His Family Wanted a Frightened Bride, He Fainted First novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fainting Place
Agnes trades three years of rent for a frightened-bride performance that supports Roderick's monthly tribute. Hettie fails two false faints, stands through real fright and refuses another fall; Lucan recoils from thorny roses.
My aunt had marked my fainting place with a dinner plate.
She stood over it in the vampire lord's entrance hall, guarding it from the housekeeper's broom.
"You land here," she whispered.
"Not on the flowers."
I looked at the marble around the plate.
"I'd rather land on something that gives."
"Your reputation has given quite enough," my aunt said.
She had carried the plate from Leeds wrapped in my good cardigan.
The cardigan was still in her bag, protecting the spare plate.
I was twenty-eight and had agreed to meet a prospective husband.
Apparently, meeting him upright would prejudice my application.
The housekeeper stopped sweeping beside my aunt's shoe.
"I'll need to clean under that."
"She's about to fall," my aunt explained.
"Then I'll need to clean under her too."
Someone on the stairs coughed to conceal a laugh.
Lord Lucan came down ahead of his relatives, tall and dressed entirely in black.
A fair-haired man followed, touching the silver family crest at his throat.
"My cousin Roderick," Lucan said.
Roderick took my aunt aside without taking her very far.
"Three years of rent," he reminded her.
"Once the village has seen a suitably frightened bride."
Our landlord had offered us one small attic room instead of the two we rented.
My aunt had answered by buying my dress for this visit.
I had understood the marriage was provisional.
I hadn't understood the price included an audience.
"What village?" I asked.
Roderick pointed toward the back passage.
"They bring their courtesy on Friday, the first of the month."
"Two hens per farm, thirty pounds per household."
Roderick looked at the plate.
"Your photograph goes beside the collection table," he told me.
"A frightened bride reminds them what refusing might cost."
"For what?" I asked.
"Protection from the family."
"And they think he sent you?" I asked, looking at Lucan.
"He knows I use his name," Roderick said.
Lucan looked down the back passage instead of denying it.
"Who protects them from you?"
My aunt trod on my shoe.
Roderick smiled at Lucan.
"Your bride has spirit."
"We haven't agreed to marry," Lucan said.
"Naturally," Roderick replied.
"That's why we haven't announced the date."
He looked at the plate and nodded to my aunt.
She pressed my elbow down, and I raised my hand to my forehead.
Lucan looked behind him to see what had frightened me.
My knees bent, but I remained inconveniently conscious.
I lowered myself toward the plate anyway.
He caught me beneath both arms before I reached it.
"There's a chair," he said.
He put me in it before my aunt could protest.
"Please don't catch her, my lord," she said.
"It spoils the effect."
"I won't let her hit the floor."
"It's forgiving marble," my aunt insisted.
"It isn't," his sister called from the stairs.
"I fell on it twice as a child."
The housekeeper tucked a blanket around my shoulders.
"Thank you," I told her.
"Winnie," she said, rescuing its hem from beneath my shoe.
"And you needn't fall to get one."
Agnes made the circling motion she'd rehearsed on the train.
I was to stand and try again.
I stood because I wanted my cardigan and a straight answer about the rent.
My aunt pushed the chair away with her heel.
The blanket caught under my foot.
I pitched forward and grabbed Lucan's coat.
He caught my waist with one arm and retrieved the chair with the other.
"We could save time by leaving you in it," he said.
His hand was warm through my dress.
I had expected a cold hand and had not prepared for wanting it to stay.
"She needs an introduction to the family's power," Roderick said.
He unscrewed a silver flask marked BLOOD and took a swallow.
Then he pointed at a burning candle.
Its little flame stretched into a column level with my face.
The heat frightened me properly.
My knees locked, and I stood as rigidly as the candleholder.
Agnes looked from my legs to the plate in despair.
Winnie lowered a long brass snuffer over the wick.
The flame vanished.
Roderick pointed at it again, achieving nothing.
"You'll need a match now," Winnie told him.
He lowered his hand and glanced toward the back passage.
"You won't be in the photograph," he told her.
"Good," she said.
"I've things to do."
His sister came down the stairs, grinning.
"Elspeth," she introduced herself.
"Welcome to the family demonstration of a candle going out."
Agnes nudged the plate toward me with her toe.
"Now, Hettie," she breathed.
Lucan looked at my face, then at his cousin's flask.
"A bride should know her place," he said.
My back went cold where his hand had been.
"Then let her find it," I answered.
I stepped over the plate and picked it up.
"I'm not falling again."
I handed it to Winnie.
"I'd like my cardigan," I told my aunt.
"And I'd like to meet the man I'm considering marrying."
Lucan held out his arm to me.
Roderick looked at the empty space where his frightened bride should have been.
Then Lucan saw the thorny red roses beside us and stopped so sharply I nearly caught him in return.
"Winnie," he said, staring past them.
"Take those away."
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