were knighted. We are just landed gentry. We’re aware of the benefits from bringing Jerin out with your sponsorship-but we’re not sure what this all entails.”
“Wisely said.” The Queen Elder smiled. “In the next three months there will be nightly social events to attend. Actually there will be several on any given night; one picks and chooses-and one is picked and chosen, as they are all by invitation only. Normally, landed gentry such as yourself would field only invitations from the lower strata of the Peerage. With the sponsorship of the Queens, all who wish to curry our favor will invite you. There are dances, musicales, dinners, and picnics- window dressing for the true event-bringing Eldests together with brothers in tow. Offers are made, negotiations follow, and hopefully, by the end of the season all will be happily married.”
“It sounds like extended fairs.”
“I’m sure the Season grew out of fairs. Unfortunately, in my view, things have gotten out of hand. I’m afraid that members of the Peerage put too much importance on dress. It is a sign of how rich they are that they can sink so much money into an outfit, then never wear it again. We have not invited you here to bankrupt your family by keeping up appearances, nor to be humiliated unfairly because you’re wise not to waste your resources. As our guests, we intend to provide a modest wardrobe to your family.”
“The costs are truly prohibitive?” Eldest asked.
“Fifty crowns.” She gave a number that made Eldest startle, and then added, “For each outfit.”
“Each?” Eldest asked.
“Each.”
Jerin blanched. One hundred for Eldest and himself to be made a single set of outfits. Two hundred if Summer and Corelle were included. Multiply that by three or four. The numbers staggered him. His entire brother’s price could be swallowed by the cost of the clothes.
His sisters exchanged a look.
“We will have to depend on your generosity,” Eldest murmured.
“Good,” the Queen Mother Elder said. “The best tailors in Mayfair were put on notice. A runner has been sent to their shop with news of your arrival. You will see them this afternoon.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Eldest said, bowing her head.
The answer pleased the Queen for some reason. She offered cakes and they accepted, using their best manners to negotiate getting the rich flaky pastry from the delicate china plates to their mouths using only the silver dessert forks. Jerin remembered without prompting that he was the senior ranked male at the table, and thus responsible for refills. He filled everyone’s cup without spilling a drop or trailing his sleeves in the liquid, all the while grateful that their grandfather had drilled table manners into the family.
They even managed polite small talk, answering questions on the trip down and the health of the sisters and mothers they’d left behind.
“Your family seems blessed with strong, healthy, beautiful children. Any birth defects?”
“None,” Eldest said proudly. “Our family has always kept itself clean of inbreeding. If a family can’t pin down a male from the time the first daughter is born until the last daughter hits menopause, some forty or fifty years, then the family shouldn’t reproduce in the first place.”
The Queen Elder laughed for a moment, then sobered. “There is much to do, and time is growing shorter. Barnes will show you to your apartment.”
Barnes led them up a curving flight of stairs and down a long carpeted hall to a set of double doors.
These she opened to reveal a spacious parlor, done in pale yellow damask-velvet wallpaper and cheery yellow silk drapes and matching settees. On the left-hand wall, two doors led to bedrooms. Jerin’s wedding chest sat untouched in the small corner bedroom with a large four-poster bed. Barnes called this bedroom the men’s quarters. His sisters’ luggage had been unpacked into the richly carved mahogany wardrobes of the much larger bedroom, which contained six elegant sleigh beds.
“Will you be wanting baths?” Barnes asked Eldest.
“If it can be arranged,” Eldest said.
Barnes signaled a younger woman with a family resemblance to her standing at the parlor door. “Two hip baths, hot water, and towels will be brought up. It will be removed while you are at dinner.”
She showed them how the double parlor doors could be barred at night. She went on to quietly point out that the parlor and women’s room isolated Jerin’s bedroom from the rest of the palace. She demonstrated how one of the parlor settees could be wheeled to block his bedroom door and used as a bed. Surely even the most paranoid of sisters would feel safe with their brother in this apartment.
Jerin recalled that in his sisters’ adventure novels, there were always secret passages to the men’s quarters. The daring heroines used them to save their true loves from heartless mothers, cruel sisters, abusive wives, and vile kidnappers. He sighed over the banks of windows, evidence that no secret passage could open into his bedroom; Ren wouldn’t be visiting him late at night.
A squad of servants, obviously younger sisters of the majordomo, brought up two copper bathtubs.
They set one in his bedroom, the other in his sisters’ room to share, and poured buckets of steaming water into them. All the while, the women sent curious glances his way. It made Jerin blush-these strangers preparing a place that he’d step naked into.
“The Queens have commissioned tailors for you,” Barnes was saying. “They’ll be here in an hour.” The tub filled, the servants filed out. Barnes followed them to the door, then turned, indicating a length of tapestry fabric hanging from a loop in the ceiling. “This is the bellpull here. Ring if you need anything.”
Jerin glanced to his sister and saw the slight frown Eldest wore when irritated. Was she as baffled as he was but too proud to ask? Summer and Corelle studiously ignored Barnes, which probably meant they were also ignorant. Luckily men were expected to be naive. He cleared his throat and asked quietly, “I don’t understand. Ring what?”
Barnes looked surprised. “The bellpull. You pull on this, and it rings one of the bells down in the kitchens to let us know you want something.”
“Really?” Summer exclaimed. “How does it do that?”
“There are cables on small pulleys run through the walls, going down to a rack of numbered bells. You pull here, and your bell in the kitchen rings. If you want anything, just ring.”
Jerin nodded, wondering what “anything” constituted. With a tub, towels, and chamber pot at hand, he could not guess what more they could want.
“The Queens keep country hours, so dressing gong is at six and dinner gong is at seven,” Barnes continued.
“Dressing gong?” Jerin asked.
Again the startled look from Barnes. “It’s like a bell sound, deep and not so sweet. Brassy, one could say, kind of like hitting a slipper against a big kettle lid.”
“What’s it for?” Jerin pressed on.
“So you know it’s time to dress for dinner,” Barnes said.
“You expect us to take that long to bathe?” Summer half laughed, nervous that things were vastly different with the nobility.
Barnes worked her mouth, considering words carefully before saying, “Dress in one’s dinner clothes as opposed to one’s daily wear.”
That stunned all the Whistlers speechless.
“Will that be all?” Barnes asked after a moment.
“Yes,” Eldest murmured finally. “Thank you.”
Barnes backed out of the room, apparently a habit from serving royalty, and closed the door. The Whistlers stared at the shut door in silence.
“Dinner clothes.” Eldest crossed to bar the door. “They have clothes just for eating?”
“Apparently,” Corelle said.
“Daily clothes. Dinner clothes. Party clothes.” Eldest counted on her fingers, squinting. “1 think we should have asked for the reward in money and stayed home. We could have bought the store and a husband for the cost of these clothes.”
“A good husband is worth it,” Summer murmured. “Besides, we can resell the clothes in our new store later for at least half their cost.”
