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PURSUING GENEVIEVE
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PURSUING GENEVIEVE
Chapters
1 Genevieve’s Mistake
2 The List of Men
3 The Terrifying Lord Ashby
4 The Marriage Act
5 A Musical Interlude
6 The Purpose is Men
7 Whose Guests are We?
8 The Auction
9 A Clandestine Plan
10 Coaches in the Night
11 Scandalous
12 The Hidden Château
13 Violent Passions
14 The Painful Crossing
15 Chaos at Bastwicke Chase
16 Triumph and Turmoil
17 Questioning Love
18 Lay Down Your Life
19 Calling the Banns
20 Out of the Mouths of Babes
21 The Final Banns
22 Lenora’s Fairy Tale
BONUS Preview of The Rogue and the Rose
Glossary
1 Genevieve’s Mistake
2 The List of Men
3 The Terrifying Lord Ashby
4 The Marriage Act
5 A Musical Interlude
6 The Purpose is Men
7 Whose Guests are We?
8 The Auction
9 A Clandestine Plan
10 Coaches in the Night
11 Scandalous
12 The Hidden Château
13 Violent Passions
14 The Painful Crossing
15 Chaos at Bastwicke Chase
16 Triumph and Turmoil
17 Questioning Love
18 Lay Down Your Life
19 Calling the Banns
20 Out of the Mouths of Babes
21 The Final Banns
22 Lenora’s Fairy Tale
BONUS Preview of The Rogue and the Rose
Glossary
Chapter 1
Genevieve’s Mistake
“Are you nervous?” whispered Genevieve Lamar as the coach veered around a corner of Bloomsbury Square.
“If your father finds out, he will strangle me!” Shrubsole Curling replied, looking apprehensively out of the window.
Genevieve thought her illicit swain looked almost attractive for the first time, but that was due to the golden light bathing him from the carriage lantern. Before sneaking out of the house, she had borrowed one of her father’s lace jabots and boldly tied it around Mr. Curling’s throat to give him a bit of elegance. Otherwise, he lacked any.
He lifted the lace and added darkly, “Lord Bastwicke could easily choke me with his own jabot.”
“I suspect he might like to,” she agreed, “so we must rattle on to Fleet Street as fast as we can. Then he won’t know about our marriage until it is too late.” A prickle of guilt caused her to let go of Shrubsole’s bony fingers. “But although he would thunder,” she added, widening her eyes, “the worst repercussions would come from Madam, my mother. But,” she sighed, “I simply must get away from her.” Now it was fear that encroached upon the joy of Genevieve’s idealistic elopement. “Madam, when crossed, strikes out quickly and sharply, like lightning.”
“I know! Frightening lightning! She didn’t like the way I combed her hair once.”
In the slowly jolting coach, Genevieve eyed Mr. Curling’s profile. He had straight brown eyebrows, a long, narrow nose with a high bumped bridge, and a wide mouth that often smiled.
He was not smiling now. Below his three-cornered hat hung a sparse and tangled queue of light brown hair, which seemed ironic to her, considering his profession. He was a hairdresser much in demand with the most fashionable ladies of London. He said, “You will soon be a widow if she strikes me for this. But how long do we have, I wonder? How long can we stave them off and live in wedded bliss?”
Though feeling jittery, Genevieve decided to maintain a semblance of audacity. “Who cares?” she threw back as they rolled by a lamp-lighter with a flaming torch. “We are leaving Madam—and without permission! I have longed to do this for two years!” She hung onto the remains of her triumph. “This is a marvel of courage for me, Shrubsole. It’s been a sore trial being the eldest girl since Arabelle married and left.” A certainty crept into her mind that her beloved sister would not approve of this horrendous scheme. Eloping with a man—and from such a low rung of society—was absolutely contrary to their family’s precepts. Truly, she should not be doing this.
