She set her punch down on the table and accepted the fabric with a smile. “Thank you, Imogen.”
“Don’t stare, my dears.” This from an elderly doyenne on the far side of the table, flanked by two hideously-frocked, pale-faced young ingenues, who had apparently never witnessed quite this flavor of chaos.
“Oh dear,” Imogen said, her wide-eyed gaze falling to one of the girls. “Truly that bonnet is …” She trailed off, then said, “Awesome.”
Adelaide gave a tiny, barely-there snort of amusement, and Sesily feigned deep interest in her glass.
“I particularly like the …” Imogen searched for a word, moving her hand in a large oval in front of her own face. “… ornamentation.”
The girl’s grandmother harrumphed.
“Lady Beaufetheringstone,” the duchess said, leaning over Sesily’s arm toward the punch bowl. “May I serve you and your—”
“Granddaughters,” the lady barked. “That would be fine, Duchess, as we should like to be on our way.” She lowered her voice to a still very audible whisper and said to the young ladies, “Obviously, I wouldn’t like you two to be painted with this company.”
Sesily refrained from pointing out that the poor pale girls could do with some color. Instead, she cleaned her sticky hand and stared directly at the older woman until the trio scurried off, no doubt to whisper about the unfortunate souls lurking at the refreshment table.
“Do try not to cause trouble,” the duchess said under her breath.
“I would never,” Sesily replied, casually. “I was merely resolving to begin my fairy godmothering with those two girls. I shall have them round to tea.”
The duchess raised a brow. “You don’t drink tea.”
Sesily grinned. “Neither will they, when I’m done with them.”
“Sesily Talbot, be careful, or what they say about you will be true.”
Of course, it was already all true. Or, most of it. At least, most of the best bits. Which, sadly, were considered to be the worst bits to most of society. There was no accounting for taste.
Adelaide leaned back and looked to the floor between them, where Imogen’s mint green skirts were all that could be seen. “Why is Imogen beneath the table?”
The duchess sighed to the roomful of her guests. “Can you blame her with this company?”
Sesily swallowed a chuckle. “Any news, Adelaide?”
“Oh, yes,” Adelaide replied. “Your retiring room is the nicest in London, Your Grace. Very conducive to conversation.”
“Is it?” the duchess asked, as though they discussed the weather.
“Seems that Viscount Coleford is in attendance with his new bride.” Bystanders might miss the edge in Adelaide’s voice, but it was clear as crystal to her three friends.
Sesily slid a surprised look at their hostess. “Is he?”
Coleford was a monstrous bully of a man, pickled in venom and willing to take it out on anyone who drew close—as long as they were weaker than he. He had just married his third wife, forty years his junior, all of London looking the other way despite the mysterious deaths of two prior viscountesses—the first after the death of his grown son and only heir, and the second after two years of marriage without issue.
Like too many of his peers, the old viscount had been allowed to relish in his power for too long. Which was why, like so many of his peers, he was on their list.
But his was not the box that would be ticked tonight.
“Enemies close,” the duchess replied beneath her breath as she flashed a bright white smile in the direction of a couple dancing by—the publisher of several of London’s most popular newspapers and his beautiful wife, whom Sesily knew from her regular attendance at the city’s most exclusive gaming hell.
A clever addition to the evening’s play, which was about to begin.
“Seems, also, that the Earl of Totting escorted Matilda Fenwick this evening.” Adelaide pushed her spectacles up on her nose and shook her head, her red ringlets bouncing. “They say she’s to be a countess soon enough.”
Tilly Fenwick, eldest daughter to a very rich merchant on the hunt for a title, doomed to a life married to a man drunk on power, who destroyed women for sport.
Which was why the future countess had come to them.
Sesily considered the ballroom, easily finding the set of broad shoulders she’d been watching all evening. Across the room, the Earl of Totting, one of the handsomest men in all of London—who also happened to be one of the worst men in all of London—moved with slow, even grace toward the open doors.
A breeze blew in, bringing a brisk November chill with it.
“Brutal heat in here,” Adelaide said.
Sesily shivered and met her friend’s keen gaze. “I was just noticing it. Positively cloying.”
Totting drew nearer to the exit.
Imogen came out from beneath the table, brandishing the pillbox. “Found it!”
“Wonderful news,” Sesily said, pressing the handkerchief back into the other woman’s hand. “Thank you.”
Imogen shoved the handkerchief into her reticule and began to collect her dispersed items, hands flying across the table. Were anyone watching, they’d see nothing amiss, at least, nothing that was not to be expected from Imogen.
They wouldn’t see the pill she dropped into the glass of ratafia.
Nor would they think twice about Sesily lifting her madcap friend’s pencil and paper, casting a glance at the text scrawled there.
7-out
10-down
Seven minutes, then ten more.
Sesily’s brows rose at Imogen. “That’s it?”
It wasn’t much time.
Imogen blinked. “Do you know Margaret Cavendish? The author?”
“What?”
Her madcap friend smiled. “The Contract. It’s lovely. I shall make thee a meteor of the time, she writes. So poetic.”
Imogen would not know poetry if Byron himself kidnapped her in the dead of night. Sesily tilted her head, irritation coursing through her. “Yes, well, first I’m not certain that Cavendish was referring to actual speed. But more importantly, I’m supposed to—” She stopped herself, lowering her voice so no one else would hear. “In seventeen minutes?”
“I tell you, Sesily,” Imogen said. “If anyone can do it, it is you. I believe in you.”
In and out in seventeen minutes.
“Well, no one has ever said I’m not fast,” Sesily said, dryly.
A trio of snickers replied.
“A meteor of the time, you say?”
“To be honest,” Imogen said, collecting the paper and pencil, “I didn’t get much further in the book. Any more than ten minutes of reading and I’m absolutely dead asleep.”
“Terrible, that,” Adelaide commiserated.
It was an understatement. The last thing they needed was a corpse in the gardens.
But there was one thing that would be worse, for Sesily, at least. “Imogen, are you able to remember anything you read that close to bedtime?”
Imogen looked absolutely delighted when she proclaimed, “Not a bit of it! Isn’t it wonderful?”
Sesily, Adelaide, and the duchess exchanged a look. Sesily had seventeen minutes, but she’d be the only one who would remember them.