,” Sarah snapped. Then she bristled despite herself as Persy laughed.
    “Oh, Sarah, you are so good at distracting me,” she said as if she had done nothing wrong. “I remember how you’d make a game of taking that horrid medicine. ‘Pretend you’re the stable, Persy. Here comes the horse, a fine strawberry roan. He’s so tired, he needs to rest. Open up and let him in.’”
    It was so hard to stay angry at the girl, even when she needed a dressing down. Sarah smiled at the memory. “I remember. You were very good to open up. I tasted that stuff once. It was quite nasty.”
    “Completely abhorrent,” Persy agreed. “Unfortunately, I’m no longer that child, Sarah. You can’t get me to accept someone with a pretty story. If I don’t wish to marry the duke, I won’t.”
    Sarah held back a sigh of vexation. “I cannot force you to marry, Persy. Nor would I even if I could. But you must marry eventually. Do you want to end up like me?”
    It was a dire threat and an empty one. They both knew that Persy would never countenance being an old maid. Besides, there were simply too many men willing to marry her to allow her to remain single against her will. Persy merely eyed her contemptuously before turning her face to the window in dismissal. Sarah let the sigh slip out.
    She was still perplexed when she retired to bed two hours later, after making sure their butler, Mr. Timmons, had settled the house for the night. Mr. Timmons was nearing retirement. Indeed, his replacement was practicing at the Compton home while Sarah and Persephone visited London. Sarah had worked with him too many years to let the fellow shoulder all the burden of running the household. Besides, all the servants were used to bringing her their problems. Aunt Belle was too preoccupied with Persy, and Uncle Harold felt managing servants was woman’s work.
    “Bless you, miss,” Timmons had said to her tonight when she’d finished locking up for him. “One more trip up those stairs tonight would have done me in.”
    Though Sarah was just as tired, she had only smiled into his wrinkled face. Patting him on the frail shoulder, she had sent him off to his room in the corner of the basement for a well deserved rest.
    Unfortunately, she still had one more task before she could say her prayers and retire for the night, and she was far less sure she wanted to handle it. Every night she wrote to her aunt and uncle, although she posted the packet of letters only once a week. In the letters she reported on how Percy was doing, which beau was the current favorite, and what places they had visited. She wasn’t certain what to tell them tonight.
    “Persy refuses to marry and I wish I could escape,” seemed spiteful and ungrateful. Perhaps she should try in the morning. Maybe by then she could think of something better.
    The thought of collapsing in her quiet bedchamber had never been more appealing. She could not say that Aunt Belle and Uncle Harold stinted in their material support of her, for all Uncle Harold bemoaned the cost. She had lovely clothes, even if they were all drab, dark colors that befitted her spinster status. She had a beautifully appointed room here in London as well as in Suffolk, both done in blues and golds with bed, writing desk, comfortable chair, and marble fireplace. They were no more hers than any other guest bedchamber. When she moved to the cottage that Norrie said stood next to the Dame School at Wenworth Place, she had already planned to use her meager inheritance to purchase paintings for the walls and porcelain vases and figurines to place on the mantel. Her home would look like Sarah Compton lived there.
    Unfortunately, she was not to be left alone that night. While Persy had her own maid (a young lady named Lucy as nearly puffed up in consequence as her mistress), Sarah was long used to fending for herself. She was therefore surprised to find Lucy turning