“She must,” Anne explained. “She and Villiers had a laugh about Oyster at the benefit the other night. He’s a joke between them, you see. An intimacy.”
“Nothing could make Oyster look fashionable,” Eleanor said flatly.
“I’ll pin one of my ostrich feathers into his collar. Queen Charlotte herself adorned her dog with ostrich feathers. Or was it peacock feathers? This will show Villiers that you are truly à la mode. Everyone has a pug these days.”
“But I am not à la mode,” Eleanor began. “And more to the point, Oyster is not a pug.”
“Part of him is a pug,” Anne said, patting the dog. “Wait until you see how wonderful he looks with an ostrich feather.” She was wearing a wildly fashionable chip hat lined with sarcenet, with a cluster of white feathers on one side. Without pausing for breath, she plucked one of her plumes and knelt beside Oyster.
“He is a pug,” her mother announced. “Mr. Pesnickle said so, and although he might have been more tidy in his dog’s domestic arrangements, we must take him at his word.”
“No pug has those ears,” Eleanor said. “And more to the point, Oyster will not add to the occasion.”
“Your sister, young though she is, is much better at understanding men,” her mother ruled. “You have never shown the faintest interest in attracting a man’s attention, Eleanor; now you must accept advice from a younger sister.”
“Voilà!” Anne cried. “He’s wearing his feather à la conseilleur. See how it tilts sideways?”
“Who could miss it?” Eleanor asked, leaning down to give Oyster a pat. He panted enthusiastically, looking up at her with adoring eyes. She was very fond of Oyster. But he was one of those odd dogs who just missed being attractive. His body was cream, and his nose and muzzle were black, and then he was pop-eyed. The feather didn’t help.
“The point is,” Anne told her, “Oyster gives you something to talk about.”
Oyster’s incontinent habits certainly did generate conversation. “I don’t think he likes that feather, Anne.” It curled over his back and brushed his tail. Not the brightest of dogs, Oyster was convinced a fly was trying to bite him and so he began twisting around to snap at his own tail.
Though he was far too fat to actually reach his tail.
“It’s fashionable,” Anne said stubbornly. “Mother, don’t let her take the feather off. Oyster will get used to it, and the queen’s dog wears one precisely the same. Though I seem to remember hers does wear a peacock feather.”
A pug wearing a peacock feather. That would be a conversation piece, all right.
“When we arrive, you must go down for a nap immediately, Eleanor,” the duchess stated. “I want you to look your best by the time Villiers appears. Certainly better than Lisette!”
“Mother,” Eleanor said, “Lisette is a friend of mine. There’s no reason to use that tone.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes. “Eleanor, you are such a fool that it’s a miracle they’re calling Lisette cracked instead of yourself.”
Eleanor said nothing.
Her mother gave a faint shriek. “I’ll be blessed if I haven’t forgotten to take your grandmother’s silver combs! I want to arrange them on your bedside table.” She trotted from the room.
“Does she think that I’ll invite the duke into my bedchamber to examine my combs?” Eleanor said.
Anne gave her hand a squeeze. “Mother is accustomed to overstating her opinions.”
“I know.”
“She didn’t mean to call you stupid.”
But she did mean it. Eleanor had always been a puzzle to her mother, and not a pleasant one. Part of the problem was that the duchess had never known about Gideon, never known about the glorious year in which they grew closer and closer, fell in love, told each other everything, and finally, in that last delirious month before his birthday, made love.
Because her mother never knew that, she knew nothing about her.
The greater problem was that Eleanor simply didn’t fit in. She said the wrong things. She was too sarcastic.
Eleanor had figured out long ago that her mother was oblivious to her feelings and didn’t mean most of her insults. But the knowledge didn’t help. Every time her mother called her stupid, she felt more bitter, like a knife sharpened in the cold.
Then she would say something sarcastic again, exasperating her mother with her stupidity.
“Mother and I saw Gideon at the Duchess of Beaumont’s benefit ball,” Eleanor said, needing to tell someone. “He was in the refreshment tent and he came up to speak to us.”
“Was he with Ada?”
“She is ill again.”
Anne wrinkled her nose.
“Don’t! It’s not her fault.”
“I think she likes to lie about on a sofa and court attention,” Anne said with the relentless lack of sympathy that only a young healthy person could feel.
“I was there once when she had a coughing attack,” Eleanor said. “It sounded terribly painful. She couldn’t straighten up.”
“I don’t like her.”
“Don’t, don’t say that! It’s not her fault.”
“You’re right about that. It’s not her fault,” Anne said.
Eleanor blinked.
“I don’t mean her illness: I mean the rest of it. It’s Gideon’s fault, Eleanor, and now that you’re finally considering another man, I’m going to say it. He shouldn’t have left you like that. He should have broken that will. He never, ever should have behaved with such dishonor.”
“Dishonor!” Eleanor cried. “Why, that’s the opposite of what he did. He—”
“He dishonored you,” Anne said, steadily, holding her eyes. “Didn’t he, Eleanor?”
Eleanor had never been quite sure whether her sister knew the extent of that summer’s folly. “It wasn’t dishonor,” she said haltingly. “We are—we were in love.”
“If a man falls in love to that tune,” Anne said, “then he incurs some responsibility in the matter. Gideon is a cad, Eleanor. A louse. I’ve thought so forever, but I couldn’t say it because you made him into a saint, and yourself nothing more than a worshipper at his worthless shrine.”
“Not a louse,” Eleanor protested. “He’s honorable, and good. But once he learned of that will, it all became so complicated—”
“He’s a hoity-toity prig,” Anne interrupted. “Do you think he would have broken that will if you hadn’t—” She paused. “You might hate me for this, Eleanor, but I’m going to say it anyway. If you hadn’t given your virginity to Gideon, don’t you think he would have broken that will?”
“That’s a wretched thing to say!” Eleanor snapped. “We were in love! You may not know what that is like, but—”
“I agree with our nanny,” Anne said, overriding her. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”
“That’s—you can’t—” Eleanor felt rage rising in her chest and she tightened her grip on Oyster’s leash so suddenly that he gave a sharp yelp. The thought that Anne might be right was heartbreaking, literally.