Page 4 of Lady Mary's May Day Mischief
“Wasn’t it always obvious? The year all of us came out? I danced with him at that masquerade ball. Later that night, I won all that money from him! He laughed at my skills. Imagine! No one…no one has ever matched him.”
“Fifi, you were eighteen. All of us were green. Foolish.”
“Six years ago.” Fifi inhaled and her spectacles slipped. She pushed them up. “The wars were on.”
Mary stilled. She hated discussions of the dead, or worse the disabled soldiers who wandered the city streets without bread or board or hope. “We had the ridiculous perception that war was glorious…and that all soldiers would return.”
Fifi slouched, repentant. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to open old wounds.”
Mary lifted a shoulder. She had not yet recovered from the loss of her brother, George, at Badajoz, or the demise of both her parents. She reached over and squeezed Fifi’s hand. “No need to apologize. Things were different with me then. For us both.”
Six years ago, when Fifi and Mary debuted, Mary’s parents were alive as well her older brother George who was heir to the Dalworthy earldom. Now her first cousin, Winston, was the Earl of Dalworthy. And she lived here alone, far from her childhood home, striding from room to room with only echoes of love and affection ringing in her ears.
Six years ago, Fifi had a different life, too. Her father was alive. Her mother had not begun to stumble over carpets or mumble phrases as mismatched as pieces from two different puzzles. The result was that Fifi lived in her large Georgian home in the Crescent—and for all intents and purposes, she was as much alone as Mary.
At twenty-four years of age, both of them had increasingly secluded lives. Bath was a lovely little town, quaint and tranquil as the patina of its dark honey-colored stone. But the place where society had flocked for more than a century to take the waters, gossip and dance until two in the Assembly Rooms, was so very passé.
The town to see and be seen, to find drama and romance and a man who might truly grow to love a lady, was Brighton. To the coast, south of London, society flocked. There the roly-poly spendthrift Prince Regent lived, and lavishly so. He added to his Pavilion with impecunious abandon, brought his mistresses to entertain him and drew thetonto him for dinner, musicales, the theater—andaffaires de coeur.
And Fifi and I cannot go because we haven’t the desire—or the blunt.
But that doesn’t mean we must continue to deny ourselves.
“What do you mean?” Fifi blinked.
Mary caught her lower lip. One day soon she must master the art of keeping her truths to herself. Or learn how to present them in a more acceptable fashion. “I’ve been thinking.”
Fifi clapped her hands. “That’s the spirit. The old Mary!”
Her butler stood in the open doorway with the tea tray—and stared at her. She balked. He was just in time to feed Fifi. But he’d been present when one of her so-called plans had erupted. Millicent Weaver, one of their school friends, had barged in two years ago to her parlor in London and bemoaned how their silliness had ended her relationship with one young man and ruined her life. That failure had put her off any future interference.
“You’ve got a plan?” Fifi urged her to speak. “What is it? Tell me.”
Thompson glared at Mary. He was seventy, if a day. He was spry, an inveterate walker and former boxer. He was her Cerberus, her watchdog. Her major critic. He cocked a bushy grey brow in warning.
“Mary, tell me!”
Her butler might have been set in stained glass, so transparent was his intent to dissuade her from her old ways.
She winced. “Well, it’s not a plan. Not like one of my old ones.”
“No?” Fifi tipped her head.
No?Thompson imitated her friend.
Mary frowned at him.
He scowled at her.
Fifi licked her lips, wiggling in anticipation. “Hurry. I’m hungry.”
“Thompson, please.” Mary indicated with a wave that she wanted him to finish his service and disappear. She rose to consider the street below as he laid out the feast on the little table before the settee.
“Oh, lovely little sweets. Your cook, Mary, is superb. Look at this! Never let her go.” Fifi rubbed her hands together. “Or if you must, send her to me. I will dismiss every servant I have to fund her wages. The cakes and—”
“Caesar wants cake.”
“Quiet, Caesar.” Mary swallowed a chuckle. “Or no cakes for you at all.”
