“She said it’s not real fur but something yer friend’s costumer came up with. What about yer costume?” she then asked me.
Oh, dear. It seemed by the hopeful expression on her face that I was indeed going.
“Ye’ll need a mask so no one knows who ye are,” she continued on. “Her ladyship has hundreds of them and wigs.”
I was quite familiar with them as my sister and I had played for hours among the relics of our distant family as children.
In truth, I hadn’t thought about going. What with having only returned from the north a few weeks earlier, the new inquiry case, and Lily’s arrival, there had been no time to plan.
“And Mr. Brodie?”
She was so excited that I hadn’t the heart to tell her that he would most likely have preferred to be shot again rather than attend. He was not up for this sort of thing unless it was in the matter of a case.
There were moments when her streetwise facade slipped, and I was reminded that Lily was in fact barely out of childhood in spite of her too worldly experience. Much like wearing a mask, I thought.
It did seem that even though he wasn’t aware of it yet, Brodiewasgoing to my aunt’s party at the Grosvenor. As for a costume? That seemed highly unlikely.
After we had both dressed, we descended the stairs into a different sort of chaos as my aunt’s staff scurried about while others who were to be part of the waitstaff at the Grosvenor Hotel had already departed, including Munro.
My aunt stood in the midst of it all, giving instructions much like Wellington, I imagined, at the Battle of Waterloo. But then I had seen all of it before.
My aunt had taken over the Grosvenor Hotel for staff and guests, and had already sent a coach with her costume and other clothes on ahead. Food was to be prepared by the hotel staff with my aunt’s servants assisting.
Templeton was to arrive later in the day along with Mrs. Finch who was in charge of make-up, along with the orchestra, and a variety of other entertainments that my aunt had arranged. Munro and others of my aunt’s staff were to see to the security of those attending the party with other hotel guests about.
The only other event that might rival the All Hallows celebration was her Christmas event. I reminded myself of the possibility of leaving the country for that one.
“Crivvens!” Lily exclaimed. “I never seen nothin’ like this!”
I smiled to myself as we headed for the kitchen. Get used to it, my dear, I thought.
At the servant’s table just off the kitchen, where it was much safer, we helped ourselves to breakfast.
Afterward, Lily insisted that we go up to the Sword Room, so that I might find something to wear to the party.
Together we put together pieces from some long-ago ancestor’s wardrobe. It was a hodgepodge of a coat here, pants from some 17thcentury distant cousin there, and topped off with a sweeping tri-corn hat.
“What do you think?” I asked when we had more or less put it together as best we might. The only thing missing was a saber. The grin that spread across Lily’s face told me everything I needed to know.
Afterward, she pleaded for another duel, and I showed her some of the moves I had been taught when in France.
“I never knew a lady could do something’ like that,” she exclaimed. “Madame always carried a knife in case one of the customers got mean-tempered.”
I didn’t go into the fact that I also carried a knife, courtesy of Munro when I went off on my first adventure.
“How old is her ladyship?” she had asked me then. She seemed most serious, and her eyes widened as I told her. I saw the dark shadows that followed.
“I never knew anyone that old. No one lives that long.”
She didn’t yet know my aunt that well.
Her expression sobered. “What will happen when she…?” she started to ask.
I knew the rest of it, of course. I had experienced it myself as a much younger child at the time— the fear that everything might be taken away, that my sister and I might find ourselves out on the street, and for Lily now in a strange city where she didn’t know anyone.
“It will happen one day, I suppose,” I admitted, I would not gloss things over with her. “However, you have Linnie and myself.” Much like a family, I thought.
“And Mr. Brodie too,” she added.
