Of course, I’ve my own fretting. How can I tell Felicity what I’ve heard without upsetting her? How does anyone talk sense to Felicity? It is like trying to tame a force of nature.
“I think an English garden party is quite lovely and appropriate. It isn’t a Turkish ball, granted, but even Her Majesty finds such displays unseemly. Was it discussed among the young ladies? Did they find fault with it?”
“No, it was not discussed.” I sigh, leaning my head against the side of the carriage. The London gas fog is settling in. The streets are murky, the people appearing like phantoms. I spy a young man with dark curls and a newsboy cap, and my heart leaps. I half lean out the window.
“Pardon me! You there! Sir!” I call.
“Gemma Doyle!” my grandmother gasps.
The young man turns. It’s not Kartik. He offers the day’s news. “Paper, miss?”
“No,” I say, swallowing hard. “No, thank you.” I settle back against the seat, determined not to look again and raise my hopes unnecessarily. Where are you, Kartik?
“That was most impolite,” my grandmother tuts. Her eyes narrow with a new thought. “Did they find something wanting in you, Gemma, at the party? You didn’t speak too freely or behave…strangely?”
I grew claws and bayed at the moon. I confessed that I eat the hearts of small children. I told them I like the French. Why is the fault always mine?
“We spoke of Mrs. Sheridan’s flowers,” I say evenly.
“Well, nothing wrong in that,” my grandmother says, reassuring herself. “No, nothing at all.”
By late evening of my last night in London, my misery has reached operatic proportions. Grandmama takes to her bed early, “exhausted” by the day’s events. Tom is to dine at the Athenaeum at the behest of Lord Denby.
“When I return, I shall be a great man,” he says, admiring himself in the mirror over the mantel. He has a new top hat, and it makes him look like a well-heeled scarecrow.
“I shall practice my genuflecting whilst you are away,” I respond.
Tom turns to me with a sneer. “I’d send you to a nunnery, but even those saintly women haven’t the patience for your petulance. But please don’t see me out,” he says, striding for the door with a spring in his step. “I shouldn’t want to interrupt your sulking by the fireside.”