“What steps?”
“He would not say. I’m not certain he knew, but I would gamble that he’s spending every waking minute thinking about it.”
Percival tented his fingers. “We have got to get my aunt and her friends out of the society.”
*
Cordelia had gonestraight to her bedchamber after coming home from the literary society meeting. She’d found Juliet curled up asleep there and she was certain her younger sister had made a valiant attempt to wait up, but with nobody to talk to it had been all for naught.
She and Lynette had been ever so quiet as she was undressed, so as not to wake her sleeping sister.
Cordelia would not have admitted it, but the reason she did not wish to wake Juliet was that she did not yet know how to even discuss the evening she’d just attended.
Lord Harveston had made his feelings about their troupe clearly known. They were not wanted there. Their attendance had been met with disapproval. Somehow, though, it felt as if she were the only one to have perceived it.
Lady Rawley viewed her nephew as misguided. She was determined to make his society more lively. She was convinced that Lord Harveston’s subjects for debate were one long bore.
Cordelia was very afraid of where that idea would go.
Worse, she felt Lord Harveston viewedthemas the bores.
It was very upsetting to feel as if one did not measure up. It felt as if there was a whole world she was not acquainted with, as if she were just stumbling around in the dark.
Cordelia had not ever considered the possibility that she might be looked down upon for what she did not know.
She had thought she would be judged by her looks, which Miss Mayton had told her were very good, and her clothes, and dancing, and ability to make charming conversations. Her acting out Desdemona’s poignant adieu was meant to be the special surprise treat on top of it all.
Now, she was beginning to wonder about it. She was beginning to wonder what Lord Harveston would make of her Desdemona. She began to suspect that he would make nothing of it at all.
Of course, she should not mind that he thought so little of her accomplishments, such as they were. He was not her Corinthian after all. She was not at all interested in such a bookish fellow.
Though, somehow she did mind that his opinion was so dismissive.
How could she have possibly explained all that to Juliet?
She had lain awake for quite some time before finally falling asleep.
The morning dawned cloudy and gray, and she might have slept very late were it not for Rosalind slipping into the room and jumping into bed with them.
“Have you brought Conbatten with you and left him in the drawing room?” Cordelia said sleepily.
“I have not,” Rosalind said. “I left him in his morning bath with Henri monitoring the temperature to keep it at ninety-eight degrees precisely.”
Juliet yawned and said, “Too bad, I was wanting to ask him how much he was enjoying reading the ode I wrote for your wedding.”
“He adores it, and it is hung up in our new family room. Is he not clever to think of designing a room that is for our special things? I cannot believe anybody else has such a room.”
“Very clever,” Juliet said, “though sometimes I wish everyone who came into the duke’s house could read the ode.”
“And view the wedding portrait that Viola painted,” Cordelia said.
Rosalind nodded. “He insists that those private family things must stay private. In any case, it is just as well I did not bring him along this morning. There is a goat standing on a sofa in the drawing room—did you know it? It appeared to be sizing up how to climb the bookshelves. I asked Tattleton if he had not noticed this, but he only said he has given up trying to hold on to rationality.”
“Ah, that is Lord Darling,” Juliet said. “We found him in Basingstoke, he is a poor orphan.”
“He does look darling, but how does Papa view him having run of the house?”
Neither Cordelia nor Juliet ventured an answer on that question.