Shrubsole pulled Genevieve back from pressing her nose to the window. “Be careful! Someone in your house might see you. We are not safely away by any means since we have to circle this confounded square to get out of sight, and that lamplighter has everything lit now.” The wheels clattered much too loudly over the flagstones for any kind of a clandestine getaway. He rapped sharply on the ceiling and shouted, “Hurry up!” which caused the coachman to set the pair of horses from a fast walk to a ringing trot.
Genevieve bit her lip as she looked back at her four-story home. She no longer felt like laughing. There were candles burning in Lady Bastwicke’s boudoir, but what was worse—and which instantly doused her euphoria—was the sight of a familiar-shaped horseman approaching from up ahead.
“Shrubsole, look!” She gasped. “My father is coming home! Oh, I hope, hope, hope he doesn’t see us! Duck!” She moved her face away, which had been in the full light of the lantern when she spied Father.
Shrubsole gave a quick look out the window, and swiped his hat off his head to hide most of his face. “Isn’t this earlier than normal? I thought you said he works late!”
“This is very early for him. I thought he would be gone until ten o’clock! He has been toiling every night on that Marriage Act to see it into effect. Shrubsole, I feel afraid!”
“Duck down farther!”
She did so, her pulse thudding in her ears as she cowered and clung to the seat.
"We’ll soon be out of sight,” said Mr. Curling, patting her head.
“Can he see you? Are you in the shadow?”
“No, yes, but he’s turned his horse around and—oh no, now he’s following us! This is not good!” He pounded on the ceiling with urgency.
Genevieve tightened her fingers around his wool-clad arm. “What should we do? Quick! Are we out of the square yet?”
"Yes, but here he comes, straight after us!”
Genevieve rose to peek. Mr. Curling pushed her down again.
He rearranged his position so that he sat completely in shadow. “I’ll cover our lanterns,” he decided. “How stupid of me to keep them lit. He could recognize our faces.” He slammed down each side window in turn, and with a deal of difficulty, performed the operation through one open window while Genevieve impatiently rose up to do so with the one on the side away from Father.
She said under her breath, “I imagine he saw you do that, in full light.”
Shrubsole yelled, “Speed it up!” but it was doubtful that the coachman heard over the clattering of the horseshoes and wheels. As they swerved, his voice became terrified. “Blimey! He’s almost upon us!”
Genevieve listened to the hoof beats. “He is pursuing me! Oh no, now what?” Serious doubts drummed through her head. “My father is rarely angry, but when he is—oh, Shrubsole! I don’t want his wrath turned upon you!”
“Confound it! I never should have suggested this. We should not have tried to elope. Why did I not listen to my better judgment?”
Genevieve grabbed his lapels and loudly whispered, “Because you said we would never be allowed to marry each other unless we ran away, that’s why!”
He shook her off and muttered, “I have always been one for a challenge.”
“Do not blame yourself. Not entirely.”
“Now Genevieve, you must realize that if Lord Bastwicke catches us before we are married, it will not happen. I will never be allowed to see you again. I won’t even be able to arrange your hair, or your mother’s either, I presume.”
The thought that flicked into her mind was that he was giving up very easily. “You are right,” she said, eyeing him with dawning disfavor. “Face it, Shrubsole, if Father catches us, it will be good-bye to you and me.”
“Oh, well,” he said on a sigh, fingering her long copper-colored curls that hung in silky glory beneath her tiny lace cap. “It felt too wonderful to ever come true for me.”
“Shrubsole! Whyever not?” Genevieve demanded.
“Because you are such a beautiful, wonderful, and wealthy daughter of a Peer, and I am just . . . nothing.”
When the cantering hoof beats caught up to them, Genevieve felt a rush of terror. She gave her former fiancé a quick kiss on the cheekbone—the first she had ever given him—and said, “Then why don’t we just stop? It will go much better for us if we do.”
“You have likely said a true thing,” conceded Mr. Curling. The horses slowed and the coach swayed as the coachman tried to maneuver into a place where he could halt.
