Free Love Match by Maggie MacKeever

and a battlemented wooden fortress, batteries of forty-eight-pounders at each corner. She studied her companion, who was engaged in an energetic conversation about the alarming aspect of affairs in Ireland. Could Magda be a revolutionary herself, with a taste for republican sentiments and severed heads?
    Magda finished her conversation, and her coffee. Augusta set down her own cup. “Justin will want to make known his presence in Bath. We shall give a small entertainment. Soup à la Reine. A fillet of pheasant and truffles. Larded partridges. Woodcocks. Dantizic Jelly. Lemon-Water Ice. Followed by a musical interlude.”
    “And then some cards?” Magda placed her elbows on the table, and folded her hands beneath her chin. “I do not mean to blast your schemes, truly I do not, but I must point out that Saint’s bride is now the lady of the house.”
    So she was. Augusta didn’t begrudge her cousin his happiness—if happiness he would find—but his marriage left her without a place again. She could hardly reside indefinitely with Justin and his wife. Unless she made herself indispensable. “Elizabeth is not foolish. She will allow herself to be guided by older, wiser heads.”
    Magda’s brief impression of Saint’s duchess was that she was not so malleable. The young lady had looked quire ale to spit fire. “Has it occurred to you that your cousin might wish to be private with his bride?”
    Again, Gus grinned, causing herself to look several years younger, and considerably less prim. “He’s hardly private now. We’re here. A little effort on my part, and we shall all rub along together tolerably well.”
    Unlikely, thought Magda. But if Augusta concentrated her efforts on the new Lady Charnwood, Magda would be left to pursue her own plans. Plans that would be much more easily accomplished without Gus stuck to her like a court plaster. “D’accord,” she said therefore, as she got up from her chair. “And now let us spend some of Saint’s vast wealth.”
    Augusta’s spirits rose. Spending money not her own was one of her favorite things. Not that she had money of her own to spend.
    Perhaps she might persuade Magda to purchase a corset. Justin would be grateful. In perfect accord, the ladies made their way to the shops on Pulteney Bridge.
     

Chapter 8
     
    “A bride should always strive to appear accomplished and amiable.” —Lady Ratchett
     
    Dinner en famille that evening was not a comfortable affair. This had nothing to do with the excellence of the meal, for Cook had outdone herself in the preparation of stewed eels and sole à la normande, lobster pissoli, stewed celery, and roast beef, among other things; and the footmen stationed at the mahogany sideboard were assiduous in their attentiveness, quick to provide an additional spoonful of oyster sauce, or refill a wineglass. Despite all these efforts, the food was consumed largely untasted, and the wine injudiciously drunk. Each person seated at the vast mahogany dining table, where silver and crystal and excellent Staffordshire pottery gleamed in the soft candlelight, had other matters on his mind. The duchess brooded upon the perfidy of her mama, who had kept her in such appalling ignorance of her husband’s marital history; the duke contemplated the odd circumstance that his bride held him in such low esteem she believed he would introduce his fancy piece into the household; Lady Augusta pondered the relative merits of roast pheasant, boiled fowl with béchamel sauce, and galantine of veal. Madame de Chavannes, upon whose mind the most weighty matters of all might be expected to prey, was the most animated of the four, and had thus far discussed with great erudition the Irish Rising, the defeat of the French at the Battle of the Nile, George Ill’s repeated bouts of insanity, and the stubbornness of the citizens of Cairo, whose continued opposition to Bonaparte had in one day alone resulted in ninety people being shot in the Citadel, and seven