Talk of the Ton (Free Fellows League 5)

Mrs. Broughton

Emma Loudan, daughter of Viscount Howitt, was painstakingly painting bees, one after another. Bees, she thought to herself, are profoundly uninspiring insects: after one has painted one round yellow body and then another, one has learned all there is to know about bee painting. But there was no relief in sight: Titania and Bottom both mentioned bees in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Mr. Tey had decided that bees must swarm over every backdrop, and never mind that the audience would think the insects were flying marigolds. Emma sighed and dipped her brush into yellow paint.

She was just putting a finishing touch on one of three beehives when the door opened.

“Lady Flaskell,” announced the butler, Wilson.

Emma put down her brush just in time as Bethany hurdled herself across the room and threw her arms around Emma. “Careful!” she said, laughing. “You’ll get painted.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m wearing nothing but rags for the trip.”

Emma put her little sister at arm’s length and glanced from the saffron-colored flying ribbons on her glorious little bonnet to the tips of her silk slippers. “Rags are looking better every moment,” she observed, untying her voluminous apron.

Bethany’s eyes narrowed at the sight. “Your gown must have been created by Madame Maisonnat!” she cried. “The Duchess of Silverton was wearing just the same costume in sage green, only last week. Everyone was talking about it. How on earth did you obtain that gown here, in the depths of the country, and without coming to town?”

“I have my means,” Emma said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

“What means are those?” Bethany demanded. “I could beg, plead, and cry at Madame’s door, and I’m quite certain that she would fulfill her other orders before mine.”

Emma glanced down at her morning gown. It was designed à la militaire, in amber-colored poplin with garnet buttons marching down the bodice. It followed her curves to a T and made her feel like an extremely feminine brigadier general. She smiled at her little sister. “It’s not a dark secret. Madame knows my measurements, and she simply sends me those gowns that she thinks would interest me.”

“Before anyone else?” Bethany said, her eyes narrowed.

Emma grinned. “I also pay her approximately twice the customary price, for her trouble. I must dress well in order to keep up my spirits here in the country.”

“Piffle! You could join me in London any moment you pleased. Mama’s death was well over a year ago now. The truth is that you like being immured in St. Albans, Emma.” Bethany walked over to the stage set, with its fresh paint and clusters of bees. “How can you prefer to sit about in the county and paint? Are those insects?”

“Bees. Obviously.”

“Proving my point absolutely. Painting insects while dressed in Madame Maisonnat’s latest creation! You’ve lost your wits.”

Put that way, Emma could see what she meant. “I like painting sets,” she said.

“That’s irrelevant,” Bethany said. “For once, you must take me seriously, Emma. You are in trouble.” She took a deep breath, her chest swelling impressively. “You are in danger of becoming an unmarried woman!”

“I’ve been an unmarried woman for four and twenty years,” Emma noted, opening the door. “Shall we retire to the morning room and have some tea? You must be fatigued after your journey.”

Bethany trotted through the door and down the hall, talking all the way and paying no attention to the presence of the family butler and two footmen. She finished up as she entered the morning room: “The point is that unmarried women are dreadfully out of fashion. If they ever were in fashion at all.”

“Wilson, will you bring us a tea tray?” Emma asked the butler.

“Immediately, Miss Loudan,” he said, bowing his way out of the morning room.

“You really mustn’t speak like that in front of Wilson,” Emma said, settling herself next to the fire. “When he is upset, he falls prey to stomachaches.”

Bethany plumped herself into the settee and turned her reticule upside down. “I cut a piece from a gossip column that you must read . . . ah! Here it is!” She waved a bit of newspaper in the air. “From La Belle Monde, and it says quite firmly that there is nothing more fatal to a woman than the lack of a husband. Listen to this: ‘Though they are the very ornament of their sex, they will await invitations that do not arrive. When they are invited to an occasion, one sees them flock to the side of the ballroom, like crows made dismal by rain.’ How awful, Emma! You do not look well in black.”

Emma was beginning to feel nettled. “I have a prospective husband,” she said coolly. “Simply because Kerr hasn’t yet presented himself to undergo the rite of matrimony doesn’t mean that he won’t do so in the near future. And besides, I firmly reject the implications of that piece of drivel. I could find another husband in five minutes, if I wished.”

“How long has it been since Kerr visited you?” Bethany demanded.

Emma hesitated.

Bethany answered for her. “He was coming last Christmas—No! It was two Christmases ago,

but then he traveled the Continent after his brother died. And before that—” She stopped, trying to remember.

“It’s been three years,” Emma said, feeling a mild astonishment at the fact. She was so comfortable living as she was that she tended to forget her fiancé’s existence. “I was so glad not to hear from him during Mama’s illness, since I had no wish to leave her, that I haven’t taken close account. But he has been in mourning for his brother, you know.”