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Roz sank down in a chair with a moan.

“Let’s not despair,” said Cordelia. “Let’s hang the costumes to air and see what repairs are needed.”

“Where do you suppose the donkey head went?” asked Viola.

Roz moaned again.

“We don’t need the donkey head, silly,” said Miranda. “No one’s going to fall in love with an … ass.”

“Someone should fall in love. We need husbands, don’t we?” Viola insisted, looking at Cordelia.

“You don’t,” said Roz. “You’re too young. Miranda doesn’t. She’s hopelessly attached to her wretched curate—”

“Mr. Hartley is not wretched,” Miranda protested.

“He can’t afford a wife,” Roz countered. “And Cordelia doesn’t need a husband. She’s on the shelf. So why are we even thinking of having a ball?”

“Roz,” Cordelia said. “We are going to have a ball for our neighbors, as we’ve always done. We, the Staveleys, not Graymont, are the first family of the neighborhood. We are, at least you all are, young ladies of fashion, and if there is no eligible gentleman to your liking at the ball, Roz, perhaps one of our neighbors, seeing how lovely you are, will invite you to Bath or London.”

“That’s a capital idea, Cordelia,” Viola said. “We can make sure Roz shines at our ball. Then we work on Lady Frome to take her away to meet some eligible men.”

“I like that,” said Roz, popping up out of her chair, eyes glittering with tears. “You want to be rid of me. Very well, but don’t expect me to put on some old rag of a costume and be a laughingstock for our neighbors.” She spun and in two strides flung open the door. It slammed behind her, rattling the teacups in their saucers.

Cordelia waited. A short pause, and then the first notes of Roz’s melancholy song came from the parlor. “Right, then,” Cordelia said to Viola and Miranda. “Let’s pick the most likely costumes and get them hanging up. After they’ve had some time to air, we’ll see which ones we can make presentable for our ball.”

*

A heavy rain closed in upon the lodge by midafternoon when the first reply to Cordelia’s letters came from Georgiana. It was the sort of rain that made the very air in the house damp. The costumes hung in Cordelia’s room, looking limp and lifeless after years in a trunk. Roz declared them rags. Only Viola could still see promise there. Cordelia asked Cook to make something cheering for an afternoon tea.

Now, Roz, Miranda, and Viola occupied the parlor with a fire and their tea. Henry, grumbling about the lack of discipline in a house full of women, had taken over the dining room. With tempers momentarily soothed, Cordelia retreated to the scullery with Hector and her letter. Her encounter with Graymont left some kind of aftereffect that stirred her nerves like strong coffee and required solitude and reflection. She was used to thinking of herself as beyond any disturbance in the company of gentlemen. She had almost four years of meetings with solicitors and agents and tenants. It was those dealings, really, that separated her from her marriageable sisters, not her age. In the scullery, Cook supplied her with tea and a plate of soft, buttery jumbles, little mounds of cakey biscuits, which she shared with the dog.

Opening Georgie’s letter, Cordelia found it wrapped around a print shop image in two frames. In one, the subject was a group of dissipated gentlemen around a card table in a gentlemen’s club. In the second, a young woman with a lantern led three others into the dark of a rainy night, their cloaks billowing around them in a storm. Cordelia had no trouble recognizing a dramatic rendering of her family’s story.

Windlesham House

Rose Street, Soho

London

Dear Cordelia,

How very sorry I am that such cares and worries fall upon your shoulders. I will help in any way I can. Naturally, you want to know about Lord Graymont.

As I do not go about in the most fashionable of circles, I have turned to my friend, Briana Croft. Being the daughter of a respected barrister, Bree has occasion to observe London’s prominent families. It is she who gave me this print, which appeared recently in Holland’s window on Oxford Street. If you study it, you will see that the artist knows the principal characters, as all are quite carefully drawn. There is no mistaking your papa or his fellows at the gaming table. Lord Graymont is recognizable, holding the deed to Delamere Castle. He appears to be the villain of the piece, but what puzzles me is the portrait of an older man in the shadows. Bree tells me that the man is Lord Knowles. He looks sinister, doesn’t he? Does he have a connection to your family? It is interesting, too, I find, that the artist has given the four young women the same face. If I am not mistaken, that is just how your mother looked.

Now, to what Bree has discovered about Graymont. He is known to have a keen interest in architecture and building and is one of the few members in the Lords to wholeheartedly endorse Mr. Barry’s design for the new Houses of Parliament. His own house on Clarges Street is reputed to be a marvel of Adams’ work. He is considered to be eligible, with an extensive estate in Wiltshire; however, he apparently shuns events where ladies meet prospective suitors. Bree has it on good authority that Graymont has never appeared at Almack’s. There is a shocking story that he compromised a girl, Miss Bexley, and refused to marry her, but I could not learn the truth of it. In any case, it appears that Graymont is wholly indifferent to society’s opinion.

Furthermore, there is some estrangement between Graymont and his older sister, Lady Sydling, and his younger brother, the Honorable Lionel Rayne. Graymont has kept his distance from them for years. He was traveling abroad at the time of his mother’s death. He is likely to be found at Moody’s, a boxing establishment in a low area of Soho. As Moody’s is not far from Windlesham House, I will attempt to determine if the rumor about his boxing habit is true.

There is no talk of your father at present. Your family’s house in town has been let for the Season to a new-made baronet, Sir Augustus Woodford. If there is any further news to report, I will write again. I hope you are keeping well and that these woes will soon be a thing of memory.

Your affectionate cousin,

Georgie

Cordelia put aside the letter. It explained why they’d not heard from their father. With a tenant for the house, father must, temporarily at least, be in funds. She took up the print. Georgie was right about the artist capturing her father’s likeness and Graymont’s. The handsome father she remembered from childhood was just visible in the caricature of a buffoon slumped in a chair, an empty glass in hand, waistcoat straining over a plump belly, eyes dazed in a round, red face. Graymont thought that her father pursued his pleasures to feel alive, but Cordelia found that idea too sad to contemplate. She preferred being angry with her father to pitying him. She didn’t know the other figure, Lord Knowles, whoever he was, looking over his shoulder in the shadows in that odd, sinister way. His presence in the print seemed an omen or a warning.

What Georgie didn’t mention struck Cordelia as more interesting. Graymont was years younger than any of the other card players at that table. He was not, after all, one of her father’s usual cronies. His triumphant fist, clutched around the deed to Delamere, appeared to have nothing to do with the four young women cast out into a storm.