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“You’ve drunk all my brandy,” Joshua said.
She looked at the glass in her hand. It was empty. Oh.
“Lucy has taken to drinking brandy,” she said.
“What? She’s…how old?”
“Nineteen. I hide the bottles but she finds them. The first time, it was afternoon. Mama has this pet goat called Guinevere, and the goat gets into the roses. Lucy got the goat out and, under the influence of brandy, she brought the goat inside so it wouldn’t attack the roses, and she tied a bonnet on its head.”
“What for?”
“So no one would know it was a goat. It was a cunning disguise.” She laughed. It had not been funny at the time, although Lucy had been laughing. But Lucy had been drinking brandy, and now Cassandra was drinking brandy, and really, the brandy did a marvelous job of making things funny. “So there was this poor goat, in this giant bonnet covered with fake cherries and grapes, running around the house, dodging the servants, and bleating and breaking things and eating the flowers. Finally, we chased her outside. Poor Guinevere. She wouldn’t be caught again and wore the bonnet for an extra day until I could get it off her.”
He laughed. She did like his laugh. It warmed her like brandy.
“Another time, Lucy dressed up in one of Mama’s old gowns and a wig and sang bawdy songs.”
“What bawdy songs?”
“I am not singing a bawdy song.”
A slow, wicked smile spread over his face. “You know the words, don’t you? Perfect, polite, prim Cassandra, singing bawdy songs.”
“It was Miranda. She’s my older sister. Half-sister, I mean. From Mama’s first marriage.”
“I don’t care about Miranda. I want the song.”
“I mean, Miranda found this old songbook and dared me to perform one, but then…”
She’d been twelve to Miranda’s sixteen, and didn’t understand the words. She had sat at the pianoforte, heart thumping, her breath so short she wasn’t sure if she could sing, but she was determined to prove herself to Miranda, so she played the first two notes, and paused, and everyone was listening—the Bells and the Larkes were there too, as were the vicar and his wife and mother—and then—
“Miranda sang it instead,” she said.
Miranda got into trouble, of course, and enjoyed every minute. Mama and Papa never learned the plan; they’d patted Cassandra on the shoulder and said they were glad they could rely on her to be good.
That time, Cassandra had complained, because Miranda and Lucy were naughty and got all the attention, whereas she was good and got none. So Mama took her to Leamington Spa, on a special trip just for her.
She missed Mama too.
“Sing it now,” he said. “Shock me, Mrs. DeWitt. Besides, you have been drinking, and this nation has a proud tradition of using drink as an excuse to sing bawdy songs. It is your patriotic duty.”
“Oh my. Well. If it’s my patriotic duty.” It did seem like an excellent idea, and she enjoyed the way he was looking at her. “It was called ‘Oyster Nan’. Um…”
She gathered her hazy thoughts and sang:
As Oyster Nan stood by her Tub
To show her vicious Inclination;
She gave her noblest Parts a Scrub,
And sigh’d for want of Copulation.
He burst out laughing, his eyes dancing with delight, and she laughed too, enjoying herself more than she ought.
“What next?” he said. “Did Oyster Nan get her—”
“Don’t say it.” She pushed her hair from her forehead and tried to remember. “There was a vintner,” she said. “And they…they sported.”
