Wylder Bride by Amey Zeigler—Excerpt Day!

Excerpt from Wylder Bride:

Boston, 1879

Maisie Brinley refused to descend the stairs for dinner. Her mother invited the stuffy, self-absorbed, yet wealthy, Ralph Pope to dine tonight. They hadn't invited him to discuss the politics of moving to the gold standard, either. No, this dinner party would end in a marriage proposal. 

Perhaps he would arrive tonight on his newly acquired bicycle all the way from the financial district, rebuilt nearly seven years ago after the fire of 1872. When she last saw him at the Boston Common earlier in the spring, he looked so silly balanced upon the two-wheeled contraption.

Tying a knot in her sheets, Maisie stifled a laugh against her hand. Leaning out the third floor window to view the other stately brick mansions with mansard roofs along the South Slope of Beacon Hill, she dropped the lengthy rope ladder made from her tightly woven bed sheets to the brick streets below. How would she manage the climb in her skirts? Thankfully, her kid leather boots were sturdy.

"What are ye doing there?" Cara O'Donnell asked from behind.

Maisie glanced over her shoulder. “I'm running away." She wanted trees and wilderness, not people and houses.

"And just where do ye think ye'll go this time?" Cara brushed back a strand of red hair and tucked it into her cap. Thrusting her chin into the air, she planted a fist on her thin hip. "Ye have no place to go. Ye'll just be dragged home by Constable Higgins again. Now get away from the window before ye fall and break yer neck, and then what would yer mother do with ye?" She snagged the bedsheets and pulled them from the window, untying the knots and shaking her head. "Bless me, Miss Maisie, if ye aren't a handful of trouble. Now I have to rewash the linens."

Along with her Irish brogue, Cara's grin always brought a smile to Maisie's own lips. Only two years separated them. Maisie never gloated over her superiority in her age or station. She narrowed her eyes. "I could still climb down the drainpipe and run off."  Ever since they were installed, the thought tempted her. "But then I would miss you, my dear friend.” She sighed. “Don't worry. I'll help you wash the bedding. It's my fault they're all soiled." Cara was right. She had no place to go. 

"Bah, ye know yer mother wouldn't permit ye doing the wash. Besides, ye don't know how!" Done with separating the sheets, Cara set to work remaking the bed with fresh linens. "Now, come away from the window and dress for dinner. Ye must dine with Mr. Pope tonight, miss. He's a very good match."

"You sound like my mother." Frowning, Maisie straightened the hem of her tailored, drop-waist cuirass bodice and studied the pink damask wall coverings surrounding the open window. Horses' hooves clapped on the cobblestone and brick streets below. Bells rang from their harnesses. A breath of chilled smoke from the neighboring stacks invigorated her. "Perhaps he's a match for some other stuffy, straight-laced debutante but not me." She couldn't imagine having a blissful home full of laughter, love, and warmth with him. The only thing underneath Ralph's ribs was a bank account.

"And I might add, he's one of the last bachelors in all New England whom ye haven't snubbed." Shaking a finger, Cara pitched her eyebrows.

 True. Maisie had a tongue in her head and a brain that powered it--much to her mother's disapproval. Cara was right. Maisie sent more than her fair share of suitors running with a few short words. Her mother must be getting desperate if she considered Ralph Pope--someone whose mother wasn't part of the Boston elite. What horrors! Maisie rolled her eyes at her mother's snobbery. "I suppose I must at least eat."

"There's a good girl." Cara finished folding the sheets. "Now come and get dressed."
Moving away from the open window, Maisie removed her arms from the oppressive long sleeves. Even in chilly early May, her clothing suffocated her. In fact, everything about Boston suffocated her.

Cara removed the day bodice and laid it on the four-poster bed. She slid the evening bodice with shorter sleeves over the corset. "You'll look beautiful in this bodice, miss. I'm sure the honorable Mr. Pope will be taken with you."

"That is precisely what I wish to avoid." Maisie slid her hands through the delicately stitched sleeve hole and adjusted the lace around her bertha collar.

"Don't ye want to get married?" At the foot of the bed, Cara tugged at the spiral lacings up the back of the dark purple silk faille.

Maisie stood in front of the wardrobe. ”Of course I do. Just not to any of the men my parents want for me. I want a real man--one with gumption, grit, and passion." She ran her hands down the front drape of her dress, grateful she didn't have to change her skirts for dinner. Getting in and out of the bustle, the crinoline, and the bum pad took no small amount of work for the both of them. "What happened in the last one hundred years that turned all the Boston men--the firebrands of the Revolution--into wet, wool socks?”

"What do ye think?" Cara turned her toward the looking glass embedded in the wardrobe.

The dress was no Worth gown, but Maisie had to admit the image pleased her. 

A knock sounded on the door behind her.