Chapter
Two
MELROSE HOUSE, KENT, EARLY MAY
“Did you fetch my silk ribbons, Hattie?” Sarah mumbled around a mouthful of pins as Hattie entered the small parlor with her marketing basket over her arm.
“Silk ribbons? No.” She stripped off her gloves and set them down on the table beside the door. “Was I meant to?”
“For pity’s sake, Hattie! I asked you to?—”
“Kindly remove those pins from your mouth before you speak, Sarah.” Margaret glanced up from the book she’d been reading. “I don’t wish to explain to Dr. Paulson how you managed to swallow half a dozen sewing pins. He already thinks we’re mad as it is.”
“Oh, hang Dr. Paulson! What do I care what he thinks?”
“I daresay you’ll care when those pins are lodged in your throat,” Margaret said mildly. “I can’t think it would be at all pleasant. Rather like swallowing a cactus.”
Sarah plucked the pins from between her lips, dropped them onto the table beside her chair and turned to glower at Hattie. “I asked you to fetch four yards of violet silk ribbon from the mercantile to trim my new straw bonnet.”
Dash it, she had, hadn’t she? That is, Sarah had shoutedsomethingto her from the doorway as she’d made her way down the pathway that led to the tiny village of Chatham, and it was just as likely to have been about ribbons as anything else. “Oh, dear. I beg your pardon, Sarah. I forgot.”
“Honestly, Hattie, you may as well let Molly do the marketing if you’re going to be so forgetful.” Sarah tossed the unfinished bonnet onto the table with a tragic sigh. “I was going to wear that bonnet when I called on Mrs. Lyons today, but I can’t possibly wear it without the violet ribbon.”
“I truly am sorry. Perhaps this will cheer you up.” Hattie rummaged inside her basket and pulled out a letter. “Alice Weatherby has written to you from London.”
“Another letter already?” Sarah held out her hands, brightening at once. “Look, it’s a lovely long one. What a pity Alice is leaving London at the end of the week, just when the season is about to begin. There’s sure to be one delicious scandal after another, and no one to report it.”
“Dear me, whatever shall we do without an endless flow of gossip from London?” Margaret turned over a page of her book. “What will become of us?”
“I know. It’s tragic, is it not?” Sarah huffed. “Alice has all the best gossip.”
Hattie stifled her sigh as she dropped into her chair opposite the window. Alice had been as faithful a correspondent as she’d promised Sarah she would be.
Far more faithful than certain other people, despite the promises they’d made.
She’d had such high hopes when Mr. Briggs, the postmaster had handed her the letter this morning, only to have them immediately dashed. Cass hadn’t written to her since last October, and the eight months since she’d received his last letter felt like an endless, lonely walk through a barren desert.
Eight long months, and this despite the dozens of letters she’d sent him during that time. At first, she’d put his silence down to his father’s illness, but the Sixth Earl of Windham had drawn his last breath nearly four months ago, and still she hadn’t heard a word from Cass.
Perhaps he no longer had time for her. He was the earl now, after all, handsome, elegant, and wealthy, and she…well, she was who she’d always been. Harriet Parrish, the quietest of Lord Melrose’s three reclusive sisters. No one special. A spinster in the making. Certainly not the sort of lady who could hold the attention of a fashionable earl like Lord Windham.
“Ooh, listen to this! Alice says Mr. Allan and Lord Fullerton were spotted stumbling about the streets outside of Brooks’s Club in the wee hours of Monday morning!”
“There’s nothing so scandalous in that, surely?” Margaret turned over another leaf of her book. “Don’t all the most fashionable gentlemen frequent Brooks’s Club?”
“They do, yes, but it seems Lord Fullerton had been dipping rather deep that evening, and…” Sarah let out a gasp. “My goodness! Alice says Mr. Allen accused Lord Fullerton of cheating at whist, and Lord Fullerton responded by issuing Mr. Allen a challenge to a duel! Dear me, London is terribly exciting, isn’t it?”
“Exciting? No. Scandalous and disgraceful, yes.” Margaret snapped her book closed and set it aside. “I do wish Alice weren’t quite so fond of gossip.”
“Indeed. I can’t imagine it does you any good, reading about such nonsense, Sarah.” Hattie rose, marched across the room and snatched her book of pressed flowers down from the bookcase. “For my own part, I don’t care a fig for the scandals of London’s fashionable aristocrats.”
Sarah ignored this and continued reading, breathless with excitement. “Lord Henry and his brother, Viscount Golding,were seen entering Madame White’s, a notorious brothel in the Strand in the wee hours of Sunday morning. They emerged some hours later in the company of a pair of birds of paradise, and?—”
“For pity’s sake!” Hattie slammed the heavy book onto the table, making Sarah and Margaret jump. “No brothels, and no birds of paradise, if you please, Sarah.”
“You needn’t make such a fuss, Hattie. I know all about birds of paradise.” Sarah gave a nonchalant wave of her hand. “Chère amies, too. Alice says all the fashionable gentlemen have them.”
“That’s quite enough, Sarah.”
