Right Number, Wrong Girl

“Sorry to disappoint.” I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to. Henry was happy to help.”

“Mm. I’m sure he was.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. The Worcesters are coming with The Dowager Duchess. Make sure you don’t forget her. Or The Dowager Countess of Anglesey. I believe Matthew’s bringing his grandmother instead of his mum, unless Eva doesn’t come, then I’d imagine they both will.”

I swallowed. “Right.” Jesus, this was confusing.

Also, no wonder there was drama.

There were a lot of women in the aristocracy. Which I suppose made sense given that most titles could only be handed down the male line and women tended to outlive men.

We didn’t do as many stupid things as men did. I could attest to that by once watching my father climb a tree to trim it and almost falling out. My mother trimmed it later that day after borrowing what I liked to call a chainsaw on a stick from a neighbour.

She kept her feet firmly on the ground and did not fall.

That was only one example I could come up with. There were a lot more.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Hugo sat down next to me and took the guest list from me.

“Is it that obvious?” I replied dryly.

“Painfully so. What are these silly little flags?”

I shrugged. “They’re what people use at weddings.”

“Yes, when the tables are numbered and they’re to denote the bride’s side or the groom’s side.”

Oh.

That made a lot of sense.

“How do I know? I’ve never gotten married or even thought about planning a wedding. I’m eloping to another planet, never mind another country.” I took the flags off the table with a huff, then grabbed a pen and started numbering the tables. “Is your family sitting together?”

“Sadly.”

“Right. Then this one is yours.” I wrote a big number ‘1’ in the table that belonged to them, then grabbed the other notepad and wrote down that it belonged to them. “I assume that that’s you, your parents, Evelyn, and your sister and her husband. And Henry.”

“Yes.”

“That’s only seven. Tell your grandma to find a date,” I ordered him.

“Absolutely not. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

“Well, I can’t put seven people on a ten-seater table, can I? It’s either eight to rearrange the seats evenly, or she, you, and Henry all need a date.”

“I guess you’re out of the question.”

“I will be in London, forgetting I’d ever gotten myself into this giant mess, so you guess correctly.” I handed him a pen and looked at him pointedly. “Start numbering the tables and stop pouting.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not pouting. Just thinking how gutted my brother will be that you won’t go with him.”

“Yet you were the one who brought it up,” I shot back. “If you’re going to irritate me, I’m going to pack this up and take it back to the cottage and spend the entire day getting brain-numbingly exhausted by reading the internet’s history of the aristocracy.”

“Don’t forget about the gossip pages. They’re full of upper-class drama.” He shifted his chair around and leaned back, resting his leg on his opposite knee. “That’ll keep you busy for hours.”

“Can you please take this seriously? I’d like to bluff my way through the next forty-eight hours before I can go back to my real life.”