“So, are you willing to enjoy this whole thing?”
Lucy shrugged. “Very well. I’ll try.”
“I’ll try” was hardly an enthusiastic response, but Alice was grateful for what she could get. “Good. Now, I’ll need to know a great deal more about you and your background.”
Lucy eyed her cautiously. “Why?”
“Because people will ask, of course—they’ve already started. The ton is quite a small and rather closed society, and people like to understand how we are all connected.It’s the reason I became your godmother—so we’d be connected in a way people could appreciate.”
“I see.”
“So far I’ve managed to imply to people that your mother and I were girlhood friends—luckily I had a very obscure girlhood, so nobody could contradict me—and that we had lost touch over the years because your family moved quite often. That your mother had died, and it was for her sake I was bringing you out.”
“Sounds good to me.” Lucy seemed indifferent to the conversation. She was folding her napkin into some intricate shape.
Alice smacked her hand on the table. “No, it’s not nearly good enough, Lucy. You don’t seem to understand. To most of the people in the ton, background is everything. If anyone suspects I never saw you or any of your family before this week, and that I’m trying to pass you off—falsely—as my goddaughter and a friend of the family, we’ll be ruined.”
Lucy looked up. “We?”
“Yes,we—both of us. You for not being who they think you are—the ton can be very unforgiving of people who try to deceive them in order to gain access to the highest levels of society. As for one of their own who aids and abets such a deception...” She shook her head.
“Oh.”
“Yes,oh.”
“We’ll have to agree on the story then,” Lucy said, quite as if this were an everyday occurrence for her. And perhaps it was.
“Exactly, but we should keep it as close to the truth as possible. Now, what was your mother’s name?”
“Louisa.”
“And her surname—her maiden name?” Alice prompted.
Lucy’s brow furrowed in thought, then she shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
Alice was shocked. “You don’t remember your mother’s maiden name?”
Lucy gave a careless shrug. “She never talked much about the past, never mentioned her parents. And if ever I raised the question, she’d change the subject.”
“What about your father? Surely he knows.”
She shook her head. “I asked him once and he got so angry, I never asked again.”
“I see.” How strange not to know such basic information about one’s parents.
“Do you know where your mother grew up?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. What about where you grew up? Was that in the country?”
“Yes, in the village of Chaceley, in Worcestershire. My father was the vicar there. I implied this afternoon that your mother and I knew each other as girls, but had lost touch after she married and moved away,” she said.
Lucy nodded. “That’ll work. We moved a lot. Papa has what he calls ‘itchy feet’—he always likes to keep moving.”
Alice couldn’t imagine not having any place to call home. Even if home wasn’t very comfortable.
“What should we tell people if they ask about your father?”
“That he’s away, traveling. It’s what I usually say.”
