Chapter 13
“Welcome home, Lady Lavinia,” said Mrs. Down as Lavinia walked into the manor.
“Thank you, Mrs. Down. Any correspondence?” Lavinia slipped off her gloves and straightened her fingers that had been tingling after the brisk walk from the coaching stand.
“On the hall table, my lady. And a calling card from the modiste regarding Lady Frances’s new gloves.” Mrs. Down lowered her voice and looked sidelong at the table. “And a letter with a seal I do not recognize?”
Lavinia’s breath caught, but she kept her voice even. “Thank you. Please see that Lady Frances is informed I’m home. She may want to know about the gloves at once.”
She moved to the hall table, where three items awaited: the modiste’s note, a handbill about the upcoming vicarage fete, and a letter. The paper was thick, the wax pale blue, the monogram a stylized S. She ran her finger over the seal—Nancy Rowson’s mark.
Her friend’s letters were never dull.
She broke the seal and unfolded the heavy, cream-colored sheet. The handwriting was large, slanted, and impatient.
Dearest Lavinia,
I am hosting a garden party next Thursday—nothing so grand as a ball, but the guest list is extremely well chosen.
I invited them with you in mind. Scarfield insists on inviting one or two dullards, but I have mitigated this.
You must come, and bring Frances. Indeed, bring every scrap of beauty your family possesses, as the company could do with improvement.
There is a rumor that Hester is bringing her new French pastries, and you know how I suffer for pastry.
Yours,
Nancy
P.S. Wear the blue if you can. You know the one I mean.
A smile threatened the corners of Lavinia’s mouth, but she suppressed it for dignity’s sake. She barely had time to replace the letter on the table before a flurry of footsteps announced Frances, who swept into the foyer with the urgency of a house on fire.
"Lavinia! Did you hear from Nancy? You did, didn’t you?" Frances’s cheeks were flushed, her hair slightly mussed in a way that suggested she’d run straight from the schoolroom to intercept her sister. "Tell me at once!"
Lavinia feigned coolness. "I did receive a letter, yes. You are not to pounce on your correspondence like a terrier on a biscuit, Frances; it is unbecoming."
Frances bit her lip but could not stifle the excitement. "She’s inviting us, isn’t she? To the garden party? I just know she is. Oh, I do hope it’s not to be one of those solemn assemblies where no one dances or laughs above a whisper—"
Lavinia held out the letter, letting Frances snatch it up with both hands.
"It is not a ball," Lavinia said, "but Nancy assures me the guest list is meticulously curated. Her own words."
Frances was already halfway through the letter. "Pastries! She mentions French pastries!" She clapped her hands in delight. "And look, she wants us early. I wager it is so she can show us her new hat before the rest of society arrives."
"I suspect," Lavinia replied, "it is because she knows we are the only guests guaranteed to rescue her from boredom before the hour." She reached for the letter, but Frances hugged it to her chest.
"Lavinia, do you think—do you suppose—" Frances’s face turned suddenly solemn, the gleam of mischief replaced by uncertainty. "Do you suppose that Mr. Hemsworth will be present? Or that anyone will notice me at all?"
Lavinia arched an eyebrow. "Mr. Hemsworth? I thought you found him insufferable."
"I do," Frances said, eyes downcast. "But he is better than most. And he is so very tall. It is unfair that men get taller as they grow older, while I have not grown at all since last Michaelmas."
"You have grown considerably, if only in wit," Lavinia said, gentler now. She reached out to smooth an unruly lock from her sister’s brow.
"But if it is a husband you seek, perhaps you ought to cultivate more subtlety.
Men are like wild pheasants: approach them directly, and they bolt for the hedgerow. "
Frances giggled, but then turned earnest again. "Do you think it’s possible, Lavinia? That I might meet someone suitable at the party? I know I am not out yet—not officially—but sometimes I think I am already an old maid, and all the men who might have wanted me have found prettier girls."
Lavinia’s heart gave a painful twist at that. "You are seventeen, Frances. Entire wars have been won in less time than it takes to find a good marriage." She tried to smile, but it felt stretched over a chasm. "Nancy married at two-and-twenty, and she was the first of us to go."
Frances pursed her lips, then brightened. "I shall make a plan. If I do not find a husband by the end of next season, I shall become a poetess and scandalize the ton with my opinions." She struck a pose. "They say Lady Byron writes her own verses."
