Page 5 of Yule Be Mine

“Let’s not be hasty, Julius.” Yule held up his hand. “Tomorrow Fritz and his family are planning a trip into the woods to gather greenery and play Mistletoe Run. Perhaps they will invite some additional guests—some additional young ladies from the neighborhood—to come out in the woods with us.”

“That’s a long shot, Yule.”

“Since when have you not been willing to try to beat the odds, Julius?”

His cousin sighed and drained his glass. “As you say, cousin. I’ll let it ride.”

*

Sitting at thetoilette table in the pretty little guest room she shared with her sister, brushing her hair before the mirror, Penelope frowned at her reflection. Tonight’s meeting with Ulysses Quartermain had scarcely been the encounter she’d been dreaming about for years, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. “Charlotte, can I ask you something?”

Her sister had just finished washing her face and stepped from behind the hand-painted screen with Japanese cherry blossoms on black lacquer. “What is it, Pen?”

“What can I do to make Sissy like me?” Penelope rushed through the question, although she’d been thinking about nothing else ever since her old friend had walked away after scarcely speaking two words to her after an absence of ten years.

“Well, the first thing you can do is to stop calling him ‘Sissy.’” Her sister pulled back the covers and slid into the soft bed. “Really, Penelope, why would you think a grown man would want to be called such a silly nickname?” Charlotte began stuffing her blond hair up underneath her nightcap. “I don’t blame him for not wanting to talk to you. You likely embarrassed him.”

“But I thought he’d like to remember the fun times we had when we were young. Before Victor died.” Penelope joined her sister in the bed, twisting her dark auburn locks into a knot on top of her head, then pulling the cap over it. “He didn’t seem to mind me calling him that then.”

“You were seven years old, Pen. He probably minded but didn’t let on because you were a child. If you want him to talk to you like you are a young lady, you need to act like it. And start by calling him Ulysses.” Charlotte lay back on the pillow and pulled the cover up to her chin. As if something had suddenly occurred to her, she flipped over toward Penelope and plucked at the sleeve of her nightgown. “Do you mean you want him to talk to you like a gentleman talks to a young lady he’s interested in courting, or simply as a friend?”

Hesitating, Penelope quickly weighed her options. She’d done so much to make sure of this meeting with Sissy after all these years. She couldn’t let the opportunity go by to learn whatever her sister might know about how to make a gentleman fall in love with you. “I want him to court me, Charlotte.”

“Oh.” Her sister flopped back down on the mattress. “I suppose I should have expected that. You’ve dragged that doll he gave you all over.” She cut her gaze over at Penelope. “Is that why you wheedled Mama into asking Lord and Lady Hugh into getting us an invitation to this house party? I know our family doesn’t know the Kastners at all.”

Sheepishly, Penelope nodded. “I knew we were coming to London for Christmas, and I’d heard you say you’d had a letter from Yule’s sister, Iphigenia, mentioning Yule would be in London after this house party.” She shrugged. If she wanted something thing, she had to go after it. “I merely pointed out to Mama that it would be very jolly if we could meet the Quartermains here, because house parties inevitably have bachelors in attendance. And we are coming out in the spring. Why not get a head start on things?”

“Penelope!” Charlotte sat up in the bed. “You are incorrigible.”

“Is that truly such a bad thing to be?” Penelope sat up beside her, her head cocked to the side. She knew what she wanted. Why shouldn’t she go after it?

After giving her sister a long hard look, Charlotte heaved a sigh, and settled down under the covers again. “Oh, very well then. The first thing to do is call him by his proper name.”

“You mean Ulysses? Not Yule? That’s what the family calls him, you remember.”

Charlotte propped her head up on her hand. “I’d start by calling him Ulysses and let him suggest Yule if he wants you to be that familiar. You never called him that before, so you’d better act more respectfully to begin with.”

Sliding down under the covers too, Penelope nodded. “I’ll try that when I see him tomorrow.” Burning to know more about how Yule might address her if he wanted to court her, but wanting to include her sister in the conversation out of politeness, Penelope ventured a question. “Did you meet anyone you might be interested in tonight, Charlotte?”

Her sister lay back on her pillow, her brow furrowed. “There were actually several young men I could take a fancy to. Lord Boxtd, I seem to remember when he was a boy visiting Welwyn Manor in the summer. He was as wild as all the Quartermain cousins then, but he’s rather more reserved now. His profile is quite handsome in a brooding sort of way. Then there’s Mr. Kastner, who is also rather dark and dashing. I think I would like to get to know them better this weekend.”

“What does a young lady do to get to know these gentlemen better?” Penelope bounded up in the bed, eager to find out what to do to get Ulysses to notice her at all.

“Well,” Charlotte sat up, excitement brewing in her face, “tomorrow I understand after breakfast, we will all go out to the woods to cut greenery for the house, including a Christmas tree. I hope to be paired with either Lord Boxtd or Mr. Kastner and with luck, we will strike up some light conversation. You want to let the gentlemen know you have some wits about you as well as a sense of humor. A gentleman always wishes for his wife to be a good companion and be able to converse on a variety of topics. But most importantly, they want a wife who has sense and an organizational bent to her, so she will be able to run their households capably from the very first.”

“Where did you learn all this, Charlotte? Mama never spoke of any of this to me.” It was rather surprising and not at all fair her mother had entrusted all these wiles to her sister but not to her. Perhaps Charlotte had become her favorite while Penelope hadn’t been watching. Or maybe it was just because Charlotte was older.

“Mama has told me nothing about the courting process, save to listen to gentlemen whenever they speak and don’t gainsay them at all costs.” Charlotte sat up, making a rude face. “If we had to wait for her to tell us how to catch a beau, we’d both be old maids. You know how she is.”

“Oh, I certainly do. ‘Mind your manners and run along, my dear, and don’t bother me.’” Penelope frowned. “Then how did you—”

“Phaedra and Iphigenia Quartermain told me all this years ago. We’ve corresponded with one another over the years, as you know. Do you remember them at all?”

Penelope shook her head. “Only that they are Ulysses’s twin sisters. I was always off with him and Victor.”

“They were a few years older than I, but I was always sent off to sit with them whenever Mama called on their mother. Iphigenia took a liking to me for some reason, and we became good friends after a while. Being older, she knew quite a lot about young gentlemen. And one time, after their eldest sister, Cassandra had just been married, they told me all about how she’d instructed to catch a beau.”

“Goodness! And you remember such things from all that long ago?” Rapt, Penelope drank in the Quartermain’s intelligence as though it was ice cold water on a hot summer’s day.