Page 58 of Lady Scandal

“No,” Simon put in before his sister could reply, giving the girl his sternest frown. “She is going straight back home. First thing tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s such a shame,” Delia said. “I was hoping the two of you could join me tomorrow night at the opera. I have a box at Covent Garden.”

“The opera?” Cassie echoed before he could refuse the invitation. “Oh, that would be lovely. I’ve never been to Covent Garden.”

“And she’s not going now,” Simon assured them both. “She’s going home to Berkshire with me.”

He was ignored.

“Several friends of mine are coming,” Delia went on. “One of them is a young lady about your age. I know you’ll like her. You two might even become friends. I know it can be lonely for a girl,” she added with a pointed look in Simon’s direction, “once she’s left school. It’s hard to make friends.”

Simon felt a stab of conscience, just as he suspected Delia had intended, and the look he gave her in return was wry.

“It’s Puccini,” she told him irrepressibly. “La Bohème. It’s anexcellent production. I saw it when it first came to London last autumn. You really ought to see it.” She turned to Cassandra. “We can have supper here at the Savoy afterward.”

“Oh, it all sounds so wonderful,” Cassie said wistfully and turned to Simon. “Can we go?”

Simon felt compelled to point out the obvious. “You’re already in serious trouble, young lady.”

“I know,” she agreed at once. “And I’m sure there will be consequences, which I absolutely deserve. But,” she went on before he could emphatically concur, “before then, can we go to the opera with Lady Stratham? I promise I’ll be good as gold from now on.”

He knew his sister well enough to know how laughably ridiculous that promise was, but Cassie gave him no chance to say so.

“Oh, dear brother, do say yes. Please, please.”

He glanced from Cassandra to Delia and back again, any shred of stern brotherly resolve fading.

“Two peas in a pod,” he muttered, knowing he’d just lost the battle. Their radiant smiles told him that they knew it, too, and he feared that he was the one in serious trouble.

11

The following morning, Delia found a note from Ritz on her breakfast tray, asking for a meeting with her that afternoon. He was spending Sunday at home with his family and then departing for Paris first thing Monday morning, the note said, and he wanted to discuss hotel business with her before his departure.

She had a pretty fair idea that the hotel business in question involved Simon, however, and that made everything terribly awkward. On the one hand, she understood Ritz’s misgivings—his dislike of being undermined, his concern for the staff, and his resentment of the changes. She had felt the same, in the beginning. But during the past few weeks, she had also come to see Simon’s point of view. A hotel that lost money could not stay in business. Both Simon and Max had forced her to accept that brutal truth, but Ritz still seemed to be under the illusion that nothing had to change.

Easy for him to be so cavalier, she thought, tossing the note back on her breakfast tray, since he was never around for more than a few days at a time. He had clearly not yet appreciated that the changes Simon was implementing were going to be made, no matter how many of the employees he rallied to stand against them.

Delia bit her lip, staring at the note on the tray, feeling torn. Sheowed Ritz so much, and she honestly didn’t know where she’d be today if it weren’t for him. But she also knew when to accept the inevitable. And she had the feeling that the entire purpose of the meeting Ritz wanted was to force her to choose a side, and that was a position she did not want to be in. Stalling, she decided, was her best bet.

Fortunately, she had the perfect excuse to avoid a meeting. Her day, she knew, was going to be full, for she had to pave the way for Cassandra’s introduction into society tonight. Inviting Simon and his sister to the opera had been an impulse on her part, but if Cassandra hoped to move in society, the poor girl was clearly going to need some help. Simon might understand balance sheets and income statements, but he was clueless about what a seventeen-year-old girl required to make a successful debut.

The opera was an excellent way to begin the process. The boxes that lined the perimeter of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden were the perfect place to see and be seen by anyone who mattered, and though early February in London wasn’t the most exciting time, there would still be plenty of the ton’s aristocratic members in attendance to see just who Lady Stratham had invited to share her box for the year’s first performance of Puccini’s new opera.

Despite the ideal setting, it was a tricky business to launch a girl, and Delia knew choosing whom else to invite had to be done carefully. Adding to the difficulty, she didn’t have much time to make the arrangements.

With that reminder, she dashed off a note to Ritz explaining that she was fully engaged all day and evening, expressing her sincerest apologies, and suggesting they meet the minute he returned from Paris. She then summoned Molly, got dressed, and left the hotel to begin making her arrangements for the evening ahead.

As she’d suspected, filling the remaining five seats of her box was not an easy task. No one liked receiving last-minute invitations,particularly for the benefit of a girl they’d never met whose brother had not been to the manor born. In addition, word of Simon’s new policies at the Savoy had gotten round, ruffling quite a few aristocratic feathers, requiring her to send one telegram, make a dozen calls upon acquaintances, and use every bit of her skill at persuasion. But these efforts proved worthwhile, and in the end, those in her box that evening included one baroness and her daughter, one very eligible baronet and his sister, and one very exasperated duke.

“Really, Delia,” Max grumbled as they stood by the refreshment table, waiting for Simon and his sister to arrive, “the favors you ask.”

“Oh, stop,” she replied as she accepted a filled glass from the footman pouring champagne. “I’ve asked bigger ones of you in the past.”

“That’s hardly a point in your favor. You realize I’m a busy man?”

She negated that point with a scoff. “In February? Hardly.”

“Even in February, it’s not a simple matter to drop everything and come all the way to London. Especially when I was given no explanation.”

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