Page 11 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
“Doubtful,” Thomas returned between bites of fish smothered in a creamy pepper sauce. “We’ve only just arrived. In a few days, perhaps, once it is known we’re in town.”
The baroness waved away her dish, laying her fork down. “It’s known,” she said.
“How could it be?”
“Thomas,” the baroness said patiently, “we are newly arrived to town, and already a bit late for the start of the Season, mind you. Add to that the fact that we are staying in a home not our own, and with dear Mercy added to our number—of course I had to write to inform our friends of our current circumstances.”
Thomas’ brows arched above the frames of his spectacles. “So soon?”
“Naturally,” the baroness replied. “Else how would anyone know where or when to call upon us? Half a dozen letters at most, but unless I miss my guess—which I think we both know I never do—then our arrival to town will be known by morning at the very latest.” She accepted a fresh glass of wine from a servant waiting in the wings, and added, “We don’t want to miss out on the best invitations simply because no one knows we are in town.”
Juliet made a giddy little sound, her blond curls bobbing. “Shall we attend a ball this very week, do you think, Mama?”
“I have no doubt but that we shall receive invitations,” the baroness said. “Whether or not we shall accept them is in question. Of course, Mercy will require a new wardrobe in advance of our attendance—”
“I’ve instructed my solicitor to arrange an appointment with a modiste,” Thomas said. “I believe it’s scheduled for tomorrow.”
“Oh, but a good gown takes so much time to produce,” Marina said. “Why, our wardrobes alone required weeks, Thomas, if you’ll recall.”
Had Thomas flinched? Odd, that. Mercy cleared her throat. “There is no need to arrange your social schedules to accommodate me,” she said. “I’m perfectly content to remain at home.” At least until they had gone out for an evening’s engagement. It would be ever so much more convenient to slip out of the house unnoticed when there was no one at hometonotice.
“Don’t be absurd,” Thomas said, his voice dropping to a faintly surly tenor. “A suitable wardrobe is a necessity, and we’ll visit multiple shops to acquire quickly one for you if we must. You’ll need some things immediately, of a certainty, but I suppose the bulk of it could be produced over the course of the Season, delivered as they are completed. Money buys such convenience, after all.”
Money bought a great deal of things, but respectability was not one of them. One had to be born into that, or else well-connected enough to borrow against someone else’s. Papa had had the money to purchase entrée into certain homes before. Not the finest, perhaps, but those which had deemed him a useful acquaintance for one reason or another.
But there wasn’t enough money in the world to purchase social acceptance. Even if a few families had admitted them, it hadn’t meant the other guests had done anything other than to tolerate their presence.
Vulgar. Common. Upstart.
These words and more had been whispered in her hearing behind fluttering fans or clenched teeth. People staring at her as if she were an oddity, a curiosity. Pulling their skirts away as she passed by, as if she might contaminate them—when the vast majority of them wore fabrics which had been produced by one of her father’s mills, cloth woven with patterns of Mercy’s own devising.
How was it possible to covet the creations and spurn the creator? It had struck her as bizarre, even hypocritical. The strange dichotomy of valuing wealth, but only when one’s own hands were not sullied in the process of its accumulation, had perplexed her. It hadn’t been until much later that she had understood that it had never been abouther, really. It had been about Papa’s affluence. That he had been so gauche, so audacious as to earnhis riches instead of having been born to them.
“Mercy?” The faint stridence to Marina’s voice suggested that this had not been the first attempt to reclaim her attention—only the first to elicit the desired response.
Mercy blinked, jarred from the depths of her thoughts, unnervingly aware of the eyes now upon her, ostensibly awaiting a response to some query that had been posed. “My apologies,”she said, feeling the burn of embarrassment heating her cheeks. “I suppose I was woolgathering.”
Marina managed a smile, as if in an effort to sooth Mercy’s mortification. “I was only wondering,” she said, “whom we might expect to call upon you?”
“Call upon me?” Somehow, she had lost the threads of the conversation completely.
“It has been quite some time since you’ve last been in town, has it not?” Marina inquired, with a guileless tilt of her head. “I daresay you’ll have dozens of old acquaintances to renew.”
Oh. Mercy supposed she couldn’t blame Marina for the misunderstanding. She’d been just fifteen when Mercy had had her Season years ago—little more than a child, with a child’s understand of such things. Marina had been born to this world, after all, and had spent a good portion of each year in town, making friends with the daughters of the aristocracy, preparing to take her place within it.
She had no idea what it was like to be an outsider to it. Nobody snubbed the daughter of a baron. Nobody had ever suggested she did not belong within polite society. And Mercy had never told her of her own experiences, for fear of tainting that romanticized version of it that Marina had always held so dear. A kindness, she had thought, not to burden the girl with experiences she would likely never know herself.
“No. There’s no one,” Mercy heard herself say, though the light, nonchalant tone she had intended to employ had fallen somewhat flat. “I’m afraid I wasn’t in London long enough to make many friends, and it has been so long besides. I doubt much of anyone remembers me.” Nowthatwas likely not strictly true, but those that did would most certainly not recall her fondly. “That is to say, I don’t expect to have callers,” she said between sips of wine to soothe her parched throat. “Or invitations.”
“Of course you shall have invitations,” Juliet said, with a tiny furrow of her brow. “We’ll be just swimming in them. We were last Season, though I wasn’t yet out in society to attend any events myself.”
Yes; Mercy expected the Armitage family would receive a great deal of invitations. It was just that she didn’t expect to be included.
The baroness slid a sympathetic look across the table. “Not to worry,” she said, in that fond, maternal tone that Mercy had always found comforting. “I’ve let it be known that I am sponsoring you for the Season. It would be the height of discourtesy to exclude you.”
Mercy managed a bland smile and a noncommittal response, and let the baroness believe she had been convinced. But her stomach pitched and rolled like the bowl of blancmange which had been set before her to mark the conclusion of the meal, unable to shake the suspicion that the baroness was soon to discover just how discourteous her social set could truly be to those they considered lesser than themselves.
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