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“And now Lady Quinseley has it,” Bianca said with a sigh. If only there had been some cousin or nephew to inherit the earldom! Perhaps the current circumstances would be different. “Why do the worst people get rewarded for being the worst people?”
Before Tina could answer—if indeed a satisfactory explanation existed for the question posed—the knocker banged a familiar pattern against the town house’s front door.
“It’s the others!” Tina hurried toward the entrance. “What are they doing here?”
Bianca and Tina arrived just as the butler swung open the door, allowing a wave of wallflowers to spill into the entranceway.
“Grab your bonnets, ladies,” Joy sang out sunnily. “We’re going to Hyde Park!”
“We are?” Tina said doubtfully. “We never go to Hyde Park.”
“Today we are,” said Goose. “We’re celebrating!”
Tina accepted her bonnet from the butler. “What are we celebrating?”
Goose clapped her hands. “It’s Bianca’s birthday in two days, and we have the best present. She—”
Peavy clapped a hand over Goose’s mouth. “Don’t spill the secret yet.”
“Are you certain I’m fancy enough to mingle with aristocrats and the fashionable?” Bianca asked as she tied on her bonnet.
“More than fancy enough,” Doc said confidently.
“Come on, come on!” Bouncing on her toes, Joy ushered the group out of the town house and into a large coach-and-four, where they nonetheless had to squeeze their hips together and sit on each other’s laps in order to fit eight women in a single carriage.
Luckily, the entrance to the park was less than a mile from the Eagleton town house.
Every afternoon at this hour, the cream of Polite Society gathered in Hyde Park to gad about in long, looping circles for two hours a day. The more raffish gentlemen were astride horses or atop rackety phaetons. The more stately ladies were ferried about in open barouches and landaus. Everyone else strolled on foot—all the better to see and be seen.
“Let’s promenade!” said Joy as the eight friends tumbled out of the overstuffed carriage.
The young women linked arms in two rows of four and set off on the footpath.
“What’s this about?” Bianca asked Joy as the group found its rhythm.
Tina was on Bianca’s other side, and Peavy was on Joy’s other arm.
Joy looked as though she might explode with happiness. “You remember how Peavy’s father is a solicitor?”
“Yes,” Bianca answered warily. “Am I going to have to defend myself to a judge for my birthday?”
“That’s what a barrister does, not a solicitor,” Tina whispered.
Joy squeezed Bianca’s arm. “Peavy mentioned to her parents that you had attended the St. Trevelyan ball with us. And do you know what her father replied?”
“Of course she doesn’t know,” said Tina. “We weren’t there.”
“Joy, justtellher,” interjected Peavy.
“All right, all right.” Joy’s eyes sparkled. “Peavy’s father said, ‘I’ll wager the poor girl never has a moment to sit down, with a dowry like hers.’”
Bianca blinked. “He said what?”
“You have a dowry,” Joy said, bubbling over with excitement.
“I… have a dowry?” Bianca said faintly.
“A big one,” Peavy confirmed. “Father was the solicitor who wrote it up. He can’t recall the terms precisely because it’s been twenty years since last he saw them—”
