Chapter 12

C HAPTER 12

Lady Hester's houseguests began to arrive the next day, and Cordelia had no idea what to think of them. Lord and Lady Strauss did indeed bring their son, although he did not look like the sort who would inspire the world-shaking passion her mother had warned her about. He was tall and skinny, with an Adam's apple so prominent that it made his neck look kinked, and he wanted to talk about horses at remarkable length.

Lord and Lady Strauss were rather more interesting. Lord Strauss was also tall, but much wider than his son, with black skin and tightly curled hair. He had a deep voice and kind eyes, and when he laughed, the sound filled the room. Cordelia noticed this while trying not to appear to do so. " None but an excessively ill-bred person will allow her attention to wander from the person with whom she is conversing, " according to The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, though it did not provide any advice on what to do if your conversational partner assumed that you knew ten times as much about horses as you actually did.

Lady Strauss eventually shooed her offspring away and smiled apologetically at Cordelia. She had white skin and green eyes as sharp as peridots. "Do forgive him, my dear," she said. "He has not yet learned the art of making his passions interesting to other people. You are kind to put up with him as long as you have."

"Oh… no…" Cordelia swallowed. "I… err…" Stop stammering, this isn't an inquisition. Pretend you're talking to Lady Hester. "I appreciate it, really," she said carefully. "I'm not very good at conversation, myself."

"You're too kind," said Lady Strauss. "I love him dearly, but I know what he's like. Men are like that, my dear. It's a rare one that settles down enough to talk to before they're thirty."

Cordelia didn't know whether to laugh or not. Fortunately dinner was served before she had to decide. She was seated next to Master Strauss, but she was reasonably confident of her ability to handle utensils by now, and anyway, it didn't seem like he would notice if she used the wrong fork. Best of all, her mother was down the table, near the Squire, and couldn't see her. All she had to do was nod alertly and not spill anything and she could escape. In fact, she reasoned, it might be better not to talk to him too much. That way no one will think I'm in danger of being compromised.

Not that I could really be compromised at the dinner table. I don't think.

Not talking proved easy enough, because young Master Strauss began immediately telling her about phaetons and racing carriages and high-perch and driving unicorn and a great many other phrases that had very little meaning to her. She let it wash over her and simply waited until he stopped to take a breath before interjecting, "Oh," or "Hmm," or "My goodness."

Apparently this was acceptable, because after dinner, she pled headache and went up to bed and her mother patted her hand in a distracted way and didn't look angry or as if she cared at all.

"So you've decided to have a house party, hmmm?" said Lady Strauss. She had brought a bag of knitting to the solar, but Hester knew from long acquaintance that Imogene Strauss had been working on the same scarf for the last decade and carried it purely for protective coloration.

And indeed, as soon as tea had been poured and the door had closed, Imogene reached into the knitting bag and fished out a deck of cards and a flask. "I don't suppose I could interest you in a game, Hester?"

"Not on your life, you old cardsharp. But you can pour a little of that rum into my tea."

She obliged, and topped hers off as well, before shuffling the cards with hand-blurring skill and dealing out a solitaire spread on the table. Her hands were old and gnarled and the lace at her cuffs did not quite cover the thick blue veins, but she flipped cards as cleanly as any riverboat gambler. "I gathered by the way you worded the invitation that you've an ulterior motive for this little get-together?"

"Whatever makes you say that?"

"You underlined the please in please attend three times. You've never been an underliner, Hester, not even when we were at school."

"Yes, well. It seemed the easiest way to handle things. And I am very, very grateful to you for coming, you know."

Imogene put the ace of spades on the top row and followed it with a two. "The easiest way to handle this ever-so-charming woman staying with you, I take it?"

Hester grunted. She was not about to confide her premonition of doom, not even to Imogene, but the truth of the situation was damning enough. "She's setting her claws into Sam. He's fended off fortune hunters before, but she's a good deal sharper."

The ace of diamonds made an appearance and was duly placed in the top row. "Hmm," said Imogene noncommittally.

