by whoknowsfantasy
Miss Beatrice Hawthorne has been trained for one purpose: to marry well. Her stepmother has invested twenty years and her father's considerable fortune in the project. Beatrice plays, sings, dances, paints, speaks four languages, and observes the world around her with a wit she has never quite learned to suppress. That last item may be why, at one-and-twenty, she is embarking upon her third London season unmarried. Or it may be her stepmother, who will entertain no offer beneath royal blood — an inconvenient standard, given that her stepdaughter possesses none, and that the only suitors of that description thus far attracted have been broke, gouty, or running from creditors abroad. Now her younger brother Charles has married before her, and Mrs. Hawthorne has resolved that this season will not end as the others have. Theodore Sinclair, Viscount Sinclair, future Earl of Ashbourne, has come to town under his father's instruction to choose a wife. He has no patience for new money, and no intention of finding a merchant's daughter remotely worth his attention. He is going to find that harder than he expected.
