Miss Charlotte shook her head. “No one caught my particular interest, but I keep telling you, I am not on a husband hunt. In any case, I wouldn’t go out of my way to dance with any one of them again.”
“Don’t be too quick to judge. It’s not that easy to suss out someone’s nature while dancing,” Greer said. “I hardly even heard most of my partners speak, but I enjoyed the intermission with Lady Emily.”
“The dark-haired lady in the cream gown?” Beatrice asked.
“The very one.” Odd that Miss Rare-Foure had noticed with whom he’d danced and dined since they’d been in different rooms.
“I think I danced with her brother,” Charlotte mused, “or maybe it was a cousin. He was perfectly able to speak on the dance floor. Too able!”
“What do you mean?” Beatrice asked, as they started walking together across the hall to the ballroom, carried along by the other guests.
“Asking questions.”
He noticed Beatrice stiffen. “What kind of questions?” she asked.
“Nosy ones. About me and you,” Miss Charlotte added.
“What did you say?” Beatrice asked, her voice filled with dread.
“I said I was the younger sister of a duchess and an heiress, happy to be out in—”
“An heiress!” Beatrice stopped in her tracks, and Greer stopped with her as did Miss Charlotte. They were nearly trampled by the guests behind until the flow of people rearranged itself and began to go around them. Greer felt like a stubborn mule stopped in a small stream.
“What can you mean?” Beatrice asked, keeping her voice hushed but sounding frazzled.
Miss Charlotte looked as cheerful as ever. “I told people who asked that you are a toffee heiress. I may have mentioned treacle, too.”
Even Greer had no words for that, watching as Beatrice struggled not to shatter with fury on the spot. This could become a loud and inappropriately nasty discussion, disapproved strongly by that ladies’ book Miss Charlotte had been quoting.
“I wouldn’t worry, Miss Rare-Foure,” he said, hoping to calm her. “Hardly anyone who is here has been in your shop. As you told me, most of the nobility send in their servants. And even if they have entered, you are usually in the back. Plus, your sister is a duchess. I doubt they know her origins either.”
They’d gone over all this before, but she’d gone from red in the face to quite pale.
“You are insane,” Beatrice said through gritted teeth. “Insane, I say. Both of you! Will people really believe my secret family has amassed a fortune from toffee? How would that even be possible?”
Miss Charlotte, bless her heart, started to giggle, seeming utterly unconcerned by her sister’s distress.
“Well, they nearly have, haven’t they?” Greer pointed out. “A fortune from confectionery.”
“No, Mr. Carson, not a fortune. That term implies a great deal of money, such as the Duke of Pelham might lay claim to or a viscount with whom I was dancing earlier. It does not bespeak of my parents’ modest livelihood. And what has that got to do with me? How would that make me an heiress in any case?”
“What if your family had some of those treacle wells I’ve heard about?” he asked.
At his question, both girls fell silent, looking at him with wide eyes, and then Charlotte burst out laughing, although Beatrice merely shook her head. He thought he heard her mutter something very unkind under her breath.
Then she looked him squarely in the eyes. “Those are a myth, a story, a tale told by drunkards and idiots,” she hissed, “or by shifty spielers usually to unsuspecting green youths who haven’t a clue what’s o’clock, often in some swindle designed to separate them from their wealth. I can tell you precisely how treacle is made, and I assure you, it does not come from a well!”
“Then I was the victim of a shoddyocracy,” he mused.
Miss Charlotte, who was wiping her eyes, paused at the word making him assume she was unfamiliar with it, but all she said was, “Treacle wells!”
Mr. Carson shrugged. “Then what are they?”
“The best I can determine,” Beatrice said, “is the confusion comes from an etymological mistake between the Middle English wordtreacleand the Old Frenchtriacle, which had to do with healing, and so any of the healing wells in England became treacle wells, like the famous one at St Margaret’s church in Binsey.”
Greer considered what she said. “So, the dormouse in Mr. Carroll’s book about that Alice girl?”
Beatrice looked nearly apoplectic. “If you are going to take the word of a talking dormouse in a children’s story over mine, then I cannot help you,” she said.
