“Yes, there is,” countered Emma, hands on her hips as she pinned the girl at her side with a glare. “There’s them molls wot pretend to be duchesses. Was a Duchess of St. Giles wot lived near us, and she always ’ad gents comin’ to see ’er, she did.”
Oh dear. Sybil feared she knew what manner of duchess the young girl was speaking of.
“Them are ladybirds,” the older girl hissed in the younger’s ear, though it was loud enough to carry to Sybil. “Emma, you mustn’t speak of such things in front of the fancy ladies wot come here.”
“Just wanted to know wot kind of duchess she was,” Emma grumbled.
The exchange between the two young girls wasn’t overheard by the headmistress. No doubt it would have been frowned upon. But Sybil was neither shocked nor offended by the child’s frank discussion. She could only imagine what manner of hardships the girl had endured before she had landed at the orphanage, at the mercy of others, without mother or father.
“I’m a real one,” she confided in Emma softly. “Though quite newly. I’ve only been married for three months. Before that, I was plain Lady Sybil.”
Emma grinned up at her. “I don’t believe there was nothing plain about you, Duchess.”
“I can assure you there was.” She winked. “Why, there still is, in fact. Do you know that my hair is straight as a stick?”
“No.” The girl looked up at her with wide eyes.
“And it’s the color of mud too,” she added. “Not at all beautiful like yours, which is such a lovely shade of golden-red.”
Emma patted her ringlets. “Thank you, Duchess.”
“Miss Emma and Miss Abigail, do finish making your curtsies to Her Grace and Lady Verity,” the headmistress instructed. “There are other girls waiting their turn.”
“That was quite kind of you,” Lady Verity murmured in an aside as the din of moving children drowned out her voice.
She rather felt as if she had passed some manner of test in her sister-in-law’s eyes.
“I was a girl once myself,” she said simply.
And although she had been born to an aristocratic family that had been far wealthier than Emma’s clearly had been, Sybil’s childhood had not been a happy one. She had learned to fear her father’s rages, particularly when he was tippling in his study.
The girls moved dutifully along in the procession, and Sybil was careful to smile at each child who curtsied and bowed. Some of them looked down and didn’t hold her gaze. Others smiled shyly or spoke so quietly she couldn’t make out their words. Each one of them clearly held Lady Verity in unabashed awe.
And Sybil could see why. Her sister-in-law possessed an innate ease with the children. It was equally apparent she cared very much for the orphans in the Children’s Foundling Hospital’s care. Sybil was gratified to see that they all appeared healthy, clean, and well-fed. Not all children in orphanages were as fortunate.
When the formal introductions came to an end, Lady Verity invited the children to sing with her in the music room. The headmistress watched on as dozens of her charges moved to the room where a lone piano awaited them, clearly trying their utmost to obey the rules and move with polite care.
Sybil moved as one with the sea of children, settling in a chair by the piano as Verity sat on the worn bench, fingers poised to play. A few small, excited voices chirped above the silence like birds excited at the prospect of spring after a long, hard winter.
“Children,” Lady Verity said in a firm voice. “You know the piano does not play until we have complete silence. You must be very quiet for her to offer us a song.”
A hushed silence fell over the ragtag group of orphans, each one of them, from the oldest, who looked to be about fifteen, to the youngest, who looked about two years of age. Teasingly, Lady Verity toyed with the keys, bringing forth a hint of sound.
“You must all of you hold your tongues,” she cautioned. “She just whispered to me that she will soon play if you are on your very best behavior.”
The younger children’s eyes were wide as they took in the piano, clearly believing that the musical instrument possessed a mind of its own. Sybil chuckled, as amused by Lady Verity’s antics as the children were.
Thus satisfied that her audience was eagerly awaiting their musical performance, Lady Verity began to play a rousing song to which—it quickly became apparent—she was inventing the words as she went along. She called out children by name and created rhyming, nonsensical lyrics, singing all manner of silly things until the children were laughing, momentarily distracted from their plights.
Sybil found herself chuckling along with them, equally distracted from what awaited her when she returned to Everett’s town house that evening.
CHAPTER 11
“Do you think we should include Lord and Lady Weatherby as guests, Riverdale?”Mamanasked from over herfilet de saumon à la Mornay.
Everett summoned a vague recollection of a portly lord and his silver-haired wife, trying to recall any recent interactions he’d had with them and failing. “If it pleases you to do so.”
“Lady Weatherby and I came out at the same time,”Mamansaid, sighing. “How can it have been so long ago now? I feel as if I have blinked, and forty years have passed me by.”
