“Oh please do write me something, Juliet, and send it to me. You must all write to me. I must know how the rest of the season unfolds for Viola.”
“I do wish you were staying, Bea,” Viola said. “We’ve just launched a plan to provide Lord Baderston with his opportunity to prove himself.”
“Oh that is interesting! What have you done?”
“Well, at Lady Hightower’s musical evening—”
Before Viola got further, Van Doren was storming out of the house again, the butler chasing him with a glass of brandy.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “Daylight waits for nobody—we must set off at once!”
Beatrice bit her lip and kissed her sisters and her aunt. “Write me the news,” she said to Viola. Then, she was very carefully helped into a carriage full of pillows.
They waved her off, Beatrice leaning back on pillows and laughing, while Van Doren only looked crazed.
As they’d been talking with Beatrice, Viola had seen three different footmen arrive to her father’s house with invitations left in Tattleton’s hands.
Goodness, there were so many parties when one came to London, it was impossible to keep up with it all.
She must, though. She must make her best guesses as to where Lord Baderston would be found in the coming days.
At least this night was assured. She, Miss Mayton, and her father would go to the theater and Lord Baderston had already told her he would be there. He had a box, as they did too. When they’d compared notes on the location of those boxes, it seemed very likely that they would be able to see one other.
They waved forlornly as Beatrice’s carriage wheeled round the corner and then went back into the house.
“We ought to write Beatrice every day,” Juliet said. “Just think, she’ll be on her own in the countryside, stuck with her lunatic husband.”
“His lunacy is rather endearing though,” Miss Mayton said. “I think it’s nice that he loses his faculties over care of Beatrice.”
“That is very true,” Cordelia said. “I fully expect my own husband to rant and rave when he’s worried over my health. It’s just that it’s so odd because it’s Van Doren.”
They had got back to the house and Tattleton brought the recently delivered invitations to Viola in the drawing room.
“Heavens, what are these and how will I squeeze them onto my calendar?”
She opened the first.
My dear Lady Viola and Miss Mayton,
You were very gracious to accept my invitation to a night of cards for the 21st. I am sorry to say we currently have an uneven amount for whist and know you will gracefully bow out as you must have so many other worthy hostesses eager to secure your attendance. I hope we may see you next season.
Very best regards,
Lady Margaret Hardwick
“How odd, Aunt,” Viola said. “It appears that we have been disinvited to Lady Margaret’s card party due to an uneven number of people. Have you heard of such a thing?”
“No, I never have,” Miss Mayton said, wrinkling her brow.
“What shall she do if someone she thought was coming does not turn up?” Viola asked. “Then she will be uneven again. I do not understand the sense in it.”
“Nor I,” Miss Mayton said. “Oh dear, I wonder…”
“You wonder…oh. But you do not think…” Viola said, the gravity of a horrible idea sinking into her thoughts.
“I do not know,” Miss Mayton said. “The story of the tinker’s boy is really very innocent. I would not have thought…but then Lady Margaret is such a stickler, perhaps she heard it and took offense to it somehow? Perhaps she thinks you should have never allowed the tinker’s boy to speak to you?”
“Why should she though?” Lady Viola said. “The story is a tinker’s boy asked me to run off to Gretna Green, I admired his red hair and declined. What could be more proper than that? A lady can hardly stop people from saying odd things.”
