Catherine knew something was amiss when a carriage was sent to bring her to Lady Wisterberg’s town housefirstthing the following morning. A message had been brought in to her at breakfast by Mr. Pike. It read:
Dear Miss Keating,
You are wanted at once.
Yrs, Lady Wisterberg
Free of frills and exclamation points. Very unlike Lady Wisterberg.
Her stomach awash with icy foreboding, she boarded the waiting hack. She was already logy and subdued from her strange, swift, somewhat tawdry encounter with Lord Kirke the night before.
She was admitted to Lady Wisterberg’s town house by another footman, whose expression was unnervingly grim, and led into the sitting room decorated in primarily green. It featured a gigantic portrait of the late Lord Wisterberg over the mantel.
Lucy and Lady Wisterberg sat side by side on a settee. Both were as pale as if there had been a death in the family.
Lucy looked up at Catherine with enormous eyes.
Terror nearly took the legs out from under Catherine. “S-something has happened. My aunt, my father? Areyousound? Please tell me what’s happened!”
“No, dear. You may rest yourself on that account. Everyone is sound. But it seems we may have to, ah, postpone our party.” Lady Wisterberg’s voice was odd. Clipped.
And then Catherine realized it was because she wasfurious.
“We’ve just had a few more cancelations,” she added. The word “cancelations” sounded ironically venomous.
Catherine’s heart was now pounding painfully. “How many?” she asked weakly.
Lady Wisterberg closed her eyes. And said nothing.
So Lucy whispered it. “Thirty-two.”
Catherine gasped.
“Lord Vaughn and his parents among them,” Lucy said miserably.
Catherine’s knees gave way and collapsed onto the settee.
They all stared at each other.
“But... how...why?” Catherine’s heart sickened her with its tempo.
“I don’t know,” Lady Wisterberg said tersely. “But I expect we will find out soon enough.”
Catherine and Lucy spent the morning helping Lady Wisterberg to write politely cheery notes to everyone invited to the party, regrettably canceling. It was a grim exercise in exquisite penmanship conducted in utter silence, unless one counted Lady Wisterberg’s audibly incensed breathing.
According to the rules, she was required only tospend four evenings per week in the sitting room at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
That evening she didn’t feel she could bear to face anyone at all. She took dinner in her room, too.
And then she climbed beneath her blankets. She thought about how very odd it was that dread was an absorbing occupation, as consuming as plowing a field or reading a book. One could simply sit and dread. She imagined saying to Mrs. Pariseau, “I’m sorry, I cannot listen to the story tonight, I’ll be dreading all evening.”
She sat on the bed with her knees tucked up to her chest to make herself small, and because her chest felt as cold and hollow as a gorge. And she pondered.
An attack had been levied. Or at least that was how it felt. A message unequivocal in its nature had been sent.
There wasn’t a thing she could conceive of that she might have done wrong, other than being herself. Surely no one had seen her in the Shillingford garden, in the ivy, her bodice half-off and her dress hiked up, with Lord Kirk? She had been quite certain they’d been hidden and alone.
But it seemed clear that some tacit, vociferous censure had taken place. She couldn’t help but recall Lady Pilcher’s beautiful, cruel face and Lady Hackworth’s puzzled assessment of her dress. How had Lord Kirke put it the night she’d handed over her handkerchief?Sometimes insults are more valuable than compliments, and sometimes what seems like kindness is a sort of a chess move.Perhaps this censure was indeed a compliment: she was perceived as so powerful a threat to the women of the ton that she must be summarily removed, and they had found an excuse to do it.