Genevieve said frenetically, “Loosen that jabot, quick!” She received it from him and thrust it deep into her bodice, explaining, “My father is working on a very important change to the marriage law. He calls it An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage. Have you heard of it?”
Shrubsole’s eyes widened incredulously. “The one they will read in church once a month? Do not tell me that it passed into Law!”
“Yes! It is to prevent marriages like the one we wanted performed tonight! Oh,” she wailed, “how far is Fleet Street? Maybe you should tell the coachman to whip them up again. That law is not enforced yet, but it will be. Very soon, I think.”
Mr. Curling fearfully watched Lord Bastwicke through the window. “Blimey, Genevieve, I am a dead man!”
Next to the coach window, Lord Bastwicke roared in his forty-acre voice, “Halt this vehicle! Do as I say, Coachman! You have a child inside!”
Genevieve looked through the glass, and jumped back when she saw the whites of a horse’s eyes, its black mane flicking, and then her father’s dark coat draped over his white stocking. She looked up, and there was Father’s white-wigged bulk in all its authority. There came the sharp rap of his riding crop on the coach body.
The wheels ground to a halt. A child, she thought, and instantly felt like an extremely naughty one with no hope but punishment.
“Emerge from that coach at once, sir!” came her father’s second shout as soon as Shrubsole cracked opened the door, keeping all but his terrified eyes covered.
“Father! Please don’t worry!” cried Genevieve, pushing past Shrubsole. “I come willingly!” Climbing over his legs, she kicked the round carriage step down and stepped onto it. She jumped down, snapped it back in, slammed the door shut, and imperiously motioned the staring coachman to drive away.
This he did with no hesitation after noting the menacing brows of Lord Bastwicke, an enraged father and a Peer of the Realm.
Genevieve had urgently instructed Shrubsole to hide his face in the hope that Father would not see who her fellow eloper was. So it happened, for Genevieve caused a distraction when she fell against her father’s moving horse. The animal shied and backed, causing her to tumble to the ground. As she knew he would, her father moved his horse away, dismounted hastily, and lifted her up.
“Oh, my little Genevieve!” he crooned in dismay. “Thanks to God on high, I have you safe!” The coach rattled away and diminished down the dim street. “What were you thinking, minx? You gave me the fright of my life! Where were you going with that man, and at this time of night?”
Genevieve, astonished, and most gratified at her Father’s change of tone, said, “I thought I was in love with someone, and I wanted to go off and marry him tonight—do not glare at me like that, Father!—but now I know it was very wrong, and—”
“Absolutely wrong!” he exploded.
Painfully, she added, “I am so relieved that you stopped us.”
His eyes widened. “Are you, indeed?”
“Yes! Ow, my palm is scraped.”
“Continue!” he demanded, pulling her along and lifting her white hands to look at them in the light from the street lamp. Though his voice was intimidating, his touch was gentle as it always was.
Genevieve, surprising herself, started to cry. “He is not the man for me after all!”
“How do you know that so soon after leaving the house, which is approximately a three-minute journey?”
She felt foolish, but she blurted out the truth that she had just discovered. “He did not act decisively! He was too scared of you, Father.”
“He should be! Why is that a drawback?”
“I learned that I cannot feel much respect for him. You see, he cringed.”
Her father let out a guffaw. “Is that so! That is a major drawback. Well, I am delighted. He does well to be scared of me, and lose your respect. I hope he remains thundering terrified for life!”
“He will, I am sure.” Genevieve vowed that the man she married would have far more backbone and dignity than Mr. Shrubsole Curling had demonstrated. How blind she had been, and how childishly impulsive.
As they walked homeward, her father led his snorting horse behind them. Suddenly he said with fervor, “This, Genevieve, is precisely why we need the Marriage Act. Most young people do not see past the whirligig of romance to the real character or suitability of the marriage partner they think they want at a certain moment.”
Humbly, Genevieve said, “I am sure that is true, Father.”
