“You certainly shall not do any of that,” Matilda insisted defiantly, seizing hold of Olivia’s clammy hands. “We shall steal you away and hide you between our residences. Why, now that I think of it, there is a cottage in the woods near my home that has been unoccupied for years; it will be the perfect sanctuary!”
Olivia mustered a weary smile. “I believe my father has already considered the possibility of my fleeing without delay.” She huffed out a breath. “We are to leave for this dowager’s residence as soon as the ball is finished. I suspect that is why I was informed tonight.”
“But… your mother—why did she not say anything?” Leah jumped in, aghast. “Why did she not forewarn you?”
Matilda pressed a finger to her lips. “Dear Leah, before we consider who is at fault, let us first discuss the specifics. Indeed, to understand how we might resolve this, we must first understand our enemy, so to speak.” She drew in a breath. “Who is this gentleman? Is he old? What manner of gentleman is he? What is the cause of this union—fortune, station, connections, a desire for an heir?”
“Of course, we must!” Leah agreed. “Is he a rogue in need of reforming? Has this been demanded by a despairing parent?”
Olivia chuckled tightly. “If you include my father, then yes.”
It was not clear, not even to Olivia, which question she was answering.
“He is the Marquess of Bridfield, wherever that is,” she continued, rocking slightly to dull the sharp edges of her dread. “And that, my darling girls, is all I know.”
Phoebe steepled her fingers and rested her chin upon their points. “Well, it stands to reason that he cannot be terribly old, otherwise he would not have an aunt living.”
“Unlesssheis terribly old,” Leah interjected.
Phoebe tilted her head from side to side. “I had not thought of that.” She paused. “But why is that name so familiar? The Marquess of Bridfield… No, I cannot place it. Give me a while and it shall come to me, I am sure.”
“As you are the only daughter of a Viscount and he is a Marquess,” Matilda mused aloud, “we can rule out a pursuit of station. So, we have fortune—possible, as so many of these dynasties are crumbling after centuries of frittering. Connections—even more plausible, considering none of us can place this fellow. Or, there is the desire for an heir to consider, and that needs no explanation.”
Olivia shuddered. “I would rather consider none of those notions.”
“Quite right,” Matilda said, softening the teacherly tone of her voice. “Allwillbe well, Olivia. If we cannot smuggle you out of here this evening, then we shall simply have to kidnap you on another occasion. If we put all of our minds together, I know we can concoct a believable scene; a robbery gone awry, that sort of thing.”
Olivia had to laugh. “I should relish seeing that and then, once the fellow has found another involuntary soul to marry him, I shall make a grand entrance at the finest ball of the next season, resurrected from the dead. Oh, I can already hear the screams of terror!”
“Or, you could simply make yourself so unpleasant and repulsive that he decides he does not wish to marry you,” Leah suggested with a shrug.
Phoebe nodded eagerly. “If anyone can convince him that you are not a good prospect, it is you. Do you remember your debut, when that Earl’s son tried to woo you?”
The girls snickered, knowing the story well.
“I promise, I did not employ the services of those wasps after my lemon ice “spilled” upon him—that was fate itself,” Olivia insisted, warmed by the company of her friends and the history they shared. “To this day, he calls me a witch, convinced that I somehow summoned those wasps to swarm and sting him.”
“Or you might fall in love with him,” Anna said dreamily, sipping from her cup of punch as if she was already toasting to the nuptials.
The other four women stared at her. She blinked, her cheeks flushing red, and immediately dropped her chin to her chest, falling silent. It was no secret that Anna was only part of the never-marrying side of the “club” because she had not yet found a gentleman to rival those she read and dreamed about, but even if she did find such a man, she would still be their friend. Always.
“What I mean to say is,” Anna mumbled, keeping her gaze down, “itcouldbe a success. Not all gentlemen are destined to behave as your father did, Olivia. Indeed, society’s gentlemen are rather like a… a… basket of fruit—there will be some rotten berries at the bottom, but there are plenty of shiny, sweet apples and plums to be found with time and patience.”
Matilda clicked her tongue. “But one cannot always know if a fruit is rotten until you have already bitten into it. In this instance, that bite means marriage for our dear Olivia, and she will be trapped if she finds that it is moldy within.”
“It is best to never make it that far. Best to never so much as look at the basket of fruit, for it is all assuredly sour,” Leah agreed, her eyes darkening as she turned her face away. Olivia’s heart ached for her poor friend, remembering how she had suffered. If anyone knew the pitfalls of engagements and betrothals and weddings, it was Leah.
Phoebe shrugged. “I have never much liked fruit. It is too… inconsistent. Some summer afternoons, you can enjoy the finest strawberry of your life, so sweet and fragrant and perfect it makes you want to cry. Then, you search for a strawberry like that again, and you cannot find it, and you feel disappointed for ever having tasted such a tremendous strawberry for it has ruined all other strawberries for you.” She paused. “Apologies. I forgot we were not talking ofactualstrawberries, though I imagine there is a metaphor in there somewhere.”
Olivia did not want to be the one to dampen Anna’s still-burning hopes for love and marriage, but nor could she tolerate the fantasy. “All gentlemen are the same. If there is one thing I know about marriage, it is that infidelity is as much a part of it as making vows, declaring false promises, someone drinking too much, and picking through an obscene amount of dinner courses that always end with a posset of some kind.”
“That isallyou know of marriage,” Anna corrected shyly. “Your mother and father are but one example, and if this were an experiment, you would need more than one pair of subjects for investigation. It is not evidence of marriage’s absolute failure, but evidence ofoneway in which it can turn.”
Olivia nodded slowly. “Perhaps, but if you were handed a box of twenty sugared almonds and informed that one of them was, instead, a sugared cockroach made to resemble an almond, you would likely refuse to eat any of them.”
“An astute observation,” Matilda remarked, but Anna seemed undeterred.
“Maybe, in that analogy, it merely shows that courage is required for marriage,” Anna said, taking a large gulp of her punch. “Nine-and-ten sugared almonds versus one cockroach seems like rather good odds to me.”