The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,80

not hurry. They take small, precise steps. And they never flap their arms. You look like a goose.”

Persephone hadn’t wanted to look like a goose. She’d wanted to look like a Persephone. So, she’d obeyed her mother–she was a very obedient child–and begun to take small, precise steps. Which was fortunate, for if she’d been running, she might have missed the man on one knee and the woman standing in front of him with her hands pressed to her mouth.

“What are they doing?” Persephone had asked, her eyes wide with wonder as the woman said something to the man and he jumped to his feet and wrapped her in his arms with a loud whoop that sent a startled pair of mourning doves fluttering out of the bushes.

“They are acting in a most inappropriate manner,” Persephone’s mother had said, the corners of her mouth pinching with disapproval before she’d put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and steered her in the opposite direction. “Such public displays of affection are nothing more than a cry for attention from desperate people. Proper young ladies do not engage in such behavior.”

But Persephone, who hadn’t been able to stop herself from glancing back at the couple, didn’t believe they appeared desperate. She thought they appeared happy. And she had decided she wanted to be that happy one day, too.

She just needed to find her Prince Charming.

Chapter One

Fourteen Years Later

Wanted: One Prince Charming

Estranged Husbands Need Not Apply

Percy–as she was called now–had always loved painting. There was something about the smooth stroke of a brush on canvas that was innately satisfying. She enjoyed creating beauty out of blankness. Of coaxing the landscapes out of her head and onto paper. It soothed her. It calmed her.

But most importantly, it silenced the demons within.

As she sat in the rear garden and eyed her most recent work, a lovely scene of a pond with two white swans gliding across the glasslike surface, she didn’t think about her estranged husband Andrew, the Duke of Glastonbury. She didn’t think about how black his eyes turned right before he lost his temper. She didn’t think about the sound his hand made when it collided with her cheek. She didn’t think about the rain washing away the blood on her face as she huddled in an alley, wondering what her life had come to. She didn’t think about all the nights she stayed awake, flinching at every sound for fear it meant Andrew had finally found her.

Instead, her focus was on what shade of green to use for the weeping willow behind the pond. Mint, or chartreuse? This painting was to be a wedding gift for one of her dearest friends in the entire world, Lady Helena Ware, and she wanted it to be absolutely perfect.

It was in Helena’s townhouse, a cheerful brick home tucked away in the middle of Berkley Square, that she was currently residing (or hiding away, depending on how you looked at it). And it was Helena, as well as her friend Calliope, Countess of Winchester, who had rescued Percy in her most dire hour of need.

Chartreuse, she decided before she carefully began to fill in the long boughs of the willow with tiny little flicks of her wrist. While oil was her preferred medium, she’d chosen watercolor for this particular piece as she’d wanted to bring a sense of romanticism to the painting. It was her first time attempting watercolor, but she’d long admired the work of Joseph M. Turner, an artist renowned for his use of bold colors and creative landscapes.

She even owned an original painting of Mr. Turner’s from early in his career; a stunning seascape of an ocean in the midst of a turbulent storm. Or rather, her husband owned the painting. It hung in the library of their country estate in Sussex, one of the few things she missed from her past life as the esteemed Duchess of Glastonbury.

The fancy gowns, the glittering jewelry, the endless parade of luncheons and balls and theater appearances…those things Percy could gladly go without. Truth be told, she’d never been particularly fond of all the attention and duties that accompanied being married to a duke. Especially a duke of Andrew’s renown.

Constantly being on display, like a china doll high on a shelf for everyone to look at and try to find fault with, had been both emotionally and physically draining. She’d felt as if she always had to be the best in the room. The best wife, the