He shook her arm. “I am relieved beyond measure that I caught you from making a tragic mistake. I shudder to think! Added to your own plight, I would never have been able to hold my head up had my own daughter succeeded in an elopement, and just as the Marriage Act becomes Law!”
Genevieve felt a rush of remorse. “Oh, Father! Please, please, please forgive me! I have been utterly tempted against my better judgment. I was totally thoughtless of how my actions would affect you. It makes me sad that I am such a worm.”
He stopped their progress and took her into a bear hug. “There, there, my precious, let us say this is forgiven and forgotten, and you will promise to forget that sprig, Mr. Curling. I will not tell your mother if you promise me that.”
So he knew the name of her partner in crime. Wiping away a tear, she drew a deep breath, feeling much relieved, and nodded. “Yes, Father, I promise. I will think seriously from now on before I even like another man, much less think of marrying one.”
Genevieve’s Mistake
“Are you nervous?” whispered Genevieve Lamar as the coach veered around a corner of Bloomsbury Square.
“If your father finds out, he will strangle me!” Shrubsole Curling replied, looking apprehensively out of the window.
Genevieve thought her illicit swain looked almost attractive for the first time, but that was due to the golden light bathing him from the carriage lantern. Before sneaking out of the house, she had borrowed one of her father’s lace jabots and boldly tied it around Mr. Curling’s throat to give him a bit of elegance. Otherwise, he lacked any.
He lifted the lace and added darkly, “Lord Bastwicke could easily choke me with his own jabot.”
“I suspect he might like to,” she agreed, “so we must rattle on to Fleet Street as fast as we can. Then he won’t know about our marriage until it is too late.” A prickle of guilt caused her to let go of Shrubsole’s bony fingers. “But although he would thunder,” she added, widening her eyes, “the worst repercussions would come from Madam, my mother. But,” she sighed, “I simply must get away from her.” Now it was fear that encroached upon the joy of Genevieve’s idealistic elopement. “Madam, when crossed, strikes out quickly and sharply, like lightning.”
“I know! Frightening lightning! She didn’t like the way I combed her hair once.”
In the slowly jolting coach, Genevieve eyed Mr. Curling’s profile. He had straight brown eyebrows, a long, narrow nose with a high bumped bridge, and a wide mouth that often smiled.
He was not smiling now. Below his three-cornered hat hung a sparse and tangled queue of light brown hair, which seemed ironic to her, considering his profession. He was a hairdresser much in demand with the most fashionable ladies of London. He said, “You will soon be a widow if she strikes me for this. But how long do we have, I wonder? How long can we stave them off and live in wedded bliss?”
Though feeling jittery, Genevieve decided to maintain a semblance of audacity. “Who cares?” she threw back as they rolled by a lamp-lighter with a flaming torch. “We are leaving Madam—and without permission! I have longed to do this for two years!” She hung onto the remains of her triumph. “This is a marvel of courage for me, Shrubsole. It’s been a sore trial being the eldest girl since Arabelle married and left.” A certainty crept into her mind that her beloved sister would not approve of this horrendous scheme. Eloping with a man—and from such a low rung of society—was absolutely contrary to their family’s precepts. Truly, she should not be doing this.
Shrubsole pulled Genevieve back from pressing her nose to the window. “Be careful! Someone in your house might see you. We are not safely away by any means since we have to circle this confounded square to get out of sight, and that lamplighter has everything lit now.” The wheels clattered much too loudly over the flagstones for any kind of a clandestine getaway. He rapped sharply on the ceiling and shouted, “Hurry up!” which caused the coachman to set the pair of horses from a fast walk to a ringing trot.
Genevieve bit her lip as she looked back at her four-story home. She no longer felt like laughing. There were candles burning in Lady Bastwicke’s boudoir, but what was worse—and which instantly doused her euphoria—was the sight of a familiar-shaped horseman approaching from up ahead.
“Shrubsole, look!” She gasped. “My father is coming home! Oh, I hope, hope, hope he doesn’t see us! Duck!” She moved her face away, which had been in the full light of the lantern when she spied Father.
