“Try to stay out of trouble, as difficult as that might be,” he said with what appeared very much like a smile as I made another grand flourish and slipped away through the crowd.
I found Templeton in an adjacent room usually set up as a gentleman’s smoking room. Tonight it had been transformed into a reading room with heavy velvet drapes on the walls, her table in the middle with three other chairs set around and her cards spread before her. She was appropriately attired as a gypsy fortune teller.
“Please, come, sit at my table. Let me tell your fortune,” she said, the act complete with accent, and added, “If you dare.”
I sat as she shuffled the cards, then had me choose seven of them. She turned them over one by one until they were all spread before her.
“Ah, yes,” she began. “I see a journey to a far place, and a man; a very handsome man, one who will sweep you off your feet.” She looked at me then in my make-up and mustache with my wig and hat and full pirate’s costume which I was certain hid my identity.
“Good evening, my friend. Have you accepted his proposal?” Templeton smiled. “Your mustache is twitching.”
Twitching indeed.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
“I could say that it’s in the cards,” she replied.
“Bloody hell!” I told her. She gave me that look.
“Wills may have mentioned something about it.”
Wills, as in William Shakespeare, her spiritual and theatrical muse. A more than three-hundred-year-old spiritual muse, if one believed in such things. She smiled.
“So it is true.”
“I have not accepted, precisely,” I replied.
“Coward.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No need to beg, and I won’t pardon you.”
“You don’t know anything…” I stopped.
“You would be a fool to refuse. He is the only man who has ever challenged you, and puts up with your schemes,” she eyed my costume on that one. “And most assuredly lights that fire inside you.”
“Fire?”
“Or it might have something to do with… I’m getting something.” She looked up in triumph.
“Toes!” she exclaimed. “Yes, that’s it.”
I stood to leave. “Ridiculous.”
“As I said… a fool. The man is obviously in love with you.”
Or something to that effect, I thought, as I left thegypsyto her next client.
Ridiculous! But I knew my friend was right.
There was so much to see and experience; food created especially for the night; an orchestra with goblins and witches swirling about. As the night continued, I caught a glimpse of Sir Knight with a fox— my sister, of course, and a man dressed as a hunter —James Warren. Out to catch the fox?
And then there was my aunt, lovely as Marie Antoinette. Except perhaps for the nasty fake gash across her neck that Elvira Finch had created. She wove her way through her guests sharing a laugh or comment, then eventually arrived beside me.
“Your party is a great success,” I complimented her.
“Yes, isn’t it. And the dear child does seem to be enjoying herself.”
