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‘Touché, Cassandra,’ he whispered. ‘Changing from breeches into skirts has done nothing to improve your temperament.’
Their secret squabble was interrupted by the Ambassador’s wife rising to her feet, apparently a signal to the lesser ladies to take their leave also.
In the flurry of goodbyes Cassandra received several promises of future invitations. Lady Hartley said that her daughters would be charmed to take her about with them. ‘I expect you, Lydford, will have many calls on your time,’ she remarked archly as he bowed her out.
As soon as the door closed behind the last guest he collapsed gracefully into a chair, legs stretched out on the carpet. ‘Mother, I congratulate you. A more worthy collection of influential gabble-mongers you would be hard put to meet anywhere. And, if I recollect, only Lady Hartley has daughters to dispose of.’
‘You are out of touch, Nicholas. The elder is betrothed to Sommerson, and the younger is the reigning beauty in Vienna. She has no need to fear competition.’ Lady Lydford dismissed the Marriage Mart and turned to her son in renewed irritation. ‘What were you about, Lydford? You nearly ruined my entire strategy, arriving like that. Why, you might have put Cassandra completely out of countenance with your foolery.’
Nicholas snorted inelegantly. ‘Ha! Nothing puts Cassandra out of countenance, as I have found to my cost these last seven weeks. Why, if someone particularly disturbs her, she takes a pistol to them.’
‘Nicholas, that isn’t fair! I thought he had killed you.’ Her throat tightened with hurt. ‘I didn’t want to shoot anybody.’
‘Lydford,’ his mother began sharply, but Nicholas had already jumped to his feet and taken one of Cassandra’s hands in his.
‘I’m sorry Cassie, that was unworthy of me. You were wonderful.’
Time seemed to stand still as she let her hand rest in his, and their eyes locked and held. Then Lady Lydford cleared her throat, and the moment was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Cassandra,’ Miss Fox hissed in reproof, yet again.
Hastily Cassandra roused herself from her daydream and resignedly waited for the criticism that was surely to follow. She glanced down to check that her skirts were modestly arranged and that her satin slippers were still on the picnic rug and not on the springy woodland turf.
But no doubt Miss Fox was about to point out, as she had been doing all week, that Cassandra had once more committed some error of deportment or etiquette.
‘The chicken leg,’ Miss Fox continued, low-voiced. ‘Do not gnaw it.’
She was not aware she had been, but weeks of pretending to be a boy, staying in wayside inns where daintiness would have betrayed her, had made settling back to being a demure young lady extremely difficult. Her sheltered home life was no help, either. Cassandra soon discovered she had absolutely no talent for social small talk. Papa believed one should only open one’s mouth when one had something worth saying, and gossip about gowns, affairs of the heart and the weather were outside her experience.
Sighing, she dropped the well-nibbled bones back on her plate, and dutifully turned her attention to the conversation of the other two young ladies sharing the rug with her and Miss Fox.
Lady Hartley had been as good as her word, and had arranged this picnic outing to the woods to introduce Cassandra to her daughters’ circle of female friends. The elder daughter, Charlotte, secure in her new status as affianced bride, was holding court to a little gaggle of confidantes, all agog to hear of her bride clothes and wedding plans.
Lucy, the younger and more beautiful, caught Cassandra’s eye and giggled. The two girls next to Cassandra had filled the past twenty minutes with an impassioned discussion on the relative merits of smocked or ruched edgings for a new gown, and Cassandra smiled ruefully back at Lucy.
‘Will you not walk a while, Miss Weston?’ Lucy called, already getting gracefully to her feet.
With hardly a glance at Miss Fox for permission, Cassandra scrambled up, managing not to catch her toe in her hem as she was inclined to do, and joined her new friend.
‘May I call you Cassandra?’ Miss Hartley asked. She slipped her hand through Cassandra’s arm as they gained the gravel path encircling the ornamental lake which made this such a popular picnic spot.
‘I wish you would,’ Cassandra confessed frankly. ‘I find all this formality rather daunting.’
‘And you must call me Lucy.’ They strolled on in companionable silence for a few minutes, then, when they paused to admire some ornamental waterfowl, Lucy said, ‘I believe Miss Fox said you have not been much in Society? That you have lived quietly in the country with your father? I do envy you. We scarce see anything of dear Papa these days, he is always so engrossed in diplomatic affairs.’
Cassandra smiled wryly. ‘It certainly affords the opportunity to study the character of one’s parent,’ she said ambiguously.
‘Indeed, it must.’ Lucy took the comment at face value. ‘I understand he is quite a noted Classical scholar? And you yourself, I think, are quite an accomplished student.’
Oh, dear. Cassandra groaned inwardly. That would be another black mark from Miss Fox, who had impressed on her vigorously the absolute necessity of avoiding the label of blue stocking.
‘It would quite ruin your chances if the gentlemen thought you scholarly,’ she had said forcefully. ‘Your little…’ Miss Fox paused with a shudder, ‘jest last night about the relative characters of Napoleon and Julius Caesar, while no doubt very clever, is precisely the thing to avoid.’
‘Oh, no,’ Cassandra denied hastily now. ‘I am no scholar, although I can read some Greek and Latin. It does make it more interesting when one visits antique sites.’
‘You have travelled then?’
