“There’s no man to shoot,” Linnet said.
Zenobia snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try for virgin birth, my love. I can’t imagine that it worked very well back in Jerusalem. Every time the bishop talks about it at Christmastime, I can’t help thinking that the poor girl must have had a miserable time trying to get people to believe her.”
“I can’t imagine why you’re bringing scripture into this conversation,” Linnet’s father said. “We’re talking about princes, not gods.”
Linnet groaned. “This dress just makes me look plump.”
Zenobia sank into a chair. “Do you mean to tell me that you aren’t carrying a child?”
“I’ve been saying that. I didn’t sleep with the prince, or anyone else either.”
There was a mournful pause while the truth at last sunk in. “God Almighty, you’re ruined, and you didn’t even eat the gingerbread,” her aunt said, finally. “What’s more, just displaying your waistline to its best advantage would be no help at this point. People would simply assume that you had, as one might say, taken care of the problem.”
“After the prince refused her to marry her,” the viscount said heavily. “I’d assume it myself, under the circumstances.”
“It’s unfair,” Linnet said fiercely. “With Mama’s—ah—reputation, people naturally expected that I might be rather flirtatious—”
“That’s an understatement,” her father said. “They thought you’d be a baggage, and now they know you’re one. Except you’re not.”
“It’s the beauty,” her aunt said, preening a little. “The women in my family are simply cursed by our beauty. Look at dear Rosalyn, dying so young.”
“I don’t see that it’s cursed you,” the viscount said, rather rudely.
“Oh, but it has,” Zenobia said. “It has, it has, it has. It taught me what could have been, had I not had the chains of birth holding me back. I could have graced the world’s stages, you know. Rosalyn too. I expect that’s why she was so—”
“So what?” the viscount said, leaping on it.
“Irresistible,” Zenobia said.
Linnet’s father snorted. “Impure, more like.”
“She knew that she could have married the finest in the land,” Zenobia said. “And you see, that same dream caught our darling Linnet in its coils and now she’s ruined.”
“Rosalyn could not have married the finest in the land,” the viscount said. “There’s a reason for the Royal Marriage Laws, you know.” He pointed a finger at Linnet. “Didn’t you even think of that before you created such a scandal with young Augustus? For Christ’s sake, everyone knows that he up and married a German woman a few years ago. In Rome, I believe. The king himself had to get involved and annul the marriage.”
“I didn’t know until yesterday,” Linnet said. “When the prince told me so.”
“No one tells girls that sort of thing,” her aunt said dismissively. “If you were so worried about her, Cornelius, why didn’t you trot around to those parties and watch over her yourself?”
“Because I was busy! And I found a woman to chaperone her, since you were too lazy to do it yourself. Mrs. Hutchins. Perfectly respectable in every way, and seemed to grasp the problem, too. Where is that woman? She assured me that she would keep your name as white as the driven snow.”
“She refused to come downstairs.”
“Afraid to face the music,” he muttered. “And where’s your governess? She’s another one. I told her and told her that you had to be twice as chaste to make up for your mother’s reputation.”
“Mrs. Flaccide took insult last night when you said she was a limb of Satan and accused her of turning me into a doxy.”
“I’d had a spot or two of drink,” her father said, looking utterly unrepentant. “I drowned my sorrows after I was told to my face—to my face!— that my only daughter had been debauched.”
“She left about an hour later,” Linnet continued. “And I doubt she’s coming back, because Tinkle says that she took a great deal of silver with her.”
“The silver is irrelevant,” Zenobia said. “You should never make the best servants angry, because they invariably know where all the valuables are kept. Far more important, I expect your governess knew all about any billets-doux that royal twig might have sent you?”
“He didn’t write me any love letters, if that’s what you mean. But early one morning about a month ago he did throw strawberries at my bedchamber window. She and Mrs. Hutchins said at the time that we mustn’t let anyone know.”
“And now Flaccide is out telling the world about it,” her aunt announced. “You really are a fool, Cornelius. You should have paid her five hundred pounds on the spot and shipped her off to Suffolk. Now Flaccide is out there turning one strawberry into a whole field. She’ll have Linnet carrying twins.”
Linnet thought her governess would likely leap at the chance. They’d never really liked each other. In truth, women rarely liked her. From the moment she debuted four months ago, the other girls had clustered into groups and giggled behind their hands. But no one ever let Linnet in on the joke.
Zenobia reached out and rang the bell. “I can’t think why you haven’t offered me any tea, Cornelius. Linnet’s life may have taken a new corner, but we still have to eat.”
“I’m ruined, and you want tea?” her father moaned.
Tinkle opened the door so quickly that Linnet knew he’d been listening in, not that she was surprised.
“We’ll have tea and something to eat along with it,” Zenobia told him. “You’d better bring along something for reducing as well.”
The butler frowned.
“Cucumbers, vinegar, something of that nature,” she said impatiently. When he closed the door, she waved at Linnet’s bosom. “We must do something about that. No one would describe you as plump, my dear, but you’re not exactly a wraith either, are you?”
Linnet counted to five again. “My figure is exactly like my mother’s. And yours.”
“Satan’s temptation,” her father said morosely. “It isn’t seemly so uncovered.”
“No such luck,” Linnet said. “I got a prince, but the king of darkness never made an appearance.”
“Augustus couldn’t be even a minor devil,” her aunt said consideringly. “I’m not surprised he didn’t manage to seduce you, now I think on it. He’s a bit of a nincompoop.”
“There shouldn’t be styles that make a young girl look like a matron with a babe on the way,” Lord Sundon stated. “If there is, I don’t want a part of it. That is, I wouldn’t want a part of it if I were the type to wear dresses. That is, if I were a woman.”
“You’re getting more foolish every year,” Zenobia observed. “Why my sister ever agreed to marry you, I’ll never know.”
“Mama loved Papa,” Linnet said as firmly as she could. She’d fastened on to that fact years ago, in the aftermath of a confusing evening when she’d encountered her mother with another gentleman in an intimate setting, engaged in a very intimate activity.