“I feared as much.” Sir Aubrey sighed, then joined Jonathan on a silent ride through the morning mists. “I do like tipsy cake,” he said eventually, breaking the silence. “And that was a fine one. Just the right amount of sherry, don’t y’know?”
“I know,” Jonathan confirmed, thinking of the excellent food that had been placed on the table. His thoughts also strayed to the young woman who had created that sweet. The years she must have spent alone, her entire life with naught but a hired companion, never mind that Nilsson looked to be a kind and intelligent woman. Hired was hired.
Jonathan was a bit spoiled, as he’d be the first to admit. His mother and sisters doted on him, and his younger brother was a good lad, always ready for a lark. Although Jonathan felt the need to supervise him, he did so with a light hand, earning him the affection of the boy. He had always been well-served by those in his employ. Yes, he was a most fortunate man.
Poor Cousin Penelope. He tried to imagine what it must have been like to have parents who made brief and exceedingly rare appearances, and couldn’t.
* * * *
Penelope stood at the door to the breakfast parlor, staring at the sideboard. There were no gently steaming dishes of food in the bain-marie, no eggs or ham. A meager stack of toast with a pot of marmalade took pride of place.
“Mrs. Flint,” Penelope said to the approaching housekeeper, “I fear I slept overlong this morning and have totally missed my breakfast.”
The housekeeper raised her gaze to the ceiling and gave a long-suffering sigh. “No, what’s in there is what was ordered by Miss Letty. It seems she’s taken up with some heathen notion. Declares she will eat nothing but vegetables, perhaps a bit of grains. No fish, no fowl, and no meat. She allows that we may have a bit of cheese and milk, and once a week an egg. Now, I ask you, my lady! How can one go on with no more than porridge and turnips?” It was a measure of Mrs. Flint’s distress that she so forgot herself as to speak plainly to Penelope, something she would never have done otherwise.
“I cannot credit that she expects the rest of us to do so as well.” Penelope gave an indignant look down the hall at the door to the little study where Letty secreted herself each day.
“I only know my orders, my lady.” Mrs. Flint recalled herself, and her cheeks reddened as she realized her forwardness.
“Hm,” Penelope replied. She tactfully ignored the housekeeper’s embarrassment and followed her to the kitchen. Once in familiar surroundings, Penelope quickly whipped up a buttered egg, carved a thin slice of country ham, then seated herself at the center table to eat her breakfast before Letty found out about her heresy.
‘What did she order for dinner, pray tell?” Penelope inquired after wiping her mouth following the final bite of her tasty breakfast.
Still shaken by the sight of a guest who had efficiently created a meal for herself, the cook handed a small card to Penelope. “Potato-and-leek soup with fresh bread and cheese, my lady.”
Mrs. Flint popped into the kitchen from her stillroom, to offer a comment. “She wants no meat! Mind you, we aren’t likely to have company save yourselves, but I would like to know what she thinks will keep body and soul together. Turnips and parsnips, carrots and the like. What rubbish! Beggin’ your pardon, my lady.”
“Perhaps she is merely on a slimming program,” Penelope said with hope in her voice.
“Aye, and pigs will fly,” Mrs. Flint muttered before she whisked herself back into the stillroom, where she was in the process of preparing a delicate nut torte.
Penelope soon discovered that the entire household, with the lone exception of Letty, was in a grumpish state. Even Miss Nilsson’s usually calm temper was badly frayed. The maids frowned as they went about their work, things were dropped, and hasty words were snapped.
“I see you are tiffed this morning,” Penelope whispered as her companion grimaced following a view of the breakfast parlor and its insignificant contents.
“Mr. Oglethorpe has come to call, and my stomach growls so that I dare not present myself. You shall have to entertain him until Letty can be persuaded to come out.”
Torn between preparing something for her companion to eat, an act which Penelope knew would horrify Nilsson, and doing the courteous with Mr. Oglethorpe, Penelope wavered.
“This way, Miss Nilsson,” Mrs. Flint whispered with a conspiratorial smile.
Satisfied that the servants were rebelling in a discreet but necessary way, Penelope slipped off to the morning room, where Mr. Oglethorpe paced before the empty hearth.
“Good day, sir.”
“I was hoping to see you first.” He paused, coloring fiercely as he searched for words in an embarrassed manner. “You must help me, Lady Penelope,” he declared with a frustrated thrust of his hand into his ginger-colored hair. His nice gray eyes beseeched with desperate appeal. “I have been courting Letty Winthrop for what seems like an age. She cares for me, I know she does. Yet she raises one obstacle after another.”
“I can imagine,” Penelope murmured, thinking of the latest start her cousin had embarked upon. “Perhaps she feels unsure of herself.”
“I would do anything for her, she must know that,” he declared awkwardly.
Penelope shook her head, sinking down on the nearest chair to ponder the problem of her peculiar cousin.
“Do you know the latest, Mr. Oglethorpe? Miss Letty has become what she calls a natural diet follower. Once the present supply of meat is consumed, there is to be no more purchased for this household. We are to subsist mostly on vegetables.”
“Egad! She must have heard about Shelley. He has written
a thing called Vindication of a Natural Diet and I fancy she
must have read it.” Andrew Oglethorpe also sank down upon
a chair to contemplate his beloved’s latest notion.
“Percy Shelley, the poet? What does he know about diet? Does
