“You might as well call me Josie,” Josie said ungraciously. “And—well, I just want—”
“Josie has a list,” Tess said. “Do you remember what’s on your list, darling?”
“Why bother? There’s no question of narrowing the field of my admirers.”
“A list is an excellent idea. I myself had just such a list when I selected Mayne,” Sylvie said.
“You did?” Josie asked. “May I ask what was on your list?”
“A great deal of money. A title, because I was born into the French nobility and it is too late for me not to care about such things.”
“Do you sympathize with the revolutionaries?” Josie asked with some fascination.
“My feelings are divided. In the beginning my father was young and idealistic. We moved to Paris and he became Napoleon’s finance minister. But then the corruption…the nepotism…We fled in the night. My mother never shared my father’s hopes. She loathed the revolutionaries because they killed, and so brutally, many people whom she loved. Luckily, my father saw the direction of the wind, and brought us all here a year or so before war was declared again. But of course, there were those people we knew who did not survive.”
Tess made a sympathetic noise.
“The people had little to eat under the old system,” Sylvie said, with a little Gallic shrug that said volumes. “But this is a gloomy subject, and will make us all more miserable than we deserve to be.”
Tess grinned at that. “So there is a degree of deserving misery, then?”
“Of course! These foolish men who have spread rumors about our Josephine, they are deserving much misery. Much. Do you know them, Mrs. Felton?”
“You must call me Tess; after all, we are nearly sisters,” she said with a mischievous smile. And then sobered. “The ringleader is a man named Darlington, and I have never met him, to the best of my knowledge. Apparently, he is a second or third son, I don’t remember which, to the Duke of Bedrock.”
“Bedrock’s surname is Darlington?” Sylvie said. “A charming name for such a one as this.”
“I’ve seen him,” Josie said. “He’s very good-looking, all yellow curls and blue eyes.”
“I suppose we could have someone seduce him,” Sylvie said thoughtfully. “Men are so amenable in the first days of love. I have noted it innumerable times.”
“It’s a shame that Annabel is married; she would take to the task immediately,” Josie said.
“Another sister?” Sylvie asked. “Do you realize the legendary reputation the four of you have gained amongst the ton? I heard about you the very moment I arrived for the season. Four exquisite Scotswomen who took London by storm and scooped up all the available bachelors.”
“I’m afraid that our happiness in marriage may in itself have led to Josie’s uncomfortable experience,” Tess pointed out.
“The contrast is just too great,” Josie said, striving for a careless tone. “Between myself and my sisters, I mean.”
“You are just as beautiful,” Sylvie said. “It is simply your misfortune to follow such remarkable successes. You must expect a certain grumpiness amongst those Englishmen who were not chosen by your sisters.”
The door opened and Josie’s chaperone, Lady Griselda, poked her head in. “Oh darling,” she said, “there you are! Timothy Arbuthnot has been looking for you with a veritably desperate air.”
“I like it better here,” Josie said. In truth, it was the first time all day that she had felt happy.
Griselda raised a delicate eyebrow. “In that case, I shall join you, if I may.” She smiled at Sylvie. Obviously, Josie thought rather grumpily, Mayne’s choice of wife pleased everyone.
Well, who could not like Sylvie?
She was laughing with Griselda now. Griselda had apparently encountered Lady Margaret Cavendish, whose hair—according to Griselda—had changed color. “She’s yellow as a marigold,” Griselda was saying. “Actually the color of burnt marmalade, if you know what I mean.”
“And what hair had she last week?” Sylvie wanted to know.
“Brown,” Griselda said decisively. “I can’t imagine how she did it.”
“They have all sorts of potions that will dye one’s hair,” Josie said. “Don’t you remember how Papa used to encounter dyed horses at shows occasionally, Tess?” She didn’t add that their own father was quite adept at dyeing a horse black, in order to make him a more attractive candidate for sale.
“We are discussing who should seduce this objectionable person,” Sylvie said, “this Darlington, and now of course I know precisely who should do it.”
“Do what?” Griselda said.
“Make Darlington fall in love,” Sylvie said. “You, chérie. You are the one.”
“What?” Griselda blinked at her future sister-in-law.
Josie almost giggled. Apparently Sylvie was not a good judge of character. Griselda was certainly beautiful enough to seduce Darlington or anyone else, given her pale blond curls and lush figure. But after being widowed some ten or eleven years previous, Griselda had not indulged in even the slightest indiscretion. Her reputation was, in her brother Mayne’s rather acid summary, a thing of snowy wonder that made her a terrible foil to his exploits.
“You must seduce this Darlington,” Sylvie said patiently. “We need the man silenced, and I’m sure it won’t be difficult for you. Why, Josie reports that he is good-looking. And yellow-haired. The two of you will be exquisite together.”
“I don’t wish to have anything to do with that poisonous viper,” Griselda said. “And I know precisely what he thinks of me. He told Mrs. Graham that I was unattractively chaste.”
“Then he meant precisely the opposite,” Sylvie said. “If you were not quite so chaste, you would be enormously attractive. And Griselda, surely you do not need us to create some compliments for you?” She waved at the glass, and all four women instinctively looked at Griselda’s reflection. “Guardez!”
Josie had to smile. Griselda had reached the age of thirty-two without a single wrinkle, nor any sign that she was much over Sylvie’s age. Her hair fell in perfect ringlets, and her figure was wound in something soft and silk and utterly entrancing. In short, she looked like a china shepherdess, only not nearly as hard nor as cold.
Tess leaned forward. “Though it is vastly improper of me to say it, Griselda, I think that Sylvie has a wonderful idea. All you would have to do is make him fall in love with you. He’s not a complete devil. You might find him amusing. Felton says that Darlington graduated with a First, which is remarkable for a gentleman. Likely, he’s bored.”
Sylvie was waving a fan gently before her face and nothing could be seen but her mischievous eyes. “I think that I have seen the gentleman in question, dear Griselda.”
“Hmmm,” Griselda said.
“You must have noticed his shoulders.”
“As Tess mentioned, this is a remarkably improper conversation,” Griselda said, obviously remembering her role as chaperone.
“I am quite used to impropriety,” Josie said. “Not a one of my sisters found her husband without a scandal.”