Cordelia winced. “It’s not as if I have a choice.”
“Of course, you have a choice,” Hazel snapped. “What you lack is a plan.”
“Yes, thank you,” Cordelia said, lifting her napkin dramatically to fan herself. “I was quite looking forward to my tea, and now, I have indigestion.”
Matilda reached across the table to take her hand. “What will you do, Cordelia?”
Cordelia met her gaze. There was no humor now, no dramatics to shield her from the weight of the question.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I truly don’t.”
There was a moment of tense silence. And then, because none of them could stand to linger in sorrow too long, Hazel leaned back.
“Well… I suppose you must marry a marquess or a pirate, whichever comes first.”
Cordelia laughed, both startled and grateful for the comment that made absolutely no sense, yet it achieved its purpose. And though the shadows still lingered behind her laughter, for now, in the company of friends, she could pretend that everything might yet be all right.
“Truly, Your Grace, I assure you I am quite adept at navigating the sun without protection,” Cordelia insisted as she stood awkwardly among displays of frilly parasols in every pastel hue known to woman or modiste.
“Nonsense,” said the Dowager Duchess with the tone of one who had already made peace with the fact that Cordelia would resist and had every intention of ignoring her. “No young lady of sense ought to be walking about without proper shielding. You will catch freckles or worse, attention.”
Cordelia blinked. “Oh dear. I do so dread becoming interesting.”
“Too late, I’m afraid.”
Both women chuckled as they continued to peruse, one willingly, the other not so much. The parasol shop was a dainty little boutique tucked just off Bond Street, decorated in florals and satin ribbons. It smelled faintly of lavender and smugness, and Cordelia was certain that every single employee had silently determined that she was tragically ill-equipped to belong among such delicate luxuries.
“I did have one,” she muttered to the Dowager, fumbling with a powder-blue model shaped like a tulip. “But it… well… it was left behind, at my guardian’s house.”
The Dowager turned to her, hands clasped atop the knob of her walking cane. “Did you not say your lady’s maid returned to retrieve your essentials?”
“She did,” Cordelia admitted, “but there were limits to what she could carry while dodging the housekeeper, the butler, and on one particularly unfortunate morning, the gardener with a suspicious mind and a surprisingly loud sneeze.”
The Dowager let out a short hum which in her case could have meant anything fromhow inconvenienttomy son is going to be hearing about this.
“It would be no trouble,” the Duchess said at length, lifting a pale green parasol and studying it as though considering its potential to ward off both sun and scandal. “I shall mention it to Mason. He will send for the remainder of your things.”
Cordelia froze.
“No! I—Please do not trouble him. It’s only a parasol. I can live without one. I have strong bones. My complexion has already been compromised by years of ill-advised afternoon picnics.”
But the Dowager only offered her a bemused look over the curve of a pale pink handle. “My dear, have you truly not yet learned that whatyoucall an inconvenience,hecalls Tuesday?”
Cordelia’s eyes widened with horror. “But that’s precisely what I mean! Iaman inconvenience or at the least, very near it. And I prefer not to draw further attention to my status as a helpless refugee who forgot to pack her slippers and her dignity.”
The Dowager turned fully to face her now, her expression softening with a warmth that always managed to unnerve Cordelia far more than a lecture would have.
“You are not helpless,” she recounted. “And you are certainly not an inconvenience. At worst, you are… untidy.”
Cordelia huffed. “Charming.”
“But even if youwerean inconvenience,” the Dowager continued, choosing a seafoam parasol with faint embroidery along the edges and handing it to the shopgirl, “I would still tell Mason. Because it is the right thing to do. And because I strongly suspect thatyouare no burden to him at all.”
Cordelia flushed.
“That’s… that’s not true.”
“I wager,” said the Dowager, sweeping toward the counter, “it is more true than you are ready to hear.”
