All the hints and innuendos taken together, it would not be a week before Miss Knightsbridge was known as bolder than any Mary Wollstonecraft.
*
Cassandra curled upon her bed, just now in receipt of two letters from home. She had opened the one from her friend Lily Farnsworth first, and it was just what she had expected. Lily prattled on about ribbons and shopping for ribbons and thinking about what sort of ribbons she would design, had it been her business to do so. She asked that Cassandra write her in minute detail of any interesting ribbons she had seen in the London shops. After Lily had done examining the idea of ribbons, there was a lengthy paragraph on the decorating of a bonnet.
Cassandra might have thought the girl shallow to have written such a long letter on the subject of ribbons and bits and bobs, but she knew the Farnsworths to be a fine family financially strained. Poor Lily’s father had inherited an estate badly managed and plagued with debt, and he’d made it his life to drag Farnsworth House out of that quagmire. He’d done a remarkable job, and put a respectable amount away for Lily’s dowry, but there were not extra funds for much else. Lily was not in the habit of acquiring new dresses and bonnets, and so freshening up what she already owned consumed her imagination.
Cassandra was determined to bring home a basketful of interesting notions for Lilly so that she might refurbish to her heart’s content.
The second letter was from Cassandra’s father, and it contained all the usual news of the estate. The pigs did well on the new feed, the hunting dogs were in fine form, and her own dog, May, had shredded a volume of poetry, though the viscount did not suppose he would miss it. The viscount’s views on poetry were scathing—he condemned those persons who puttered around all day attempting to pretty up the English language as a bunch of layabouts. The sun was the sun and if a gentleman were to agonize over whether or not he should call it a giant orb or some other nonsense, that gentleman ought to join Brummel on the continent. Mayhem, if she had done anything at all, had rid his sanctum of a book that should never have had the audacity to be there in the first place.
That idea was nothing less than what Cassandra would expect from her father. What was not expected was the news near the end of his letter.
You will hardly be surprised, I think, as you have made your opinion known on the gentleman, that Mr. Longmoore appears to have taken a bad turn. Some say it is his habit of too much drink, others say he must have been hit on the head. He’s taken to talking to himself aloud on various street corners in town and they say his business does very badly as he is rarely there. Some of the lower elements of the neighborhood follow him into the Beef and Boar of an evening as he has got into the habit of buying ale all round. One wonders where he gets the money for such idiocy, as he does not tend to his business. Those that drink with him say he laments about a trickster’s bad dealings with an innocent man and how our heavenly father will no doubt understand the innocent man’s mistake. I am of the opinion that the fellow has lost his wits. I suppose we shall see how he gets on, though I expect things will only go downhill from here. (Once a rational mind is lost, it is not easily found again.)
They say too much drink can permanently addle the mind, and so for myself I stick to only six glasses of ale and three glasses of port a day to avoid the state.
Though Cassandra did hold a very low opinion of Mr. Longmoore, she was surprised at this turn of events. She had thought he would go on as he always had done—drinking to excess and importuning women. She had assumed at some point some woman would agree to his propositions, that lady likely to require the financial security of his situation and able to overlook absolutely everything else about Mr. Longmoore’s person.
She supposed she ought to pity the man out of simple Christian charity. She was determined she ought to. Though, she understood it would take some work on her part to see her way clear to accomplishing such a thing—he was an oaf of a man.
Her father had ended his letter more cheerfully.
I do hope you get on with your aunt and do not cause her too much trouble, though I doubt you do, as you have never caused any trouble to me. Feel free to give those young bucks roaming London a good deal of trouble, as they have no doubt earned it somewhere in their lives.
Cassandra smiled. She supposed shehadgiven a young buck some trouble, though she’d not set out to do it. Of all people, her father would not be surprised at her interactions with Lord Hampton, though perhaps not wholly approving of her talking about her skill with a shotgun. Still, he would sympathize with how she had been provoked.
In any case, as gruff as her father could be, he was never harsh with his daughter. Her entire childhood had been one of racing up and down stairs and through rooms, breaking things as she went—the breaking of things only compounded when May came on the scene. Her father had watched the shattered porcelain and broken plates swept up in all good humor.
*
As the worldturned on its axis and the days and hours passed, whispers of a certain Miss Knightsbridge spread throughout London like a monstrous sea creature with endlessly growing tentacles. The whispers began below stairs and slithered their way up polished staircases and down carpeted passageways to the hushed sanctums of lady’s bedchambers. From there, they hopped into carriages and skipped into drawing rooms, creating doppelgangers as they went, who then slipped into different carriages and made their way to new drawing rooms. One told one and two told four and four told eight and so on it went.
For those who knew each other well, the news was generally relayed forthrightly.
“Jemima, do come in. Have you heard the dreadful tale of Miss Knightsbridge?”
“Goodness, who has not? It appears she is the most determined flirt.”
“Flirt? My dear, a mere flirt does not take the thing all the way to an engagement. At least three engagements, none sanctioned by her father, and she jilted in every one of them, all the while firing a shotgun at anything that moves.”
“I did not realize it was as bad as that! I wonder she has the audacity to hold up her head.”
“Appalling. There is no other word for it.”
More distant acquaintances began the tale in a cautious manner. A lady might begin with something suitably vague such as, “Heavens, one hears such shocking things these days.” Of course, the lady would be pressed to reveal the shocking thing, which she would invariably do, looking prettily shocked all the while.
Mamas everywhere were only too happy to hear of the ghastly story that was told in hushed whispers. After all, one less female out husband hunting was always to be celebrated. It was the general consensus that therewasone less female out husband hunting, as who would take such a lady on?
Perhaps no end of gentlemen might have taken the lady on, but as with all rumors and innuendos, the story had grown in its scope and seriousness. There was even talk of Miss Knightsbridge having engaged herself tofivedifferent men at the same time, with her father none the wiser, and having shot at a farmer she did not like for her own amusement.
That the tentacles had wended their way through London was not surprising, nor was it surprising that the person named in the story and those closest to her remained unaware of it. After all, it would be bad form to repeat the story to the person it concerned, and everybody knew who was connected to who. The Blandings and the Sedways and certainly Lady Marksworth herself were to remain blissfully unaware that something was afoot. Miss Knightsbridge would be the very last to hear of it, as that was part of the grand tradition of unfounded gossip.
Nobody in Lady Marksworth’s house had in the least noticed that invitations arriving at the door had begun to dwindle. Why would they, when so many invitations had already been received? A hostess did not wait until the last moment to secure her guests and so invitations to most of the season’s events had been received and accepted long ago.
As it happened, no hostess had yet had the nerve to rescind an invitation already given to Lady Marksworth and Miss Knightsbridge. They would not know how to go about such a thing and, in any case, Lady Marksworth was not a figure to be trifled with. Most of the ladies simply hoped that the offending persons would leave London and not trouble them further.
That, of course, was impossible. The offending person and her close circle had not yet any idea they offended.
