Page 69 of Miss Determined
Mama tied the pink ribbons as if Lissa were still eight years old, and Lissa wanted to fidget as badly as an eight-year-old too.
“I never suspected Mr. Dorningwasthe best people,” Mama went on. “A good fellow with good prospects, yes, but a marquess! Such a pity about his cousin.”
Mama was not offering condolences on the passing of a man taken much too young. She was lamenting the hiatus mourning put on a peer’s social schedule.
“I doubt Lord Tavistock feels the loss of a few weeks’ prancing around at Almack’s, Mama, and he truly does mourn for his cousin. Let’s be on our way, shall we?”
Lissa wanted to be moving, to walk off the restlessness that had plagued her since Mrs. Sycamore Dorning’s cordial tea six days ago. The invitations had started up two days after that, another from Mrs. Sycamore Dorning, this time for a picnic at Richmond. Lady Della Dorning had started off with the requisite chat over tea.
Lissa had been rendered speechless to see an invitation from the Duchess of Moreland for a musicale at which her son, the composer and conductor, would offer a few selections at the pianoforte. Then an invitation had come from the Duchess of Quimbey for a Venetian breakfast, and Mama’s joy had been complete.
While Lissa wondered what Trevor thought all these invitations were in aid of, because they were surely his doing.
Mama donned gloves and bonnet and squared her shoulders. “I am glad I allowed you girls to add a few items to your wardrobes. One can beau courantwithout spending a fortune.”
Allowinghadn’t come into it. Lissa had announced the need for some fripperies, and Grandmama had started making suggestions.
“I will do the talking with the solicitors, Mama. You are to be very much on your dignity, the widow who is too ladylike to speak candidly.”
“Iamtoo much of a lady to tell that wretch Purvis what I think of him. I loved your father dearly, but he made a grievous error when he decided to entrust his business to Smithers and Purvis.”
That was as much disloyalty as Mama had ever expressed regarding her late spouse.
And it was enough. When they were ushered into the solicitor’s office, Mama glanced around as if somebody needed to empty the dustbin. The room exuded the same staid opulence it always had—these audiences were annual rituals for Lissa—but she was struck by the extent to which Purvis’s place of business resembled a stage setting.
Legal tomes marching in height order along the shelves, Blackstone quotes framed on the walls.
That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution.
The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.
A portrait of some bewigged lord justice imperiously pointing to what was intended to be the Magna Carta, symbolic scales at his elbow, a statue of blind Justice in the shadows behind him.
Though no actual work appeared to be ongoing in Purvis’s sanctum sanctorum. None of the books were open. No documents were being drafted on the table closest to the window. No briefs, red ribbons trailing, were open on the desk.
“Do be seated, ladies,” Giles Purvis said. “How lovely to see you back in the capital. I trust you’re settling in?”
Lissa took a chair by the hearth, though Purvis had gestured to the reading table. “We cannot settle in, Mr. Purvis, and we lay that sad fact at your feet. Tea would be appreciated. China black for me. Mama prefers gunpowder.”
Mama took the second wing chair on a rustle of lace and muslin. “If you have gunpowder, Mr. Purvis. Not everybody does. You mustn’t go to any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, ma’am. Happy to oblige.” He stalked out, and Mama aimed a placid smile at Lissa.
“The DeWitts have a talent for playing roles,” Mama said. “You see before you the Duchess of Crosspatch Corners.”
“Then I suppose I’m Lady Amaryllis.”
“Just so.”
Two clerks returned with Purvis, one carrying a chair, the other a tea tray. Purvis’s opening salvo was to ask Lissa to pour out.
“You are our host, Mr. Purvis. I leave management of the service to you, and perhaps that good fellow,”—she nodded at a sandy-haired, freckled young man who looked too friendly to be immured in a law office—“will take notes, because my list is lengthy, and I do not have time to repeat myself.”
Purvis nodded at the clerk, who set the tray on the low table between the wing chairs and scurried off, presumably to find pencil and paper. Purvis took his seat directly facing the hearth and checked the strength of the tea.
“What sort of list, Miss DeWitt?”
“Modifications to our financial situation necessary to honor the spirit and letter of the documents which control your legal duties.”
