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“You turned into something, someone completely different, so aggressive in trying to get your pleasure off me. What’s your game, Josie? I don’t understand. Are you trying to seduce me into taking your maidenhead, so that your family or friends can blackmail me over it? It won’t work, I tell you. It’s a well-known gambit, and I’ll have none of it.
“Or are you not earning enough as a milliner? Are you trying out a new line of work, and was I to be your first customer? Believe me, my dear, I don’t have to pay women to get affection.”
“How dare you!” hissed Lady Josephine. Tears pouring down her cheeks, she ran for the park exit. She did not stop running until she reached the boarding house door. She did not look back to see if he had followed her.
Mrs. McCurdy was waiting inside the front door.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, “will ye look at the state of ye. Have ye been rolling around in a hedgerow all night, to show up now in this condition? Whoever he was and whatever he did t’ ye, ‘tis nae more than ye deserved.
“Yer friend Miss Glump seems to have recovered. Ye should ha’ been here tending to her, not out all night wi’ the lads. Get ye t’ bed now, but I promise ye, ye’ll both be gone out of this house on the morrow.”
Lady Josephine stumbled blindly up the stairs and entered the bedchamber. Lady Hermione took one look at her and somehow understood. She took the younger girl in her arms and rocked her, like a mother with a child.
“Did you and he—?”
“No,” said Lady Josephine. “At least, only just a little bit. But then he said the most awful things to me, called me a whore and worse….”
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” Lady Hermione said sadly, stroking her friend’s hair.
“I sometimes wonder,” Lady Hermione finally said, “what they really want out of us. Men, I mean. Do they admire a woman like my mother, who thinks only of her own pleasure and ambition, and doesn’t give a whit, really, about the man’s happiness or her own reputation?
“Or do they want someone like me, who would gladly avoid all that messy, physical business with men, and just wants babies and a happy home?”
“Is there nothing in the middle?” Lady Josephine asked through her tears.
“I don’t know. I really don’t,” Lady Hermione said. “But we should get some sleep now. We both need to work in the morning.”
They tried to sleep. But Lady Josephine sobbed to herself all night long, and it broke her friend’s heart to listen.
* * *
Next morning, they arose early and slipped away, avoiding Mrs. McCurdy’s ritual breakfast. There would have to be a reckoning with her, but that was best left till evening.
At the shop, Madame Vallencourt welcomed Miss Glump back with pleasure. But when she turned to greet the other girl, she observed the red-rimmed eyes, the puffy cheeks and the sloppily arranged coiffure. Her own cynical eyes narrowed.
“Mademoiselle, you look like hell,” she said. “I do not know what sort ofpetit drameis playing in your personal theater right now, but you should bring the curtain down on it swiftly. I cannot put you at the front of the store this morning, looking like this. Go to the back and help Millie stitch silk flowers for the spring bonnets. Pull yourself together.”
So Lady Hermione was alone up front when a pair of spoiled Society girls entered to try on hats. “Oh, Annaliese, look at thisdarlinglittle one with the ribbons! I must try it on immediately. Miss! Over here, please! These shop girls aresoslow,” she murmuredsotto voceto her companion.
Lady Hermione had been trying to hide her face. She had known the voices immediately, two German sisters, Lady Annaliese and Lady Gretchen, who had been her juniors at Saltonbury Academy in prior years.
But Madame was keeping an eye on her, so she had to turn around. “Why, it’s Lady Hermione!” exclaimed Lady Annaliese, the older of the pair. “Lady Hermione Glastonbridge, working in a hat shop—what sort of jape is this?”
“It must be part of some wager,” said her sister. “You know what thehaut tonis like, with their little bets on this, that and everything.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Lady Hermione said weakly. “It’s a wager. I’m afraid you girls have spoiled it for me now!”
Madame Vallencourt was all ears. Glastonbridge? This must be the daughter of that infamous noblewoman, then! Madame did not care to judge. She did a quick mental calculation of what a mistress of the Prince Regent was likely to spend every Season on hats, not to mention the business such a woman’s friends might bring, and she saw her life suddenly blessed.
Of course, now the secret was out. Within the hour, Lady Hermione and Lady Josephine were in a cabriolet, headed back to the Glaston Arms. From there, Lady Josephine would be placed in a comfortable carriage that would take her the long distance back to Norfolk County, back to the ducal estates at Cloverdene.
There she would have to face His Grace her father. She cried the whole journey home.
