“Well, niece, at least you look healthy,” the countess sighed.
“I feel very much like a poor relation, Aunt Euphoria.”
The dowager’s face broke into a dazzling smile of revelation. “Heavens! Yes—the very idea. You are a poor relation, of course! And we do not discuss my brother Albert in polite company, so I will not trouble you at present with any more alarming facts and circumstances than you have already been privy to. Not with Augusta and her nephew about to join us at any moment. The person of Lady Oliver presents enough of a challenge. You shall have to call upon all your powers of imagination, child.” Lady Dalrymple chattered on. “You must think the way those actresses do. Perhaps you would not know . . . but then, of course, we shall say that you have lived in London. Have you indeed been to the theatre?”
“Oh yes, many times, your ladyship,” C.J. replied, remembering to keep all her answers as honest as possible.
“Well, I shan’t discuss my brother’s abilities—or absence of them, according to the critics—but perhaps someday we shall compare our views on Mr. Macklin and Mr. Garrick. You are far too young, of course, to have seen Garrick on the stage, but his fame lives on, to be sure.”
C.J. was rescued from the necessity of fabricating a response by the interruption of Collins announcing Lady Oliver and her nephew, Owen Percival, Earl of Darlington.
Surely the stately matron sailing into the room was Jane Austen’s Catherine De Bourgh in every imposing ounce of flesh. Her impeccably tailored iron-gray redingote, satin gown, and plumed bonnet matched the color of her hair, lending her the appearance of a battleship.
Lady Oliver’s nephew, on the other hand, presented rather a different impression altogether. With a start, C.J. recognized him as the handsome aristocrat she had marked in the courtroom on the day of her trial. Her stomach plummeted. Did the earl remember her? How she wished for a fan with which to hide her face! He looked to be about thirty-five years old, perhaps a bit older, with merry, deep blue eyes; and even before he uttered a syllable, she could plainly see that it was the gentleman, rather than his forbidding-looking aunt, on whom Lady Dalrymple truly doted.
Was it C.J.’s imagination, or did the man’s eyes sparkle even more when he focused them on her? “Aunt Euphoria” was not insensible to the earl’s reaction, and motioned for him to sit opposite C.J. so he could better admire the view. C.J. was relieved that he did not appear to recognize her from the assizes.
“I see you have a guest, Euphoria.” Lady Oliver retrieved a gilded lorgnette from her reticule and scrutinized C.J. as though she were a microbe. “Qui est la jeune fille habillée comme une domestique?”
“My niece, Cassandra Jane. Goes by the name of Welles.” Lady Dalrymple lowered her voice. “Albert’s child.”
Her guests nodded in complete comprehension. “Of course,” Darlington agreed softly. “Ah yes . . . and her choosing to be known by another name. It is better that way.”
“Better, Percy? Of course it is better,” Lady Oliver erupted, laying aside her lorgnette and opening an ivory-handled fan fashioned from Chinese silk. “Il fait très chaud, ma chère. Are you not stifling as well, Euphoria?” Lady Oliver wrinkled her nose as though she smelled decaying fish. “The eighth Marquess of Manwaring is a notorious wastrel who gambled away his fortune and was forced to earn a living as an actor,” the battleship sneered in a rather theatrical tone herself. “Albert has always been a most unattractive combination of the bombastic, the cantankerous, and the unwise.”
“You are nevertheless speaking to Lady Dalrymple and her niece of their own flesh and blood, Aunt Augusta,” interposed the earl in a tone that signified an end to the matter, and left his aunt pursing her lips in evident distaste.
“I’ll allow that my father is not without his faults, but I would wager he is not the only person in England who is ‘bombastic, cantankerous, and unwise,’ your ladyship,” C.J. found herself saying.
Lady Oliver snapped her fan shut in a most indiscreet gesture.
“Lady Cassandra appears to have inherited your spiritedness, ‘Aunt Euphoria’,” Darlington remarked, evidently pleased by the lovely newcomer’s intrepid reproval of his formidable aunt.
“You must remember to call her Miss Welles, Percy,” Lady Dalrymple replied, her twinkling eyes conveying the endorsement of her headstrong “niece’s” behavior. “Elle est arrivée cet après-midi. Mais oui—just this afternoon. All the way from London,” she continued, aware that Eloisa Wickham would be too embarrassed by her mistreatment of the girl to ever contradict Lady Dalrymple’s version of the truth. Her warm smile illuminated the room. “How remiss of me not to make a proper introduction! Cassandra, may I present my dearest friend, Lady Augusta Oliver, and the Earl of Darlington—her nephew, Owen Percival.”
The earl approached C.J. and bowed gallantly. The glossy dark hair that framed his handsome face smelled of a spring morning. Yet among Darlington’s immediately agreeable qualities, it was the intelligence in his eyes, which danced with an incomparable sparkle, that rendered him most compelling.
It occurred to C.J. that it might be better to volunteer nothing more to the conversation, and to avoid speaking unless expressly spoken to. It would be an exercise in restraint—ordinarily not one of her strongest suits. Thus, it was both a blessing and a curse when the older women retired to a corner of the room, at the prompting of Lady Oliver’s disdainful sneer in the direction of C.J.’s bodice.
Her voice pierced the air like a cold poniard through warm flesh. “My dear Euphoria, the girl looks like a street urchin, perhaps worse, in that unfortunate gown. You cannot possibly be considering her introduction into polite society unless she is taken well in hand. Well in hand, I say! Perhaps her appearance was acceptable to