Shrubsole gave a quick look out the window, and swiped his hat off his head to hide most of his face. “Isn’t this earlier than normal? I thought you said he works late!”
“This is very early for him. I thought he would be gone until ten o’clock! He has been toiling every night on that Marriage Act to see it into effect. Shrubsole, I feel afraid!”
“Duck down farther!”
She did so, her pulse thudding in her ears as she cowered and clung to the seat.
"We’ll soon be out of sight,” said Mr. Curling, patting her head.
“Can he see you? Are you in the shadow?”
“No, yes, but he’s turned his horse around and—oh no, now he’s following us! This is not good!” He pounded on the ceiling with urgency.
Genevieve tightened her fingers around his wool-clad arm. “What should we do? Quick! Are we out of the square yet?”
"Yes, but here he comes, straight after us!”
Genevieve rose to peek. Mr. Curling pushed her down again.
He rearranged his position so that he sat completely in shadow. “I’ll cover our lanterns,” he decided. “How stupid of me to keep them lit. He could recognize our faces.” He slammed down each side window in turn, and with a deal of difficulty, performed the operation through one open window while Genevieve impatiently rose up to do so with the one on the side away from Father.
She said under her breath, “I imagine he saw you do that, in full light.”
Shrubsole yelled, “Speed it up!” but it was doubtful that the coachman heard over the clattering of the horseshoes and wheels. As they swerved, his voice became terrified. “Blimey! He’s almost upon us!”
Genevieve listened to the hoof beats. “He is pursuing me! Oh no, now what?” Serious doubts drummed through her head. “My father is rarely angry, but when he is—oh, Shrubsole! I don’t want his wrath turned upon you!”
“Confound it! I never should have suggested this. We should not have tried to elope. Why did I not listen to my better judgment?”
Genevieve grabbed his lapels and loudly whispered, “Because you said we would never be allowed to marry each other unless we ran away, that’s why!”
He shook her off and muttered, “I have always been one for a challenge.”
“Do not blame yourself. Not entirely.”
“Now Genevieve, you must realize that if Lord Bastwicke catches us before we are married, it will not happen. I will never be allowed to see you again. I won’t even be able to arrange your hair, or your mother’s either, I presume.”
The thought that flicked into her mind was that he was giving up very easily. “You are right,” she said, eyeing him with dawning disfavor. “Face it, Shrubsole, if Father catches us, it will be good-bye to you and me.”
“Oh, well,” he said on a sigh, fingering her long copper-colored curls that hung in silky glory beneath her tiny lace cap. “It felt too wonderful to ever come true for me.”
“Shrubsole! Whyever not?” Genevieve demanded.
“Because you are such a beautiful, wonderful, and wealthy daughter of a Peer, and I am just . . . nothing.”
When the cantering hoof beats caught up to them, Genevieve felt a rush of terror. She gave her former fiancé a quick kiss on the cheekbone—the first she had ever given him—and said, “Then why don’t we just stop? It will go much better for us if we do.”
“You have likely said a true thing,” conceded Mr. Curling. The horses slowed and the coach swayed as the coachman tried to maneuver into a place where he could halt.
Genevieve said frenetically, “Loosen that jabot, quick!” She received it from him and thrust it deep into her bodice, explaining, “My father is working on a very important change to the marriage law. He calls it An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage. Have you heard of it?”
Shrubsole’s eyes widened incredulously. “The one they will read in church once a month? Do not tell me that it passed into Law!”
“Yes! It is to prevent marriages like the one we wanted performed tonight! Oh,” she wailed, “how far is Fleet Street? Maybe you should tell the coachman to whip them up again. That law is not enforced yet, but it will be. Very soon, I think.”
Mr. Curling fearfully watched Lord Bastwicke through the window. “Blimey, Genevieve, I am a dead man!”
Next to the coach window, Lord Bastwicke roared in his forty-acre voice, “Halt this vehicle! Do as I say, Coachman! You have a child inside!”
