Free The Abandoned Bride by Edith Layton

went to call upon her new prospects with high hopes. But if she had chanced to hear the conversation that ensued as soon as she left, her expectations would have fallen so low that she would have crept back to Mrs. White’s and hidden underneath her bed.
    For the younger Miss Parkinson fixed her sister with a curious stare and said, loudly (as there were no others within their offices just then), “I vow, Letty, the heat must have gotten you. Whatever can you be thinking of, sending that child off to either Franklin or Kirkland? They wouldn’t have a beauty like that in their vicinity, much less their employ. Dame Franklin would be demented if she hired on a companion who would outshine her pie-faced daughter, and Lady Kirkland fancies herself a Cleopatra. And to think that poor Miss Wittly and dear little old Miss Gowdy have excellent credentials and are in dire need of employment, and you never sent them there.”
    “Remind me, Fan,” the elder Miss Parkinson said smugly, as she pushed out her chair and leaned over to scratch her leg, “what Miss Wittly and Miss Gowdy resemble.”
    “ That’s not to the point, ” her sister said crossly. “ The dears can’t help their looks.”
    “Neither can Miss Hastings,” Lavinia Parkinson replied. “Not that they’ll do her an ounce of good getting those posts.”
    “Then why send her?”
    “Precisely because she’s a stunner and Miss Wittly resembles a bullfrog and dear Miss Gowdy, a dried herring. After those fine lady employers get an eyeful of Miss Hastings, they’ll be more appreciative of the virtues of our less comely clients. A beauty like Miss Hastings will strike terror into their hearts and they’ll be bound to snap up our old trouts when we send them in after her.”
    “That’s beastly of you, Letty, it is,” Fanny Parkinson said, wincing to see the gusto with which her sister attended to her itching limb, although sympathizing, for Lord knew they never got a chance to unbend when the offices were full.
    “The itch or the thought?” her sister replied unfeelingly.
    It was afternoon when Julia approached the hotel where Lady Cunningham was in residence. Her interviews with Lady Kirkland and Dame Franklin hadn’t taken long at all. But then, unsuccessful interviews seldom did.
    Lady Cunningham saw her immediately after she had presented her card. The lady definitely appeared as foreign as Miss Parkinson had claimed her to be. But Julia could not determine her nationality. She conducted the interview as she lay upon a recamier in her dressing room, although she did not appear to be in any way in an invalidish condition. She was relatively young and very attractive in her white eyelet dressing gown. Her red-gold hair was artfully arranged, although obviously not altogether genuine, and her voice was clear and strong. But she seemed so anxious that Julia thought she might suffer more from nerves than any sort of bodily distress. Her accent was so heavy, however, and she spoke so rapidly, that Julia experienced some distress of her own. She had to spend most of her time trying to decipher the lady’s meaning, rather than placing her nation of origin.
    “You are, of courz, younker zan I vould like,” the lady said at one point. “But zee children vould be hoppy az birtz wiz you.” By the time Julia had reasoned that the children would be elated, rather than bouncing, the lady had gone on to explain the trip she was embarking upon. As near as Julia could make out without interrupting the lady every other word, her husband, Lord Cunningham, had been some sort of emissary at the Congress of Vienna, but Wellington’s victory had changed everything for him, and he had been reassigned to Paris. Husband and wife had been separated for a long time, but now Napoleon’s defeat had made her traveling to his side less dangerous and more feasible. The children were either a boy of seven and a girl of five or seven boys and five girls of indeterminate age.
    Julia