Page 96 of Heiress Gone Wild

“Sorry I’m late,” she murmured.

“You mustn’t apologize,” Irene said smoothly. “Not on your birthday. Clara already told us about the horse going lame.”

Marjorie shot Clara a grateful glance as she slipped into her seat.

“At least it’s a lovely day,” Dulci said brightly. “Nothing is more beautiful than an English summer day.”

Marjorie felt a sudden, inexplicable irritation. Did the weather always have to be the topic seized upon in an awkward moment?

“Miss Thornton,” Hetty said, turning to Jenna, “I understand your wedding is in three weeks. Have you learned yet where Colonel Westcott will be posted afterward?”

The other woman heaved a sigh. “Bombay,” she said with gloom, earning a groan of commiseration from several women at the table. “We are leaving the day after the wedding.”

“Bombay?” Dulci cried. “Oh, no! It’ll be so hot there. What about your complexion?”

“I expect your maid can help you deal with anything of that sort,” Irene put in, but Jenna only sighed.

“My maid is refusing to come. She’s given notice. With everything else to be done before the wedding, how am I to find a decent lady’s maid?” Jenna added, eliciting more murmurs of sympathy. “One who is willing to go halfway around the world to some foreign country?”

Despite her own current difficulties, Marjorie couldn’t help thinking her friend’s words a bit incongruous, since—being American—Jenna was already living in a foreign country. She said nothing, however, but continued to stare at her untouched luncheon plate.

“The Colonel says I can find a maid there,” Jenna went on gloomily, “but men never understand these things.”

“No maid in Bombay will have any knowledge of current fashion,” Dulci said gloomily. “How will you ever manage?”

“I was so hoping we’d be staying here,” Jenna said, words that struck a depressingly familiar chord with Marjorie. “I want to live in London. I have no interest in Bombay. It’s so far away. I can’t imagine anything of interest ever happens there.”

There is a huge, beautiful world out there, and you’ve never seen any of it. Don’t you want to?

Marjorie stirred in her seat as Jonathan’s words echoed through her mind.

“Speaking of happenings,” Carlotta said, “did anyone hear about Lady Mary Pomeroy? She’s engaged at last.” She leaned forward, clearly willing to impart juicy details to the other ladies. “To a curate.”

“No!” Dulci cried as if dismayed, but Marjorie didn’t miss how she leaned closer to Carlotta, equally eager to engage in gossip at another woman’s expense. “A curate, really?”

“Is it so surprising?” Jenna said, her own troubles seemingly forgotten in light of this bit of news. “I mean, after the scandal, a curate was probably the best she could do.”

Shades of Lady Stansbury, Marjorie thought, remembering the talk about Lady Mary Pomeroy in the countess’s sewing circle, and as she glanced at her friends, she was suddenly struck by how different Dulci and Jenna seemed now from the schoolfriends who had dreamed with her of romance and adventure and living across the sea. Perhaps her memory was at fault.

Or perhaps there was another explanation.

If you want to move in society, you must play by society’s rules. It’s that simple.

She glanced from her friends to Carlotta and back again, appreciating just how well Dulci and Jenna had learned those rules. Too well, perhaps. How long before she was the same?

“Well, a girl has to marry someone,” Dulci said. “Better a curate than no one, I suppose.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with a curate,” Marjorie put in, goaded into speaking up.

“No need to get touchy, Marjorie,” Jenna said with a sniff. “You’ve been dreaming about marrying a man with a title just as much as any of us ever did.”

“I was an idiot,” Marjorie blurted out without thinking, a remark that earned her a frown from Dulci.

“I married a man with a title,” she said acidly. “Am I an idiot?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Marjorie mumbled, rubbing four fingers over her forehead, feeling suddenly weary of it all. “I’m sorry if I offended you. Let’s not quarrel.”

“Perhaps it’s time,” Irene murmured tactfully, “that Marjorie opened her presents.”

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