“How will they ever attract nice husbands like that?” Bunny asked, voice shaking. “No man wants a woman who is smarter than him and makes more money than him. They’re only going to attract moochers and losers.”
“They are far too young to be worried about future husbands,” Beck said forcefully.
“That’s exactly right, Grandmamma,” Cressida said, gliding over to stand near the girls.
I bristled.
“This is the twenty-first century. They can stand on their own two feet. Besides,” she added, posing elegantly next to Beck and tossing her glorious curtain of blond hair. “I’m sure there are billionaires out there who want a woman who pulls her own weight and is not a gold digger.”
Beck looked at Cressida gratefully, and my stomach clenched. The HR skank gave me a triumphant look.
“Shall we go in for dinner?” she suggested, placing a hand on Beck’s arm. “We have quite the menu planned.”
“Enola and Annie are reading the Felicity books from American Girl,” I said loudly to the group as Cressida grabbed Beck’s arm to lead him into the dining room while Ethel was helped out of her seat by the butler.
Cressida made a face. “Those books aren’t historically accurate. They should be reading the new Abigail Adams biography, among other works. In fact, why don’t I send you a list, Beck?”
I sat at my place setting, fuming, while Cressida flirted with our boss.
“Shall we serve the rest of Tess’s dish?” the butler asked, coming in with my tray of rabbit pudding.
Ethel waved him away. “Put it in the kitchen.”
I hunkered in my seat. White-coated servers brought out the first course. None of them even made a face when they saw me in my outfit. But I could feel their judgment.
I slurped the fennel and thyme soup that was placed in front of me.
I had picked up a bigger spoon for the soup this time. Except that it still didn’t seem to be correct because everyone else was using a different spoon.
Who cares which spoon is which? I’m going to enjoy my soup.
I balanced a crouton on the spoon, trying to keep my large sleeves from dragging in the soup bowl. I had to grab a bunch of fabric on the sleeve and direct the spoon to my mouth to manage it. Right as I was going to take a bite, the crouton swan dove off the spoon and down my dress.
Shit.
The problem was that I wasn’t just wearing a normal bra; I had gone all out and was wearing a stay. Unlike a corset, a stay was not curve hugging. It instead resembled a piece of armor and gave you a very triangular shape. There was also no way to easily go fishing for a crouton.
I took another spoonful of soup. The crouton slid down to my belly button.
I need to get this thing out.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled.
Everyone ignored me. Cressida was making everyone laugh with a funny story about her great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Alexander Hamilton.
I hurried to the bathroom.
In order to take off the stay, I had to remove all of the overclothes, which included the layers of petticoats, the dress, and the decorative shawl. It was a whole operation, and I was huffing and puffing by the time I had managed to extricate the crouton. I sat on the toilet to catch my breath.
Maeve:How was your rabbit pudding?
Tess:Terrible.
Holly:They didn’t like it?
Maeve:Imagine no one liking a dish that was boiled within an inch of its life?
Tess:That was the historically accurate cooking method. Not that it matters because Cressida is apparently some sort of Founding Father descendent, and she practically planned the meal and is already banking her future on the fact that Beck is going to want to make babies with Alexander Hamilton’s descendant and not me.
