“Oh darling, the season has scarcely begun, hasn’t it?” Annabel said, tucking the baby’s blanket around his little shoulder. “There’s plenty of time to lure any number of men.”
“Annabel.”
She looked up at the tone in Josie’s voice.
“I’m known as the Scottish Sausage.”
If Josie were writing one of the novels she loved to read, she would have said that there was a moment of stricken silence.
Annabel blinked at her. “The—The—”
“It’s partly your fault,” Imogen said, a sharp note in her voice. “You introduced Josie to your revolting neighbor, Crogan. When Josie rejected his advances he wrote a school friend named Darlington. And most unfortunately, Darlington appears to specialize in cruel set-downs.”
“Has the tongue of a snake,” Tess said flatly. “No one loathes him, although they should, because he’s so clever. But he hasn’t shown any cleverness here, just garden-variety malice.”
“You can’t mean it!” Annabel cried, sitting up straight. “The Crogans?”
“The younger one,” Josie said morosely. “The one who sang all those songs in the tree outside my window.”
“I know you didn’t want to marry him, but—”
“He didn’t wish to marry me either. He felt it was beneath him to wed a Scottish piglet, but his elder brother threatened to throw him out if he didn’t court me.”
“What?” Annabel said, confused. She was trying to think about her neighbors, the Crogans, and not about Samuel’s warm little body under her hand. “How could he possibly insult you, Josie? We had him to the house only once, and I refused to allow him to take you to the assembly!”
“I overheard his brother urging him to marry me,” Josie said.
Annabel’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Ewan would never have let that little toad write insults to his friends in London. As it is, I’m sure he’ll kill the man. He almost did it last year.”
“It was too humiliating.”
But Annabel had known her little sister for eighteen years, and she could recognize the slight flush on her face. She said with a little gasp: “Josie, you didn’t have anything to do with young Crogan’s illness, did you?”
Josie tossed her hair. “He probably ate something that didn’t agree with him, the disgusting little turnip.”
“He lost two stone in a matter of a fortnight!”
“That wouldn’t hurt him. And he deserved it.”
“Papa’s colic medicine for horses,” Imogen told Annabel.
“It wasn’t Papa’s,” Josie said. “It was mine. I created it myself.”
“Josie and I have already discussed the inadvisable approach she took to the problem,” Tess said, looking up from peeling an apple.
“Inadvisable? She could have killed the man!”
“Absolutely not,” Josie said indignantly. “When Peterkin gave it to the stable boy, it only made him sick for a week.”
“I rather think the younger Crogan did deserve it,” Imogen said. “After all, he instigated all the unpleasantness Josie has suffered in London.”
“What did he call you?” Annabel asked. And then: “Ewan is going to kill him. Absolutely kill him.”
“He called me a Scottish piglet,” Josie said flatly. “Darlington made the term into the more alliterative Scottish Sausage, and the sobriquet has stuck.” Even she could hear the stark despair in her voice.
“Oh, Josie, I’m so sorry,” Annabel whispered. “I had no idea.”
“I did write you a few weeks ago, but perhaps our letters crossed as you were coming from Scotland,” Tess said.
“It’s too late now,” Josie said. “No one will dance with me unless he’s forced to by Tess and Imogen.”
“That is simply not true,” Imogen said. “What about Timothy Arbuthnot?”
“He’s old,” Josie said. “Old and widowed. I can certainly understand that he wants a wife for those children of his, but I don’t care to play the role.”
“Timothy is not old,” Tess said. “He can’t be more than a year or so into his thirties, which is, may I point out, the same age as all of our husbands.”
“Besides,” Imogen said, “thirty is a watershed year for men. If they’re going to develop intelligence, they do it around then, and if they don’t, it’s too late. So you mustn’t hanker after men in their twenties. That’s like buying a pig in a poke.”
“Don’t mention pigs,” Josie said through clenched teeth. “I don’t like Mr. Arbuthnot. There’s something waxy about his face, as if he got up in the morning and had to push his nose into place.”
“What a revolting description,” Annabel said. “While we need to turn this unfortunate situation around, obviously Arbuthnot isn’t the one to do it.”
“There’s no way to turn it around,” Josie said. “Unless by a miracle I suddenly became slim, everyone thinks of sausage when they look at me.”
“Absurd,” Annabel said. “You look beautiful.” They all stared at Josie for a moment. She was wearing a dressing gown, as they all were. Josie scowled back at them.
“The problem with you,” Annabel said, “is that if one doesn’t know you, you look like one of those sweet Renaissance madonnas.”
“With round, maternal faces,” Josie said glumly. She hated her cheeks.
“No, with beautiful, glowing skin and a sweet look. But you’re not at all sweet by nature.”
“True enough,” Imogen said, eating a last seed cake. “You do have the most marvelous skin, Josie.”
“Unfortunate that there’s so much of it,” Josie said.
“Nonsense. I’ve told you many times, as has Griselda, that men are very fond of figures like ours,” Annabel said. “Griselda! Wake up and tell Josie how delicious your figure is. And mine, for that matter.”
“The three of us do not have the same figure,” Josie said. “Your figure curves in and out, Annabel. Mine just flounders about.”
Griselda looked up. “This book is incredible. I am almost certain I know who Hellgate is.”
“Your brother?” Imogen asked idly. All of London was reading Hellgate’s memoirs—and most of London had decided that Hellgate was really the Earl of Mayne.
“I don’t think so,” Griselda said, having clearly given the matter serious thought. “I’m only a third of the way through, but I don’t recognize a single woman whom Mayne has courted.”
“Courted is not exactly the word for his interactions with women, is it?” Josie remarked.
“One needn’t be exact about such things,” Griselda said, unruffled by this slur on her brother’s character. “We all know that Mayne is not a saint. But although the writer is extremely clever, I don’t recognize the women.”
“Is it true that Mayne is in love?” Annabel asked. “I can hardly believe it. Remember when we first met him, the night we arrived at Rafe’s estate?”