Her last casual guests, having stayed the obligatory quarter hour for a “morning” call, had departed, and Cousin Amabelle had excused herself for her customary afternoon nap, so Retta was enjoying a “comfortable coze” with her two best friends—the Honorable Harriet Mayfield and Miss Hero Whitby. The three of them had been thrown together at the age of fifteen in Miss Penelope Pringle’s Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. All three girls had been essentially motherless, though Retta did have a stepmother. Both Harriet and Retta had lost their mothers early on—Retta in infancy, and Harriet as a child of seven. Hero’s mother, whose love of classical myth showed in the girl’s name, had died when her daughter was in her teens, and, on arriving at the Academy, Hero was still feeling her loss keenly. Retta recalled that Hero’s father, a wealthy country squire and a doctor, had lovingly insisted that his daughter have the kind of education his wife, only child of a knight, would have wanted for her. Retta and Harriet, on the other hand, had found refuge at the Academy from their rather indifferent families.
Today, seated in the drawing room that the Countess of Blakemoor had recently redecorated in the popular Egyptian style with its vivid colors and a good deal of gold leaf and gold paint, the three friends looked exactly what they were: young women of fashion enjoying each other’s company. With her reddish brown hair and hazel eyes, Hero was dressed in her favorite soft green. Retta loved that Hero had long ago got over her embarrassment at her profusion of freckles. Harriet, in half-mourning for her sister and brother-in-law, wore a mauve day dress trimmed with black grosgrain ribbons that complemented her almost-black hair. Retta herself wore a dress of soft gray, simply because she liked the color. It was trimmed with touches of green velvet at the scooped neckline. The colors reflected the color of her eyes, which were essentially gray, but often showed a hint of green, depending on her clothing or mood. Her maid had dressed her brown hair in the popular “Greek” fashion: piled loosely on her head with soft tendrils before each ear.
As schoolgirls, the three had shared many interests. Each had taken supreme delight in escaping to faraway times and places through the medium of books. This fact alone would have earned them the label of “bluestockings” and relegated them to the sidelines in the society of their peers, but they also shared a passion for “doing good deeds,” though they might not have expressed it in precisely those terms. In fact, they had earned the sobriquet by which they were known in school for one of those causes. The “Ha’penny Hs” had campaigned—successfully, it turned out—for every girl in the school to give up at least a halfpenny of her allowance each week to provide relief to poor children in a nearby workhouse.
Now, a few years later, while each still held many of those interests and concerns, only Retta followed through on them with any degree of regularity, for the other two had busy lives in the country, Hero in assisting her father in his medical practice and Harriet in caring for her young nieces and nephews who had lost their parents in a horrible carriage accident. Harriet was determined that those children never feel as lonely and rejected as she once had.
“I do appreciate your helping with the Fairfax House charity during your visit,” Retta said, refreshing their cups from a covered teapot on a tray before her on a low table. “I hate that you are both returning to the country tomorrow. If only you could be in town more, just think what we might accomplish!”
“Fairfax House is a most worthy cause,” Hero said. “What the Fairfax sisters do for abused and abandoned women and children is simply amazing. But I must not desert Papa and his work any longer. That spell he suffered in the spring weakened him far more than he will admit.”
“I regret missing the next meeting of your literary group,” Harriet added. “I so enjoyed that last one. Imagine being able to talk with Maria Edgeworth herself after all these years of reading her novels! And I envy your having heard Lord Byron read his own work. What a treat that must have been.”
“You cannot stay for even a few days more?” Retta wheedled. “I shall be at sixes and sevens once you’ve left me on this desert island.”
Harriet exchanged a skeptical look with Hero and swept her hand in an inclusive gesture at their surroundings. “Such a desert island! A bit like an Arabian seraglio, is it not? At least I think that is the term for a Turkish harem.”
Retta shared an amused glance with them. “Yes. It is the right term—as you well know. The countess is quite taken with modern fashion.”
Retta rarely referred to her stepmother as anything but “the countess” and limited her direct addresses to the woman to “ma’am” or “my lady.” She respected her stepmother’s position in the household, but Retta had never quite forgiven the countess for persuading her husband to send his eldest daughter away to boarding school when the twins—as was wholly customary for boys—left home for school. The countess’s own daughters had been allowed to continue their education at home with a succession of governesses, art teachers, and music masters.
Of course, as she looked back on it, Retta realized that Miss Pringle’s Academy was the best thing to happen in her young life, but at the time she had felt lost and rejected and resentful, especially toward the countess who had engineered the change, but also toward her father. Although he had always been aloof with the “nursery set,” she had thought he cared about her enough to regret not having her near. She had felt betrayed. Just last week her feelings of resentment and abandonment had resurfaced.
“What is it, Retta?” asked Hero, always one to be in tune with the emotions of those around her. “We lost you there for a moment.”
Retta shrugged. “Oh, I was just thinking how wonderful it would be to be in Vienna where such important matters are to be decided—things that will affect all Europe for decades to come, and not just England and France. Wouldn’t you love to be there?”
“Of course,” Hero said. “Meeting all those important people would be an experience to remember in one’s dotage.”
Harriet leaned forward from her chair to set her cup down. “Hero, neither you nor I has the connections that would give us entrée to such exalted company.”
“But Retta does.”
Both her friends looked at her with eyebrows raised in question. “I wanted to go,” she said. “Oh, how I wanted to go. I thought I had convinced Papa to allow me to accompany him and the countess, but then he informed me that it was no place for a young woman. As though I were some green school girl!”
“Your stepmother talked him out of it.” Fiercely loyal, Hero was always quick to get to the heart of a matter. “I would wager she did not want an adult daughter to show her up. How very selfish.”
“Certainly unfair,” Harriet said.
Just then they heard laughter and chatter coming from the entrance below. It grew near as five young people climbed the stairs and burst into the drawing room enthusiastically discussing a curricle race they had witnessed. They exchanged greetings with Retta and her friends, whom they had all met previously, and returned to the excitement of the day.
“You should have seen it, Retta,” Richard said. “Bingham and Willitson neck and neck on Park Lane.”
“Good heavens!” Retta sat up straighter. “It is a wonder someone was not injured. Willitson was party to this?”
“Yes. Willitson,” Rebecca said with a sly look at her older sister as the newcomers arrayed themselves on chairs and settees. The door opened and Jeffries, the butler, entered carrying another, heavier tea tray. “I ordered more refreshments,” Rebecca added.
In the silence that ensued while the tea things were arranged and distributed, Retta surveyed the new arrivals. The girls were, of course, attired in the latest fashion of walking dresses with perky little bonnets to match: Rebecca in a vibrant blue to set off her silvery blond hair; Melinda, whose hair was a darker blond, in soft pink. Gerald, Viscount Heaton, always seemed aware of his position as heir to the earldom—having beat his brother to that status by a mere twelve minutes. Thus he was outfitted