"You met her at dinner last night."

Imogene did not take her eyes off the cards. "Yes. It was plain within the first five minutes that the woman is out for marriage, and I suspect it's not the first time. Do you know anything about her?"

"Not a damn thing. Everything she lets slip sounds perfectly reasonable and I haven't been able to verify any of it. Her daughter's dropped a few hints, but not intentionally."

"Nervous little thing, isn't she?"

"Very. Clever enough, but ignorant as a newborn chick and knows it." Hester thought about mentioning Cordelia's behavior at that very strange dinner, but decided against it. There had not been a repeat, and all of Hester's suspicions were too vague and too bizarre to say out loud. "She'd do well enough if she was out from under her mother, I think."

"Hmm." Imogene studied her cards. "Perhaps. Do you want to know what I think?"

"No," said Hester. "I invited you to a house party and began discussing the alarming woman currently pursuing my brother simply so I could watch you cheat at solitaire."

Her old friend snorted. "Is that why you invited Lord Evermore? To try and persuade her to turn her attentions elsewhere?"

Hester froze with the teacup halfway to her lips.

Evangeline and… Richard?

Sharp green eyes searched her face. "Ah. Not your plan after all, I see." Imogene swept up the cards and began to shuffle them. "Pity, it would have been quite a clever one. Evermore is wealthy and unattached."

"Yes," said Hester faintly. Unattached. Yes. He was unattached. She could have attached him years earlier and had not, for reasons that seemed increasingly foolish now. Because a woman with her own inheritance has a little power, a wife has none at all. Because I made my own life after my betrothal ended in disaster, and I was too proud of that to give it up.

Because I could not bear to become old where he could see me.

She did not say any of these things to Imogene, because her friend would have cut them apart as neatly as she cut a deck of cards.

"It's not too late, you know," Lady Strauss said quietly.

"I'm old," said Hester.

"So's he."

"Yes, but fifty-year-old men still marry debutantes, not fifty- year-old women with bad knees." She gestured self-deprecatingly to herself.

"I think you do him a disservice," said Imogene. "And yourself as well. Still. Who else is coming?"

"The Green woman."

"Oh, her. "

Hester raised her eyebrows. "Do you dislike her so much?"

"I adore her, as you very well know. It's impossible not to. The problem is that she will throw all the rest of us in the shade. No one so plain should be so gorgeous. It sets a bad example for the rest of us plain people."

Hester snorted. "I thought it would be interesting to see what Evangeline would do."

" Interesting. " Imogene turned over a single card and studied it thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose. Adding a tiger to another tiger's enclosure is also interesting, I'm told."

"She was Samuel's mistress at one time. I am hoping he might be reminded of why."

"Or hoping that his new flame will show herself badly by example? Mmm." Imogene held up the card she had drawn. It was the queen of spades. "Be careful, Hester. You may drive her to move more quickly on your brother than you want."

Hester grunted. "I know. I just hope that between you and I and Richard and Willard, we can find some way to stop her."

"Oh, well, if Willard's involved, what chance does she have?" Imogene rose to her feet. "Perhaps I'll go play cards with this houseguest of yours. It might prove very interesting for all involved."

Master Strauss cornered Cordelia at breakfast, and was talking about horse breeding. Again.

"… but the hunting lines out of Stanville's stables! Gad, but if you could see them! Incredible necks, the lot of them…"

"Mm-hmm," said Cordelia. She knew that she was supposed to make eye contact when someone was speaking to her, but young Strauss had a pimple at the corner of his mouth that had become huge and white-headed and her gaze kept drifting back down to it involuntarily.

"… and hindquarters. Bunchy, you know, which was out of fashion for years, but that's where the power comes from in your hunters, but of course Stanville knew that, so he bought some of the finest studs in the country for a song…"

Everyone got pimples, of course, she didn't think any less of him for it, but it still drew the eye like a magnet. Cordelia glanced away to find her tea and took too large a swallow, nearly choking. She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin.

