A Fiery Dalliance

I

"I'm hoping that hawk returns, and instead of snatching up poor helpless animals and children, it grabs you." Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

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I.

June 1825

"Peregrine Beresford is the farthest thing from a properly accomplished young lady, and she will make a terrible wife. I will pray for the poor gentleman, whomever he may be, who will inevitably be stuck with her."

Seventeen-year-old Perrie knitted her fingers together awkwardly as she sat opposite her parents in the upstairs drawing room. She was trying to look anywhere but their disapproving faces after she had just had to endure them reading her report from Mrs Liscombe's Finishing School for Young Ladies.

Of course, it only read so poorly because Lily's report had come first. Lily's read like a dream. She glanced sideways at her fifteen-year-old younger sister, who appeared just as sheepish. Perrie envied Lily's tact. Lily was just as determined as Perrie, and she certainly had her own ambitions. But she was better at holding her tongue and being discreet, and for that, Mrs Liscombe's report glorified the younger Cecily Beresford.

"Perrie," prompted her mother, Grace. "What do you have to say to this?"

"Mama, she writes as though using a fish fork for oysters is a capital offence!" Perrie complained dismissively.

"Do you know, something tells me that the reason behind this report is not centred on your dining etiquette," her father, Adam, mused in a facetious tone.

"In Perrie's defence, Papa, she did have a point," Lily interjected in an attempt to help.

"What was her point exactly?" Grace inquired.

Perrie huffed, which caused some of the dark tufts of hair around her face to blow up and settle over her forehead, tickling the skin there. "I might have told her that her entire institution is designed for creating glorified milk cows."

Lily stifled a laugh as both of their parents' jaws hung open. Perrie resisted asking them why they were so surprised. Did they really have such high expectations for her? Mrs Liscombe, as nasty and as grouchy as she was in demeanour and temperament, was right. Perrie would make a terrible wife.

One need only to look upon the stark differences between Perrie and her mother. Grace was elegance and patience personified, and her father worshiped the ground she walked on. Perrie was often told that she was much like her grandmother Cecily, and from what she had heard, her grandmamma and her grandpapa, Perrie's namesake, had a rather unhappy marriage.

Perrie was to turn eighteen in September, and she knew that her family's expectations were for her to be launched upon society the following April for her first Season as an eligible debutante.

And then she would become a glorified milk cow.

But suddenly the mood in the room changed as a snort of laughter ripped itself from her father's chest. Perrie's eyes flashed to her father's face as he abandoned Perrie's report onto the settee cushion beside him as he rose to his feet in an attempt to compose himself.

"Adam!" Grace cried. "We ought to be very angry about this!"

Adam held his hand over his mouth briefly to stifle his laugh, and when he had spluttered a little, he turned back around to face his wife and his two eldest children. "I will be the first to admit that when Perrie tried to destroy her report, I thought the worst. She has a reputation. I imagined that she'd tried to set first to one of her classmates."