Elizabeth Keene, darling. If you’d come with me to the recital at the zoological gardens, you would have seen her.”
“I leave the gathering of gossip to you, Hollis, you know it very well. I am better use to you in putting the gazette together.”
“Well, she and Lady Katherine Maugham are fierce rivals and she’s livid she’s not yet been noticed by Prince Sebastian when everyone said she would be. She was quite attentive to a certain English gentleman for spite.”
“The bodice of Lady Elizabeth’s gown was cut so low, I should think she might have had all the attention she pleased,” Caroline said, waggling her brows as she bit off a piece from the slice of ham that she held delicately between two fingers. She had taken two chairs—one for sitting, one as an ottoman for her legs.
“But I thought Lady Katherine was livid she’d not yet been noticed by Prince Sebastian,” Eliza said, confused as to who was livid about what.
“I hardly noticed Elizabeth’s bodice at all,” Hollis said. She was studying a bit of paper she’d smoothed on the table. It contained her notes. “I could not tear my eyes away from her mask. It looked like an awful bird’s nest perched on her head.”
Eliza gasped. “I did see her! I didn’t know who she was, but I feared the poor thing had lost her fortune and had been forced to fashion her own mask.”
Caroline giggled.
“Lady Elizabeth has forty thousand pounds a year, you know,” Hollis announced without looking up from her notes. “Lady Katherine has only thirty thousand pounds a year.”
Eliza and Caroline looked at each other. Their silence prompted Hollis to look up, too. “What?” She was clearly surprised by their surprise. “Did you think you’re my only source of information, Caro?”
“I assure you, I was under no such illusion,” Caroline drawled.
“All right, darlings, we must decide what will be recorded in the gazette about the ball!” Hollis said brightly. “Firstly, we must make comment on the gowns. I’ve made a few notes.”
“There was a peculiar mix of them,” Caroline began. She leaned to one side to allow a footman to pour tea into her cup. “Some of them so beautiful and some of them rather plain. I especially liked the Alucian gowns.”
“Oh, they were beautiful,” Eliza agreed. “But if I had to choose which gown dazzled more, I would say Hollis’s.”
Hollis gasped with delight. “Would you?”
“I would!” Eliza reached for a blue ribbon in Hollis’s hair, which was so darkly brown it almost looked black. The ribbon had been missed in their blurry-eyed disrobing this morning. Hollis’s gown, currently draped over a chaise upstairs, was made of the most gorgeous sapphire blue silk, trimmed in black, with a dramatic skirt that cascaded to the floor in panels. Poppy had worked several nights to bead the bodice with tiny black crystals. Hollis had added a stunning collar necklace made of black onyx, a gift from her late husband.
“The mask suited her, too, didn’t it?” Caroline agreed, smiling at Hollis. “Mrs. Cubison was right about the blue. She was quite right about everything, really. If only she’d told me who was behind which mask! Now I’m cross all over again.”
“So tight-lipped,” Hollis agreed, also appearing to be cross with a modiste whom she’d never met.
“I’d hoped she might give me a hint of how certain people would be disguised, but alas she was a soul of discretion. She said, ‘Lady Caroline, what is the point of a masquerade if you know the identity behind every mask?’” Caroline mimicked Mrs. Cubison’s apparently deep voice.
“A valid point,” Eliza agreed.
“Nevertheless, I persisted,” Caroline said. “I always persist. Frankly, I begged her and I should think she would have obliged me as she owes me a small debt of gratitude.”
“Why?” Eliza asked.
“Why!” Caroline blustered. “Can you not imagine how many clients I’ve sent to her in the last year alone?”
“How many?” Hollis asked curiously.
“I don’t have a number, obviously, but I recommend her to anyone who asks. It doesn’t matter, for she’d not divulge a thing about who’d commissioned what.”
“What in bloody blazes is this? It looks like a harem in here, Caro!” a male voice thundered.
Lord Hawke, Caroline’s brother, he of the handsome visage and trim figure, the gentleman who kept all the young ladies of London and their mothers guessing as to whom he might eventually take to wife, strolled into the dining room. He’d been out, apparently, or was going out, as he was wearing his greatcoat. And he looked quite refreshed, as if he’d had a full night’s rest. It hardly seemed fair.
“Are you only just out of bed?” he asked incredulously, looking at each of them in turn.
“Of course!” Caroline said. “It was dawn before we finally stumbled home. Had you stayed on, you’d still be abed, too.”
“I would not have stayed on. It was personal sacrifice enough that I was forced to escort the three of you against my will. I don’t care a fig about balls, and certainly not for the purpose of amusing some foreign prince. Even so, I am generally in good health and do not need much sleep. You should take your walks, the three of you. It’s good for stamina.” He reached across Caroline and helped himself to a slice of ham. “You’re all too pale, really.”
Eliza and Hollis took no offense. Beck had known the Tricklebank sisters since they’d been children, and tended to view them as children to this day. He paid them no heed, and they paid him even less.
“You won’t believe it, Beck—I met the crown prince!” Eliza crowed.
Beck looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And?”
“And he’s unmarried.” Eliza winked at him before fitting a cherry into her mouth.
“Dear Lord,” Beck said with alarm. “Surely I needn’t explain to you gooses that none of you, not even you, Caro, have the sort of dowry or connections or the appeal that such a match would require. You’re whistling in the wind! Frankly, if you ask me—”
“No one has,” Caroline pointed out.
“If you ask me,” he said a bit louder, “you’d all do well to be more practical in your dealings about town.”
“Meaning?” Caroline asked.
“Meaning, set your sights on gentlemen who are more suited to your situation. A baronet or knight for you, Caro.” He looked studiously at Hollis and Eliza. “I don’t know, perhaps a clerk of some sort?” he suggested, just in case Hollis and Eliza thought so highly of themselves that they might have set their sights on a lord or, heaven forfend, a prince. “Instead of wasting your time worrying over ball gowns, endeavour to do something useful, such as learning about the care and feeding of a husband and children. You should not be chasing princes and certainly
