Chapter Fourteen: Dane

I had little feelings for my best friend’s sister.

Gwaniella Wells was a certainly a beautiful woman, one with a lovely figure and an exceptional elegance in her way of dressing, walking, talking, and so on.

In addition, she was from a moneyed family, so one could never accuse her of gold-digging. Her wealth matched mine—unlike the family resources of Adara Huntington, however appealing I might find her.

Gwaniella’s family lineage was old and illustrious, reaching back to royalty.

But to her everlasting embarrassment, they’d fallen on hard times in recent generations.

Indeed, a hundred years ago, her ancestors were what people referred to in those days as the “genteel poor.” To literally keep themselves and their families from starving, the daughters were doomed to work as governesses, and the men entered the military at best, or at worst became tutors or scriveners or clerks.

However, fortunately for the