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As the sandglass materialized from thin air and slowly turned on its head.
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“Well played, Papa,” Seventh Sister murmured when she felt the games begin.
With avid interest, she peered into the depths of the Mirror Pond…
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Victorian England. Rathbourne Place, Pimlico, London.
“Perhaps we should have procured a house in a better locale, my dear Charles,” Lady Rathbourne murmured as she studied the text from a shiny new magazine.
“Listen to this. ‘Pimlico… The last-mentioned neighborhood, especially, is proverbially fatal to fashionable expectations; yet many simple-minded persons from the country, opine that, in the neighborhood of a royal palace, they must be right... even royal preference cannot establish the aristocracy of a vicinity famous only for its brick pits and its ale.’”
Lady Rathbourne looked up over the top of the printed sheets to blink at her husband owlishly.
“Are we not fashionable here? But the views of the park are gorgeous, and the abode is newly constructed, sparing no expense. The furnishings I hand-selected myself. We even have flushing toilets!”
“Mama!” Lady Elizabeth admonished with a shocked gasp. “You taught us never to speak of such things in company.”
Lady Rathbourne turned to her daughter and continued blinking as though something was stuck in her eye.
“Family is the exception, dearest. And what did I say about correcting your elders?”
The younger daughter of the household sighed dramatically, preempting her foray into the discussion.
“Our chances of being invited totonaffairs were already slim, and now…”
She put her egg spoon down, breakfast temporarily forgotten.
“We’ll never find good husbands when even our place of residence is deemed unfashionable! I don’t want to marry a muscled lug from the heathen hills back home, Papa. Do something!”
“That was rather a far-fetched logical leap,” Lord Rathbourne finally deigned to comment. “One article in a magazine should not void your chances of noble matrimony. Do recall that you are daughter to an Earldom—”
“A Scottish Earldom!” Lady Elizabeth complained.
“And a wealthy one, no less,” Lord Rathbourne added, ignoring the interjection.
“But we know no one here except Great Aunt Tabitha,” his lady wife contributed, clearly siding with her daughters.
“If we are not situated in the most fashionable heart of theton, our probability of success during the Season has decreased dramatically, you must admit, Charles.”
“Hmm,” Lord Rathbourne murmured noncommittally.
And so the debate went on with the family’s usual conversational fervor, while Brigid finished her breakfast with hearty zeal and efficiency, listening with only half an ear.
Sometimes, she paid attention to her distant relatives’ convoluted ramblings. Sometimes, she even offered her own commentary, though her perspective usually produced more confusion and incomprehensible blinking.
Most often, however, she was lost in her own world, daydreaming when she wasn’t…well…night dreaming.
It wasn’t her choice to accompany the family to London for the girls’ first Season. She’d much rather stay home at Castle Mar. But of course, even though she was merely a spinster companion at the ripe old age of twenty-five, the Rathbournes loathed to leave her by herself.
And the twenty or so live-in servants.
Not with all the knaves that lurked in nearby territories looking to prey on unsuspecting maidens, they said. Not with all the wolves howling in the dark forests behind the castle and the monster of Loch Ness waiting in the deep for tasty human morsels to fall in.
What rubbish, Brigid thought, pushing up her finely-wrought wire-frame glasses. She felt much more at ease in the Scottish Highlands than even theunfashionable parts of dirty, smoggy, smelly London. As to monsters… she found them rather fascinating.
