Chapter 3
Victoria waited in the formal sitting room on the ground floor—lurked if she meant to be honest about it—waiting for her guests to arrive for her parents’ farewell dinner.
The room had always seemed cavernous to her for their small family, with her an unusual only child. She’d heard stories of her grandparents throwing lavish parties with crowds large enough to make her skin crawl.
The sitting room itself didn’t suit her much better.
Everything silk and gilt, the various chairs and tables much too pale and delicate for her to ever be comfortable inside. She’d taken her mother’s scoldings when she was caught trying to play in there too seriously as a child, perhaps.
Her mother too often spoke wistfully of those days when she and Victoria’s father were first married, living in
