Page 32

Courageous lady! She’d just sacked her husband’s estate and the pinnace rode low in the water, weighed down by the ancestral jewels.

A small thump made Lavinia glance up. Emmeline had thrown down her sewing.

“I’m going out,” she announced, rising. “I told the vicar I’d bring round his bread.”

“Infamous.” Loveday dropped her own sewing into her lap and addressed her sister with exasperation. “You told Kelyn you’d finish up that pelisse. At this rate, the boys will be breeched before you’re done.”

“All the more reason to stop now.” Emmeline sashayed to the window and craned her neck to peer up at the sky. “It’s not even raining.”

“It’s raining all sorts!” Loveday’s chair creaked with the force of her protest. Lavinia bent again over her notebook. Rain wasn’t a bad idea. The men firing from the shore would lose sight of their target in the mist.

“I’m not sugar that I’ll melt,” Emmeline grumbled, dragging back to her chair.

“That you’re not,” agreed her sister tartly. But there was no strong acid in her voice.

“Finish up the pelisse,” she said. “Then you can run around wet-shod and dripping, and I won’t say a word. Although you’d do better to follow Mrs. Pendrake’s example. She knows how to take advantage of a slaggy day. She must have written a dozen pages!”

Oh, why involve her in it? Lavinia laid down her pencil and tried to match Loveday’s sweet smile. She was far more convivial than Emmeline, the chit. Plainer too, although her looks would be vastly improved if she didn’t tie up her hair in that matronly bun and wear such dismal dresses—dull brown and gathered all wrong for her figure.

“I’m only writing notes.” Lavinia adopted a modest tone, covering the exposed page with the palm of her hand. “A few additions for my little book on the shrubs of China.”

“I don’t know how she saw any shrubs in China,” muttered Emmeline, stabbing her needle into her sewing, an unpromising wad of red flannel. “This morning it was fine and she couldn’t be stirred.”

Lavinia froze her smile on her lips. Emmeline wasn’t a chit. She was a minx. Did she truly insist on war?

“Hush.” Loveday attempted to shush her sister. “Her work is important, and we must let her attend to it.”

Lavinia picked up her pencil with a gracious nod. Good of Loveday to champion intellectual women. But she found she couldn’t write another word. Emmeline’s barb had gotten under skin.

The day had dawned bright and clear. Lavinia had woken with the household—the roosters could have roused the dead—but she’d stayed in the small upstairs bedroom until the murmur of voices in the kitchen quieted. Only when she felt assured that Neal was well on his way did she creep down the stairs for her tea.

For all that she’d longed to accompany him, she couldn’t botanize all day in the sun without a bonnet. If she’d known clouds would blow in, she might have risked it.

Emmeline sniffed. In certain instances, such a sniff registered as a comment in itself. In other instances, it proved the opening salvo.

“She could work on her book anywhere, anytime,” said Emmeline.

So. The minx persisted. Well, Lavinia could handle a minx. They abounded in Society. Time-tested processes existed for establishing precedence among them. Here in Kyncastle, Lavinia would have to cut corners and establish dominance by any means necessary.

As an intellectual woman, she elected to take the high ground.

“Are you addressing your sewing?” she asked, looking up. “For you are not addressing me, and I do not think you address your sister. She has too much good sense to listen.”

A dignified reproach, one that enlisted Loveday, isolating Emmeline across the battle line with only her maltreated flannel as an ally. Emmeline, however, did not raise the white flag. She eyed Lavinia boldly.

“Neal brought you all the way here,” she said, her voice every bit as dignified as Lavinia’s, and equally reproving. “I should think you’d want to see what he had to show you.”

Vexing. The minx had a point. And Lavinia did want to see what Neal had to show her. If it weren’t for that cursed bonnet, she’d be by his side at this very moment, soaked and uncomplaining, checking every dandelion leaf in the parish for purple specks.

She felt her chin pucker as she repressed a frown. Emmeline noticed and pressed her advantage.

“Instead, off he went alone to Juliot woods.” She shook her head sadly and gave her curls a consoling pat. They were exactly the kind of curls Lavinia had always desired, fat and glossy. A very average shade, though. Mouse brown. “He looked disappointed,” she continued. “You think highly of yourself, and you don’t think of anyone else at all.”

“Emmeline!” Loveday gasped.

Lavinia’s instinct was to flinch, but instead she pressed her lips into a smile. “I cannot work on my book anywhere, anytime, as you suggest. In London, I am run off my feet. There’s always something to do. Parties, bazaars, dances, plays—so much stimulation! Every moment, a new engagement. I don’t think you’ve been to London?”

Loveday answered for Emmeline.