Lavinia managed a real smile then. "If you scandalize the ton, I hope you will do so under a name that does not further lower our credit."
Frances wilted, just slightly, and for the first time, Lavinia saw the uncertainty that lay beneath her sister’s exuberance. You have given her nothing, the inner voice scolded. Not a dowry, not even a dress new enough to warrant attention. You must do better.
She reached for her sister’s hand, squeezed it once. "We will go to the party, Frances. And if Mr. Hemsworth is present, I shall contrive to make him notice you, even if I must spill a teacup in his lap."
Frances looked up, hope lighting her face. "Truly?"
"Truly. I may even wear the blue, if it is not in rags." She softened her voice. "But you must be yourself. No more talk of old maids and wasted chances, all right?"
Frances nodded, her spirits restored. She took the letter, spun on her heel, and danced up the staircase, calling, "I must tell Mrs. Down to ready my white muslin! And Lavinia—if you do see Mr. Hemsworth, you must not call him a dunderhead again, even in jest!"
Lavinia snorted as soon as Frances was out of sight. She leaned against the hall table, the letter still clutched in her hand. She read it again, slower this time, and allowed herself the smallest measure of anticipation.
Nancy’s parties were more than mere diversions. They were battlefields, and every well-dressed lady was a general, plotting her way toward victory.
But what, precisely, is your objective, Lavinia? The question drifted in her mind. To find a match for Frances? Or for yourself?
Her eyes dropped to the last line of Nancy’s letter—You know the one I mean—and a ghost of a laugh escaped her. The blue dress. A relic from her own debut, which she’d worn to three assemblies before her father’s illness made further appearances impossible.
It would be out of fashion. It would be the only thing in the room not acquired within the past twelve months.
Still, it was better than nothing.
She set the invitation aside and went up the stairs to her room, determined to plan for the garden party with the discipline of a field marshal.
If Mr. Crawley’s threats were to be believed, her time was short. One week. Enough for one last attempt—one last, spectacular attempt—to change the fate of the Pembroke family.
You are not yet defeated, she told her reflection in the smudged glass of her dressing table. Not so long as you have your wits, your blue dress, and a single invitation.
She sat, pen in hand, and began a list of everything they would need for Thursday.
And everything she would need to do before the Scarfields’ garden was even within sight.
"It is a fine thing to see you both here!
" Nancy said, arms open as if she meant to sweep the entire world into a single, perfumed embrace. She advanced upon Lavinia and Frances in the graveled drive before they had even mounted the steps to the Scarfields’ portico, her dress a confection of chartreuse silk that would have looked dreadful on anyone else.
"It is half past twelve, Nancy. We are practically late," Lavinia replied, dipping into a curtsy so exaggerated it could have been used to instruct Queen Charlotte herself.
"Not to me, you aren’t," Nancy whispered. "The real guests never arrive before the hour. That gives us time to choose the best seats and sample the pastries before the rest." She turned a scrutinizing eye on them both. "Lavinia, you wore the blue. I am gratified and a little surprised."
"It was either that or Frances’s white muslin, and we agreed I am too old for angelic hues," Lavinia replied, glancing down at the bodice where Frances’s careful mending had almost disguised the seam at the waist.
Frances executed a perfect, if somewhat breathless, curtsy of her own. "Thank you for inviting us, Your Grace."
Nancy snorted, "If you call me Your Grace in my own garden, I shall have you both forcibly ejected."
"I should like to see you try," said Lavinia, but the reply was muffled as Nancy, true to her threat, pulled them both into an embrace that threatened to topple all three.
The Duke of Scarfield appeared at the threshold, stony of jaw and so conservatively dressed he might have been summoned from the previous century. "Lady Lavinia, Lady Frances. Welcome. My wife has been looking forward to your company all week."
"Has she, indeed?" Lavinia replied, smoothing her hair and recovering her dignity.
"I have," Nancy said, "and I mean to keep you both entirely to myself for the first half-hour, Oscar, so you may go and preside over your cheeses and wines and whatever else it is you find so absorbing.
" She handed him a small list, which he accepted with the air of a man who long ago surrendered all control of his household.
"Frances, Nancy tells me you have taken up the art of French conversation," the Duke said.
Frances blushed prettily. "Lady Lavinia insists on it, Your Grace. Though I am afraid I shall never master the accent."
"One must simply pronounce everything as though in great pain," Nancy said. "That’s how the Parisians do it."