"Hasn't she," murmured Mary.
"I do wish we could have found as comfortable a settlement for you," fretted Mrs. Alsworthy, conveniently forgetting that Lord Pinchingdale had originally been intended for her older daughter. "I don't understand it. Three Seasons! One would have thought you would have caught someone by now." Mrs. Alsworthy preened, one ringed hand rising to pat her green silk turban. "I secured your father without even one Season."
"At the Littleton Assemblies," Mary supplied, having heard the story more times than the Prince of Wales had consumed hot dinners. "I know."
"I was wearing my blue brocade, with my hair all piled on top of my head — that was the fashion then, you know, and very becoming it was to me, too — and the sweetest little stomacher all embroidered with purple pansies, and your father was smitten, smitten on the spot."
People who waxed rapturous about love matches clearly had never been privy to the aftermath of one. Her parents' great love had lasted all of a year; the marriage itself had been limping along for three decades.
"Of course," Mrs. Alsworthy was still rattling on, "I was never so tall as you, and we all know that men don't like tall girls. It makes them feel small. You really must get in the trick of looking up at them, like so."
Mrs. Alsworthy hunched her shoulders, stuck out her neck, and attempted to look dewy-eyed.
Mary wasn't quite sure how impersonating a myopic turtle was supposed to help her secure a husband, but it was easier not to argue. "Yes, Mama."
Mrs. Alsworthy squinted thoughtfully at her. "And perhaps a bit more trim on the bodice…Gentlemen do so appreciate a nicely trimmed décolletage."
"I don't think it's the trim, Mama," said Mary.
As she had known she would, her mother ignored her and carried on with her own train of thought as the ribbons on her own exuberantly trimmed bodice trembled in sympathy. "So fortunate that Letty has offered to fund another Season for you — but this will have to be the last, you know. To have five Seasons looks like desperation."
"Letty is paying for my next Season?"
"Why, yes. Isn't it lovely of her to take such notice of her sisters now that she is a viscountess? A viscountess!"
"Just lovely," repeated Mary flatly. It was one thing to make the same tired rounds a fourth time, batting her eyelashes at the same rapidly diminishing crop of men, but it was quite another matter to do so on the sufferance of a younger sister. To know that every shawl, every dress, even the food on the table had been magnanimously donated by Letty for the worthy cause of helping her older sister to a husband.
On those terms, she would rather remain a spinster.
Only she wouldn't. Either way, she would be choking on her sister's charity. She could accept Letty's munificence now — and meekly submit herself to being organized as Letty saw fit — in the interest of one last, desperate bid for the comparative independence of the married state. Or she could remain unwed and be a perpetual dependent upon her parents. Which, in the end, meant being Letty's dependent, since her father's income was scarcely enough to keep him in new books and her mother in turbans. Between the two of them, they neatly dissipated the revenue from her father's small estate before one could say beeswax.
It was rather galling to face a future as a petitioner in the house where she had thought to be mistress.
"And Lord Pinchingdale will be paying Nicholas's fees at Harrow! Harrow! Can you imagine! We could never have done so much."
"Nicholas must be overjoyed," said Mary.
Nicholas would be miserable. Her little brother was the despair of the local vicar, who had been enlisted to teach him the classics. Fortunately for Nicholas, the vicar was as nearsighted as he was hard of hearing, as well as being prone to drifting off at odd moments, a habit Nicholas had done his best to encourage. Mary would be very surprised if Nicholas knew how to read, much less in Latin. Being sent to Harrow would do wonders for him — if they didn't expel him first. It was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Letty always knew the right thing to do. But it set Mary's teeth on edge.
She was the eldest. She was the one who was supposed to be magnanimously funding her brother's education and using her social consequence to bring out her younger sisters. Not the other way around.
It wasn't right.
"Have you tried the duck?" Mary cut in, just to put a stop to the catalogue of all the benefits Letty planned to confer on her family now that she was a viscountess — a viscountess! Her mother enjoyed the title so much that the word had acquired an inevitable echo every time she uttered it.
"Duck?"
Mary took her mother by the arm and steered her towards the refreshment table. "Yes, duck. I hear it's very good. There's also game pie."
Unfortunately, she didn't think food would do much to fill the hollow feeling that seemed to have settled into the pit of her stomach. It was the same feeling she had had in the gallery before Vaughn appeared, only ten times worse. In the space of three months, she had become superfluous. The grand match she had intended to make had been made by Letty; the benefits she had intended to graciously bestow upon her family were already being bestowed — by Letty. What was there left for her? Nothing but to sit and wait and be an object of charity, fed on Letty's leavings.
As if she had read her mind, Letty spotted Mary and their mother and began to bear down on them. In her hands, she held a plate piled high with food, and her face bore its most determined housewife expression. Someone was going to be fed, and they were going to be fed now.
It wasn't going to be Mary. Without a qualm, Mary tossed her mother to the wolves. "Look!" she called out cheerfully, giving her mother a little shove in the direction of her sister. "Isn't Letty lovely? She's prepared a plate for you."
"Darling!" Mrs. Alsworthy exclaimed, and made for Letty with both arms outstretched, although whether to embrace her or to snatch up the plate was largely unclear.
Mary didn't wait to find out.
Leaving her relations to it, Mary hastily made her exit stage left, back into the relative quiet of the upper gallery. It should take Letty some time to extricate herself from the maternal embrace. Well, it was only fair, Mary decided. If Letty wanted to be a two-darling daughter, there was a price to be paid.
Mary had her mind set on a very different sort of price. Lifting her skirts clear of the dusty floor, she made straight across the upper hall into the Long Gallery. The painted Pinchingdales held no fascination for her this time. She strode rapidly past them, seeking the living rather than the dead. There was no one standing between the torches, no one sitting on the window seat. The gallery was empty, deserted.
Mary reached the window and turned, thwarted. Where was he? She would have seen him had he returned to the Great Chamber. There had been no sign of movement downstairs in the hall. Of course, he might have retired to his room or gone out to the gardens or climbed up to the battlements to howl at the moon. He could be anywhere in the vast old pile. He might even have left — really, truly left.
That was too dreadful a prospect to be thought of. She had to find him. Because anything, anything at all was better than spending the winter hearing her mother sing an endless chorus of the wonders of her sister, while she herself faded into something not quite alive. She would see just what sort of price Lord Vaughn's theoretical flowery friend was willing to pay. And if Vaughn himself was the Black Tulip…well, then, surely the government must provide rewards for that sort of discovery.
But where had he got to? She couldn't very well seek him out in his bedchamber. That would spell ruin, and Vaughn, Mary could tell, was not the marrying kind.
Not like Geoffrey.
Of course, even being truly ruined would be more interesting than another evening of game pie.