“Oh, Hattie... Mr. Masterson paid me a call,” Flora blurted. “I was going to tell you. I was waiting for the right time.”
“Well, this is hardly it,” Queenie drawled, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d just urged Flora to tell her.
But tell her what, exactly? That Rupert had called on Flora? How odd—they weren’t so well acquainted. “Mr. Rupert Masterson called on you,” Hattie repeated, to make sure they were indeed speaking ofherMr. Masterson, the owner and proprietor of the Masterson Dry Goods and Sundries Shop.
“He...he came to me in confidence.” Flora punctuated that remark with a look of sympathy.
Hattie’s gut began to do a strange bit of swirling. “Why?”
“He said...that he thought it best if you and he...” She paused, as if trying to find the words.
Elope?That was it! What other reason could he have for needing to speak in confidence to Flora? He must have sought her help.“Elope?”she asked at the same moment Flora said, “Should not pursue things further.”
No one said a word for a moment. Even Queenie kept her mouth shut.“What?”Hattie asked and stopped walking. This was stunningly incomprehensible. She pressed a fist to her abdomen to keep down the sudden swell of nausea. “What...what did...he...or you...say?”
“Oh, Hattie, dearest.” They’d come to the park’s entrance, and Flora pulled her to a bench and sat her down. She took both of Hattie’s hands in hers. “I’m so very sorry, but there is no other way to say it, is there? He would like you to cry off your engagement. End it, I mean. He has come to the unfortunate conclusion that it must be done. But because he has the utmost consideration for you, he means to protect your reputation by having you write him and end it.”
This didn’t feel considerate of her at all—she felt she’d been run over by a team of four. She didn’t even have enough air in her lungs to ask why. There had to be some mistake! She and Rupert were marching headlong into connubial bliss.Weren’t they?He’d recently met her family and, on that very night, had promised he would formally call on her father within the week. And then he’d gone toFlorainstead of coming to her? No, this couldn’t be.
Hattie stood up. “I think you’ve misunderstood, Flora.”
“Oh, darling,” Flora said sadly.
“But you must have! It makes no sense!”
“It makessomesense,” Queenie said with a bit of a shrug.
“No, it doesn’t,” Flora said quickly with a glare for Queenie. “Perhaps only a tad.”
“He dined at our home on Sunday!” Hattie exclaimed. “Today is Wednesday! What could possibly have happened between then and now?”
“Mmm,” Queenie said, and wandered off to pretend to look at some roses.
“I think,” Flora said, “that if you were to carefully consider your Sunday dinner, you might imagine at least one reason why. Probably more than one. Probably many.”
Hattie’s heart wanted to leap from her chest. Heat crept up the nape of her neck as she thought back to Sunday dinner at her family home on Blandford Street, near the fashionable Portman Square...or, as Flora had once pointed out, on the less fashionable side of the square, where no one wanted to be.
But Rupert had said it was a fine house. He’d come with a box of chocolates for her mother, and Hattie had been so charmed by that. “But I thought the evening went so well.”
Flora patted her arm. “Well...to begin, he worried about a smell in your house that he believes might be peculiar to cats.”
Hattie looked at Flora with surprise. Yes, her mother had an unreasonable affinity for cats, but she had explained that to him. “He said helikedcats! He said he didn’t know what he would do in his shop without Bobo.”
Flora gave her that sympathetic smile again. “But I think it is not the same to have one cat and... How many are there now?”
Hattie swallowed. “Eight.” Or maybe...ten? Frankly, she’d lost count. And Rupert had seemed a little taken aback when he’d entered the foyer and the cats had all come running at once, collectively expecting a treat.
“There’s a bit more,” Flora said.
It turned out that Rupert also found her mother’s collection of tea services disagreeable. And the grandfather clocks. And the dress forms. Granted there were probably more than one hundred tea services, which probably wouldn’t have been quite so noticeable had it not been for the clocks and dress forms. All right, it was the truth—Theodora Woodchurch was overly enthusiastic in her collecting, and a large residence such as the Woodchurch house could be made to look small when cluttered with so many collections.
Her mother’s habits were a source of constant squabbling between her parents, because while her mother was a spendthrift, her father was a miserly king.
And apparently, though Hattie had been so pleased that her father had not asked how little Mr. Masterson would accept in a dowry, she’d missed what terrible taste it was that her father should ask how much profit Mr. Masterson turned every month. According to Flora, Mr. Masterson had been dismayed by it, had thought perhaps such conversations were better had between men in the privacy of a study. Not at the dinner table.
In Hattie’s family, no topic was considered impolite at the dining table. None.
Her sudden heartbreak began to turn to sudden anger. She and Rupert had never shared a cross word—she had no idea he felt so strongly about such things. She knew her family was unusual, but she’d explained it to him, and he’d assured her that eccentricity in families made life more interesting.
