Page 20

“I ventured to say that in time, many women will wear spectacles. I don’t believe it, of course, but we must look ahead to your daughters.”

The idea of shepherding daughters, bespectacled or no, onto the marriage market filled Stella with horror, so she bent over Specs and gave her a kiss.

“You must wash that animal if she’s to live in my house,” Mrs. Thyme stated. “I shall ring for a bowl. You may not use your own washbasin because of the fleas.”

A short time later, Stella lowered Specs into a large bowl of warm water. After the shock—during which she scratched Stella’s arms in a frantic bid for escape—Specs accepted her fate.

“She’s enjoying herself,” Mrs. Thyme said with satisfaction.

Stella didn’t agree, but Specs was certainly brave. She was energetically swimming around the bowl, her sopping head barely above water. Stella scooped her out and wrapped her in a towel, dropping a kiss on her wet fur.

Specs glared up at her as Stella gently rubbed her dry. No, she did not enjoy that swim.

“She’s even more ratlike when wet,” Mrs. Thyme said, shuddering. “I suppose she may remain in your bedchamber, Stella, though she really belongs in the stables. It’s most unusual, but then, you are unusual, aren’t you? Your husband will have to accept your eccentricities.”

“What if I don’t find a husband?” Stella asked, sitting down so she could dry Specs’s stomach. “By the end of the Season, I mean?”

“I have a plan,” her aunt said, seating herself as well. “We’ll travel to Paris. Now that that horrid Napoleon is in exile, Paris is itself once again. The French are all eccentric, so we’ll be welcomed there. You will return next Season with Parisian flair, Stella. An entirely new wardrobe.”

Stella put Specs on the floor. She meowed, rose up on her back legs, and batted at Stella’s calf.

“I believe she is requesting that you pick her up,” Mrs. Thyme said, bending over to see the kitten more closely. “Look how fluffy she is after a bath! You must bathe her every day, Stella.”

Stella reserved judgment on that.

“Would you like to see something funny, Aunt?” Stella sang the first line of her favorite hymn. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Still standing on her back legs, front paws on Stella’s leg, Specs opened her mouth and caroled along with her.

Mrs. Thyme broke out laughing. “Her voice isn’t as deep as yours, but it is energetic for such a small creature. Mr. Thyme will love hearing it, though darling, please don’t sing that hymn. He can’t abide the words.”

Stella raised an eyebrow.

“A wretch?” her aunt said. “He is scarcely a ‘wretch,’ and neither am I. And then the ‘Shout, Shout, Hallelujah’ is quite energetic, so improper. In this family, we don’t shout. I believe the author was a Protestant, which explains everything, doesn’t it?”

“Specs is catholic in her musical tastes,” Stella said. “Would you like to hear her sing in French?”

Mrs. Thyme chuckled. “Yes!”

So Stella and Specs sang the first lyric from “Plaisir d’Amour,” after which Mrs. Thyme said that she would instruct the cook to make a special beef broth for Specs.

“But no taking her to tea parties,” she added. “I thought Lady Boodle’s pianoforte was wheezing, but now I gather that was your kitten’s musical contribution.”

Specs was trying to climb the ruffle on Stella’s gown to reach her lap. “Perhaps I might bring her to the dowager duchess’s ‘riparian entertainment’?” Stella asked, disentangling Specs’s needlelike claws and picking her up. “If Julia Fitzwilliams is invited, I’m certain that she will bring her dog.”

“But what is that entertainment?” Mrs. Thyme asked, her brow darkening. “I find Her Grace so irritating when she taunts us with her large vocabulary.”

“‘Riparian’ simply means by the river,” Stella said. “I don’t think she meant it to be superior, Aunt.”

“Dukes and duchesses never do, but somehow they always impress their superiority upon us anyway,” Mrs. Thyme said moodily. “Her son, the Duke of Huntington, seems to feel that his smile will make us forget his rank. But that is not the case.”

Even thinking about Silvester made Stella feel sick.

“I suppose you might bring Specs along, if you are able to keep her on a leash,” her aunt continued. “You wouldn’t want her to dash into the river, given how much she enjoyed the bath.”

“Would you like to hold her?” Stella held out the fuzzy kitten.

Mrs. Thyme accepted with a dubious expression, but after Specs licked her finger with a minuscule tongue, she broke into giggles. “I have a pink ribbon that would suit her white fur. Or perhaps blue would be even better, to accent her gray stripes.”