Free Lauren Willig by The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

least that you’ve quite ruined my prospects. I always wanted to be made a laughingstock in front of the ton. It only made it worse that Letty hadn’t done any of it on purpose. Outright malice would have been easier to bear than blundering virtue.
     
     
“What about a biscuit? We have some lovely gingery ones….”
     
     
Mary just looked at her.
     
     
Letty sighed. “Perhaps, later, we might speak privately?”
     
     
Mary’s expression didn’t change. “Perhaps.”
     
     
“I have some good news for you.”
     
     
“I shall look forward to it.”
     
     
There was nothing Letty could say to that, so she simply furrowed her brow at Mary one last time—her concerned expression, as opposed to her feeding or washing expression—and went off after her friends in pursuit of refreshments. From the supper table, Mary heard the flurry of chatter abruptly peak in volume as Letty rejoined her friends. Like a flock of geese squawking, she thought unpleasantly.
     
     
Vaughn still hadn’t returned.
     
     
He couldn’t still be in the gallery, could he? Mary’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at the narrow sliver of floor revealed by the half-open door. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to avoid the rest of the house party—but where was he? Without his saturnine presence, the gathering felt oddly flat.
     
     
“Darling!”
     
     
The same could not be said for the maternal bosom, which was currently swollen with unabashed glee and an entire carafe of ratafia. Mary fought her way free of her mother’s embrace.
     
     
“Isn’t this above all things splendid?” gushed Mrs. Alsworthy. “Oh, your darling, darling sister.”
     
     
So, noted Mary dispassionately, Letty had risen to two darlings. Bring out the Pinchingdale diamonds and she might attain the giddy heights of three endearments at a time. In the space of one wedding ceremony, Letty had gone from disappointment to favorite daughter. As for Mary, she had been demoted down into the depths of parental purgatory. Not hell, since she still had a chance to redeem herself by an advantageous match, but she had quite definitely been booted out of paradise pending further developments.
     
     
“Such a house!” Mrs. Alsworthy exclaimed, her cheeks pink with pride and wine. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
     
     
“It is certainly something out of the ordinary.” Unless, of course, one happened to live between the covers of a novel by Monk Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe.
     
     
“And the park! I’ve never seen anything so grand. Why, I’m sure you could fit half of London into it!” Mrs. Alsworthy beamed gleefully about her. “Your sister has done very well for herself, very well, indeed.”
     
     
“Hasn’t she,” murmured Mary.
     
     
“I do wish we could have found as comfortable a settlement for you,” fretted Mrs. Alsworthy, conveniently forgetting that Lord Pinchingdale had originally been intended for her older daughter. “I don’t understand it. Three Seasons! One would have thought you would have caught someone by now.” Mrs. Alsworthy preened, one ringed hand rising to pat her green silk turban. “I secured your father without even one Season.”
     
     
“At the Littleton Assemblies,” Mary supplied, having heard the story more times than the Prince of Wales had consumed hot dinners. “I know.”
     
     
“I was wearing my blue brocade, with my hair all piled on top of my head—that was the fashion then, you know, and very becoming it was to me, too—and the sweetest little stomacher all embroidered with purple pansies, and your father was smitten, smitten on the spot.”
     
     
People who waxed rapturous about love matches clearly had never been privy to the aftermath of one. Her parents’ great love had lasted all of a year; the marriage itself had been limping along for three decades.
     
     
“Of course,” Mrs. Alsworthy was still rattling on, “I was never so tall as you, and we all know that men don’t like