Genevieve looked through the glass, and jumped back when she saw the whites of a horse’s eyes, its black mane flicking, and then her father’s dark coat draped over his white stocking. She looked up, and there was Father’s white-wigged bulk in all its authority. There came the sharp rap of his riding crop on the coach body.
The wheels ground to a halt. A child, she thought, and instantly felt like an extremely naughty one with no hope but punishment.
“Emerge from that coach at once, sir!” came her father’s second shout as soon as Shrubsole cracked opened the door, keeping all but his terrified eyes covered.
“Father! Please don’t worry!” cried Genevieve, pushing past Shrubsole. “I come willingly!” Climbing over his legs, she kicked the round carriage step down and stepped onto it. She jumped down, snapped it back in, slammed the door shut, and imperiously motioned the staring coachman to drive away.
This he did with no hesitation after noting the menacing brows of Lord Bastwicke, an enraged father and a Peer of the Realm.
Genevieve had urgently instructed Shrubsole to hide his face in the hope that Father would not see who her fellow eloper was. So it happened, for Genevieve caused a distraction when she fell against her father’s moving horse. The animal shied and backed, causing her to tumble to the ground. As she knew he would, her father moved his horse away, dismounted hastily, and lifted her up.
“Oh, my little Genevieve!” he crooned in dismay. “Thanks to God on high, I have you safe!” The coach rattled away and diminished down the dim street. “What were you thinking, minx? You gave me the fright of my life! Where were you going with that man, and at this time of night?”
Genevieve, astonished, and most gratified at her Father’s change of tone, said, “I thought I was in love with someone, and I wanted to go off and marry him tonight—do not glare at me like that, Father!—but now I know it was very wrong, and—”
“Absolutely wrong!” he exploded.
Painfully, she added, “I am so relieved that you stopped us.”
His eyes widened. “Are you, indeed?”
“Yes! Ow, my palm is scraped.”
“Continue!” he demanded, pulling her along and lifting her white hands to look at them in the light from the street lamp. Though his voice was intimidating, his touch was gentle as it always was.
Genevieve, surprising herself, started to cry. “He is not the man for me after all!”
“How do you know that so soon after leaving the house, which is approximately a three-minute journey?”
She felt foolish, but she blurted out the truth that she had just discovered. “He did not act decisively! He was too scared of you, Father.”
“He should be! Why is that a drawback?”
“I learned that I cannot feel much respect for him. You see, he cringed.”
Her father let out a guffaw. “Is that so! That is a major drawback. Well, I am delighted. He does well to be scared of me, and lose your respect. I hope he remains thundering terrified for life!”
“He will, I am sure.” Genevieve vowed that the man she married would have far more backbone and dignity than Mr. Shrubsole Curling had demonstrated. How blind she had been, and how childishly impulsive.
As they walked homeward, her father led his snorting horse behind them. Suddenly he said with fervor, “This, Genevieve, is precisely why we need the Marriage Act. Most young people do not see past the whirligig of romance to the real character or suitability of the marriage partner they think they want at a certain moment.”
Humbly, Genevieve said, “I am sure that is true, Father.”
He shook her arm. “I am relieved beyond measure that I caught you from making a tragic mistake. I shudder to think! Added to your own plight, I would never have been able to hold my head up had my own daughter succeeded in an elopement, and just as the Marriage Act becomes Law!”
Genevieve felt a rush of remorse. “Oh, Father! Please, please, please forgive me! I have been utterly tempted against my better judgment. I was totally thoughtless of how my actions would affect you. It makes me sad that I am such a worm.”
He stopped their progress and took her into a bear hug. “There, there, my precious, let us say this is forgiven and forgotten, and you will promise to forget that sprig, Mr. Curling. I will not tell your mother if you promise me that.”
So he knew the name of her partner in crime. Wiping away a tear, she drew a deep breath, feeling much relieved, and nodded. “Yes, Father, I promise. I will think seriously from now on before I even like another man, much less think of marrying one.”
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