Don't Rain On My Love Story!

Chapter 1 - No luck, sunshine

I wrote this story a while back but never got around finishing it. It's a historical romance set in England around the 17th Century and I had so much fun writing it. Enjoy! Thanks for reading, comment and vote if you like it :)

N.B I don't own the book cover.

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 Violet Hopewell looked up as she felt the first hesitant drops of rain hit the parasol and groaned. Then she clapped a hand to her mouth. A lady wouldn't have made such an unattractive sound. A lady would have sighed delicately or perhaps made no sound at all, and called for a carriage. She held onto her bonnet and walked very quickly towards the place of shelter in the distance.

 Then Violet stopped suddenly and groaned again. A real lady would have stepped daintily over the gravel and glided onwards to the manor. Head up, not down.

 Well, she would just have to practice more and more, she decided. How else was she going debut in society?

 How else was she going to win the bet?

 As Violet glided - or tried to - up the driveway, she put a foot down on a loose, crumbly rock. Suddenly the world veered sideways as she fell. Seconds later, after a variety of strangled screams, she found herself sitting, sopping wet, in a cold and muddy puddle. The water was frigidly cold, and she felt it penetrate to her very skin.

 "Blasted rocks!" she shrieked, and flung one of the rocks in question as hard as she could. Her dress clung to her like tissue paper; she saw that the thin material, formerly so starched and spotless, was now a dirty grey colour. Her dainty, embroidered slippers were now soaked though with scummy rainwater.

 Violet resisted the urge to curse again, but then she remembered. A lady wouldn't have let such defiling words loose from her mouth. A real lady would have got up dignifiedly and continued on as if nothing had happened.

 Well, she wasn't a lady. She wasn't even close. Her only claim to be a part of the ton was the long unused title her father held. A baron was always a baron, after all, even if he hadn't been back to England for a decade. Since she was nine, in fact, they'd been living abroad in France and the result was that she was very, very out of practice. And the matter of height, she thought with a sinking feeling, was also a problem. A very big one.

 A dull throb of pain interrupted her thoughts, and she winced, surprised. The numbingly icy water had lessened its grip for her to feel the damage she had done. Her ankle felt like it was on fire, and protested with every move she made. She tried to get up and shifted her weight onto her hurt ankle.

 "Ouch!"With a noisy splash, she ended up in exactly the same position as she was before; with her backside completely submersed in muddy water.

 As if on cue, the rain suddenly increased its efforts, and rivulets trickled down from her wet, brown hair. Violet fumed and crossed her arms. There was nothing she could do but wait for the rain to stop, and hope that somebody found her. Preferably that somebody being her father - she did not think she would stand the utter humiliation if a stranger, or worse one of those ladies she was trying to imitate, discovered her like this.

 Soon, though she began shivering as the wind swept violently through the grounds. Her clothes provided no protection at all; on the contrary the sodden dress raised goosebumps on her skin. Violet didn't like the feeling of lying there, waiting for who knew what to happen.

 She tried again to get to her feet and was rewarded by a stab of pain. Another angry gust of wind howled, sweeping away her bonnet. Rain showered down as fierce as ever, and Violet felt a sudden stinging of tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. She gritted her teeth and blinked them back furiously. Granted, a lady could cry, was almost expected to cry. But Violet was not weak and fragile and she wouldn't, wouldn't give in. It was just a sore ankle!  And she was sure that the rain would stop soon....

 In the meantime she needed some way to move, to keep warm. Releasing her anger was a most interesting way of doing this, she decided.

She picked up handfuls of rocks and pebbles and began to throw them one by one.

 "I hate you!" she screamed, as each rock made a satisfying thud with the grass metres away, "for ruining my new party dress! It was expensive!"

She savagely threw one more. "And you stole my bonnet!"

 As she searched blindly for more objects to throw, her hand unexpectedly encountered something smooth. Something, she thought, that almost felt like unique texture of leather.

Only that was impossible because she was alone in the rain, surrounded by the vast driveway of a netarby manor. A very clean driveway, she knew from her first observations with the exception of the stones.

 She traced the smooth leathery thing but stopped when she touched something cold, square and metallic. That was when she realized that the item she was touching was a shoe, and that though the rain was still falling, it had stopped falling on her.

 An amused voice next to her ear spoke. "Are you finished yet?"