"… fifteen years later everyone is scrambling…"

Was there any way to tell him? No, there couldn't be. The Ladies' Book was very clear: " Avoid carefully any allusion to the personal defects of your companion. "

Her mother came in, which was either a reprieve or a dreadful escalation. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, more likely.

"Mrs. Green will be here later this afternoon," said Hester. "And Lord Evermore. Then our party shall be rounded out nicely!" She beamed at the room in general.

"I have not had the pleasure of Lord Evermore's acquaintance," said Evangeline.

"Oh, a fine fellow," said the Squire. "Wealthy as you like, but not high in the instep. He sets a good table, but he's not one of these frippery fellows you see about town, with their collar so starched that they can't turn their heads."

"And Mrs. Green is a delight," said Mrs. Strauss. "I always enjoy her company. Such a fine idea to invite her, Hester."

"Oh, she will put us all in the shade," said Hester, turning the newspaper. "She dresses so elegantly. I'd resent her terribly if she wasn't so charming."

"Good old Penelope," said the Squire. "Always livens up a room, doesn't she?"

Cordelia slipped a quick glance at her mother. Evangeline was buttering her toast with every impression of enjoyment, but her eyes flashed.

It occurred to Cordelia that this Mrs. Green might be considered a rival for the Squire's affections. Her heart sank. Her mother did not like to be thwarted. Has she ever had a rival? What will she do?

Apparently what she would do was catch Cordelia looking at her. Evangeline's eyes narrowed just slightly, and Cordelia quickly wrenched her head away, back to Master Strauss, who was still telling her breathlessly about Lord Stanville's stables. Cordelia wondered if she was supposed to know who Lord Stanville was. Was that something that everybody knew? Maybe he was famous and it would be strange that she didn't know. Better to simply smile and nod.

She found herself staring at the pimple again and dropped her gaze hurriedly.

"Oh, look at this," Lady Strauss said, reading aloud from the paper. "What a marvelous scandal! ‘At the wedding of Lord M——, when the service was performed, this paper is informed that the bride's hair, previously blond, transformed to mouse brown on the spot. Could magic have been used to change her hair color? This paper makes no judgment, but is unaware of alternate explanations. Lord M——, as readers will doubtless be aware, has been heard to express decided partiality for blondes…'" She folded down the edge of the paper and grinned over the top of it at her husband. "Now aren't you glad that you didn't prefer blondes?"

Her husband laughed. "Silly chit," said the Squire, shaking his head. "Thinking that a spell would hold up through a church wedding. What was she thinking?"

"Water, wine, and salt," murmured Evangeline, bringing a dainty bite to her lips and then patting them with the napkin.

"P'raps the fellow who sold her the spell said it would hold up," said Hester.

"Two-bit conjurers always promise things they can't deliver," said Evangeline, with an artful roll of her eyes. "A real sorcerer would have known better."

"Not many of those around though, are there?" said the Squire. "Not for a hundred years or so, if they ever existed at all. Now they just go around magicking up horses so they don't look lame when the buyer's there, or charming away warts. Or changing the hair color on silly girls."

Cordelia sat very still, not looking at her mother.

"Perhaps it was an alchemist," said Hester. "Sold her a hair dye and said it wasn't magic."

"Oh, alchemists, " her brother said, snorting. "Loons, the lot of them, trying to turn lead into gold and blowing themselves up half the time in the process. I shouldn't think there's many of them left either."

Cordelia was almost relieved when Master Strauss embarked on a long, meandering tale about a horse that had been dyed black and how the dye had run in the rain so that it became a purple-streaked horse. She laughed at that, possibly a little too loudly, and Master Strauss, encouraged, began recounting the pedigree of the horse in question unto the seventh generation.

"Cordelia, dear," said her mother, when she rose from the table, "will you join me in the Blue Drawing Room?"

Cordelia's heart sank, but she murmured, "Yes, Mother," and was not entirely glad to escape the discussion of carriages and horseflesh after all.