Chasing Miss Bridgerton

Chapter 1

Five years later...

Oh how I adore the start of a new Season. New wardrobes, new parties, new matches. Some marriages will be advantageous, others might be for convenience, perhaps a lucky few may even marry for love. However, it should come as no surprise that This Author's personal favourite reason for marriage is to avoid the repercussions of a scandal. For as you should all know by now, there is very little This Author loves more than a scandal.

~ Lady Whistledown Society Papers, 26 April, 1818

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A D E L I N E Bridgerton was an orphan. She had been since she was merely seven years old when her father perished suddenly from an unknown cause at the young age of thirty-four. Adeline's mother had died only an hour after her birth.

So, little Adeline went to live with her godparents, Lord and Lady Bridgerton, who already had seven children of their own.

Adeline had always been quite close with her cousins. Eloise and Francesca were so near in age with her (Addie was only a year older than Eloise and two from Frannie) and they often played together at family gatherings and such. Once she moved in with them, however, they became inseparable.

Less than a year after Adeline moved in with her cousins, Lord Bridgerton died of a bee sting. It shocked the Bridgertons to the very core and Adeline, who had already experienced so much loss in her short life, felt utterly broken at the death of her beloved Uncle Edmund, her father and her mother—whom she never knew but missed nonetheless.

For a long time, Addie felt as if she might be cursed. She wasn't the only one who thought so, members of the ton would sometimes joke about her misfortunes—in life and on the Marriage Mart, that is. Those who were especially superstitious actually believed that Adeline was, in fact, cursed and would avoid her like a rabbit does a wolf.

Oh, they would never say such wretched things to her face. Even the most cunning of gossip columnists never once commented on her many losses in life. Mentioning the death of a loved one seemed to be a line that nobody wished to cross. But, of course, Addie heard things and she knew that when she stepped into a ball, everyone thought the same thing: "Oh there's poor Addie Bridgerton! Orphaned, unwed and unlucky. Doomed to be a spinster!"

To be honest, Adeline didn't give a fig what they all thought. She didn't much mind the prospect of being a spinster. Eloise, Adeline and Penelope Featherington (who was one of the girls' dearest friends) decided long ago that if none of them married (which was becoming increasingly more likely with each passing day), they would all live out their lives in a faraway seaside cottage. Most of the time, this sounded much more appealing than marriage.

Besides, Lady Bridgerton and Cousin Anthony taught her to always hold her head high. Adeline was a Bridgerton, after all, which meant she was just as proud as she was untouchable.

Lady Bridgerton—Aunt Violet—never treated Adeline as anything less than a ninth child. But London society knew that although her surname may be Bridgerton, her father was a mere mister and she would never be of the same social rank as her cousins.

Hugo Bridgerton was an honourable man, no one could ever argue that, but he was no viscount. He had a small fortune and had left his only child with a reasonable dowry—which, when Adeline came of age, her eldest cousin Anthony (the new viscount) had nearly doubled so that the amount matched that of his four sisters.

However charmed her life was, it was not perfect. She was a part of the English aristocracy and lived as such. But she had gone through so much loss at such a young age. Until she was nearly ten, she had forgotten that she was allowed to wear colours other than lavender and grey—the half-mourning shades she had donned for practically her entire life.