Nor had the seating arrangements escaped alteration. Miss Drinkard had been ousted from her place at the end of the table opposite her mother, and Sir Valerian installed there in her stead, with Miss Drinkard on his right. In like manner, old Mr. Nethercote’s traditional place at Mrs. Drinkard’s right was now occupied by the squire; clearly, age and infirmity hadn’t a patch on one who, besides being the holder of a baronetcy, had been so obliging as to allow Sir Valerian to hold the fête in his barn.
But more striking than all of these was the meal itself. In lavish contrast to the single course usually offered the boardinghouse residents, tonight’s dinner ran to four removes, each one grander than the one before it. It began with a white soup, which yielded place to a salmon pie along with asparagus in cream sauce, followed by stuffed partridges and a potato pie. There were custards and aspics and puddings, along with fresh fruits, nuts, and cheeses.
How, Theo wondered, did Mrs. Drinkard expect to pay for it all? In the next instant, he knew. Like the deceased husband whose habits she so frequently deplored, Mrs. Drinkard was a gambler, staking all her counters on one cast of the dice: tonight Miss Drinkard was to secure a proposal of marriage from Sir Valerian. The realization gave Theo a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he found himself unable to do justice to the cook’s pièce de résistance, as the crown roast of lamb brought Miss Drinkard’s rôle of sacrificial lamb all too forcibly to his mind. As he picked at his dinner, he pondered with relish the prospect of a private interview with Mrs. Drinkard, during which he would reveal his identity and request her permission to pay his addresses to her daughter. But any satisfaction he might have derived from this pleasant fantasy was considerably dampened by the realization that, so long as he remained in his present circumstances, his hands were tied. Damn Ethan! What was taking him so long? At this rate, Sir Valerian would be posting the banns before Theo was at liberty to speak to Daphne at all.
Such was Theo’s state of mind when Mrs. Drinkard at last rose from the table, signaling the end of the meal. The ladies of the party followed her lead, as did the gentlemen, who in deference to the occasion forewent the custom of postprandial port. Sir Valerian had already arranged to transport the Drinkard ladies to the fête in his own carriage, and the vicar gave the curate a seat in his gig, but although the squire and his wife offered to take up Mrs. Jennings in their antiquated landau, that lady was resolute in her refusal—so much so that more than one member of the party wondered if the poor old dear was growing senile. Once the carriages had set out, however, she turned to regard Theo, her eyes bright with intelligence and purpose.
“At last!” she declared. “I thought they would never go. Come upstairs at once, for we haven’t much time.”
“I—I beg your pardon?” Theo asked, all at sea.
“So much like your dear mama, God rest her soul,” recalled Mrs. Jennings with a reminiscent sigh. “But we haven’t much time, not if we’re to save Daphne from that odious young man. Did you see the way he looked at her? I thought he was going to eat her along with the sweets course.”
Theo had indeed seen, and had found the sight every bit as repugnant as Mrs. Jennings had. “But—what are we going to do?”
Mrs. Jennings had by this time reached the top of the stairs, but at this home question, she paused to look back at him. “Haven’t I just said? We—you, that is—are going to steal a march on Sir Valerian.”
Theo could find nothing to object to in this plan, although its details were unclear. He followed Mrs. Jennings up the stairs and down the corridor to her room, on the opposite end of the house as his own. He caught up with her only to find her standing before the wardrobe. Having flung open its double doors, she stared with apparent bewilderment at the collection of outmoded finery within.
“Now, where did I put it? Oh, yes! I remember.”
She spun away from the wardrobe with the agility of a woman half her age, then dropped to her knees before the bed. Theo watched in some confusion as her entire upper half disappeared beneath the bedframe. Little by little she re-appeared—torso, shoulders, and, finally, her head—dragging in her arms a large pasteboard box.
“Here, let me get that,” Theo said quickly, realizing her intention. “Do you want it on the bed?”
She surrendered her burden gratefully. “So very kind—so very like your poor mother—yes, that will be fine.”
Theo set the box on the bed, and Mrs. Jennings lifted the lid almost lovingly. The sharp scent of camphor filled the room as she pushed aside layers of yellowed muslin until, finally, she found what she sought. There inside the box lay a complete set of formal clothing suitable for a gentleman: a double-breasted tailcoat of dark blue Bath superfine, black stockinette pantaloons, and a dark red waistcoat of silk brocade, along with a fine cambric shirt, white silk stockings, kid leather pumps with tarnished silver buckles, and a—
“The cravat,” Theo said irrelevantly, staring in rapt wonder at the stiff length of linen, rolled rather than folded in order to preserve its shape. “It’s starched.”
“It was my son’s.” The gentle caress with which her arthritic hands stroked the collar of the coat gave Theo to understand that it was the entire ensemble, not merely the cravat, that had
