“Capital. I really am looking forward to it. And Petunia doesn’t realize we’ve been learning more than simply etiquette.” Sophronia gave her best evil smile.
Dimity giggled. “Which speaks well of either your talent or her willingness to be deceived.”
“Is that a compliment?”
Agatha shook her red curls. “You should take it as one, Sophronia. Remember what Lady Linette says about compliments?”
“They are better than jewelry when hung about a girl.”
Dimity was suspicious. “Which I’ve never quite believed, but if it’s what you’ve got, take it.”
Petunia’s house was lovely, if not as grand as Agatha’s. It boasted two mechanicals, buttlinger and clangermaid, as well as a man-of-all-work and a cook. Dimity and Sophronia had to share a room, because the other was being converted to a nursery, but they had done so before and enjoyed the return to form.
Petunia was inconvenienced most mornings and occasionally of an evening, which was enough separation for Sophronia to find her society bearable. The rest of the time Petunia was vested in paying calls and shopping as much as possible before her condition became apparent and she was forced into confinement.
Sophronia left Bumbersnoot behind on most jaunts because of her sister’s evident dislike of the unfashionable accessory. No doubt he spent his time hunting stray bits of string and the occasional dust bunny, depositing in his turn small piles of ash in one corner of the room. Luckily for Sophronia, who had to clean it up, he always chose the same corner.
Dimity was so enamored of the shops they visited that Petunia turned an increasingly fond eye to her. Sophronia would never have thought her friend and her sister could grow close, but already Dimity had a standing invitation to return for another visit, with or without Sophronia.
“Would you look at those gloves? Have you ever seen anything so pretty? And the leather, it’s like butter.” Dimity was in ecstasies.
“Oh my, yes, Miss Plumleigh-Teignmott, they are indeed divine. Do you think they could be made up to match Sophronia’s new walking dress? Oh, Mr. Pilldorff? Mr. Pilldorff, these exquisite little gloves, in mauve, do you think?”
Sophronia nipped in to throw a spanner in the works simply because she could. “Did you see the lace ones, sister dear? Did you ever imagine such a thing as lace gloves?”
Petunia’s head snapped up, not unlike that of an excited squirrel. “Lace? Did you say lace gloves? Surely, you jest, sister.”
Sophronia rarely jested without purpose. She pointed mutely.
Petunia and Dimity scuttled off to the other display, followed by the obsequious Mr. Pilldorff.
Agatha sidled up to Sophronia. “What are you up to?”
Sophronia wasn’t interested in gloves. In her line of work, their detrimental effect on dexterity left her mainly engaged in constant removal of said accessory. Although the reinforced leather tradesman style were invaluable for climbing ropes. “Causing a ruckus for my own amusement.”
“They hardly need your assistance.”
“True. My poor brother-in-law. Although he doesn’t seem to mind much.”
Sophronia, after a few days’ confined acquaintance, was growing to like Mr. Hisselpenny. He was a gentleman of middling years with an ungentlemanly interest in investment banking and an unreasonable urge to spend most of his capital on his silly wife. Petunia could not have designed herself a more amiable husband. One could easily overlook the bushy eyebrows. Theirs was a match made in consumerism and pecuniary advancement. He liked the pecuniary aspect, and Petunia liked to consume.
Sophronia and Agatha drifted to the back of the shop.
“You’re doing well out of it.” Agatha gestured to the stack of packages they’d acquired on this one trip alone.
“I do need new things.” Petunia had decent taste, and they had the same coloring, so Sophronia was tolerably confident in her selections. Occasionally, she voiced a preference for extra pockets or a stronger belt, practical choices that Petunia took into account, thank goodness, because the rest of the time Sophronia let her decide. As a result, their sisterly relationship had only improved. “I’m not complaining, even if it is all in pursuit of an advantageously blue-blooded match.”
Agatha smiled. “She married for money, so she thinks you should marry for rank?”
“She saw me with Lord Mersey. For herself she wanted a husband who dotes, but for me…? I think she believes her new money plus my training at a finishing school can advance us both socially. Which sets up her progeny for improvement by association. That is, if she does not spend all her husband’s funds on gloves first.”
Agatha was somewhat upset by this assessment. “I believe she actually enjoys spending time with you.”
Sophronia was startled. “You think that likely?”
Agatha looked almost pitying. “Must everyone have an ulterior motive, even your family? What has Mademoiselle Geraldine’s done to you?”
For the first time Sophronia worried that her training—the first thing she had ever really been good at—was turning her hard. Was it negatively coloring her view of the world? It was protecting her, of course, but at what cost? And here was Agatha—whose father pushed her and whose mother was absent in all ways but death—noticing.
Sophronia turned to her quiet little friend. “I don’t mean to be harsh.”
“No, you don’t. That’s what worries me.”
A glad cry from Mr. Pilldorff at the front of the shop distracted everyone. Petunia and Dimity, plus the other shoppers, moved in his direction. He had a new delivery from Paris. Even Agatha was tempted. Or perhaps she wanted to give Sophronia time alone to think. Agatha could be thoughtful like that.
The distraction was, of course, something Sophronia found suspicious. Instead of gravitating toward the yelling, she looked around the shop—was someone trying to steal something? Perhaps Agatha was right and she saw conspiracies everywhere, but this was her training, and she couldn’t shake it.
A tall young man materialized out of the workroom at the back of the shop. He brushed aside the curtain as if he had been there, milling hats, all this time. He was dressed elegantly in a cutaway jacket, buckskin breeches, and a modest top hat, with a single fall of emerald silk at his throat. Not quite a dandy, but certainly a man of fashion. He would have been nondescript, any one of a hundred gentlemen shopping on Bond Street, except that his skin was a dark mahogany color unheard of in society.
Sophronia almost didn’t recognize him. Not because of time, for it had been only nine months, but because of the clothing and the way he moved. Before, he had been gangly, muscled and strong, but suffused with the awkwardness of nascent adulthood. Now his movements were liquid and his pace predatory, not all that surprising considering he was a werewolf.
“I didn’t know the sun had set,” said Sophronia.
“You’ve been here for ages. I was waiting for you to come out, but began to suspect you never would.”
“Is that your doing?” Sophronia gestured to the chaos at the front of the shop.
“Of course.”
“Beautiful work.”
The pause was awkward, full of unsaid truths and impossible actions. Sophronia’s brain swirled with options: apologies, confessions, caresses—so many possibilities that she froze with indecision. She had a wild desire to throw herself against him in a manner that would give her sister—and possibly Mr. Pilldorff—histrionics. Instead, her back snapped straight, inspired by thousands of lessons in posture. She held her hands stiff to her sides.