Free No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper

don’t get hungry,” she said then, her voice highly skeptical.
    “No. You don’t mention that you’re uncomfortable in any way. Besides, saying you’re hungry says that your host hasn’t done a good job of providing food for you. You also don’t mention gifts in front of strangers, especially not gifts from men.”
    “Is there anything you do mention?”
    “How nice everyone looks,” Simon said. “And how lovely the weather is.”
    “What if it’s not?”
    “Then you don’t mention it. Rolling your eyes is also not done in the best circles. Now, say that we’d just been introduced. Follow me.” He bowed slightly, keeping his eyes on hers, and smiled. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss MacArthur.”
    “A pleasure, Mr. Grenville.” Joan bowed as if she had a poker in her spine. When she looked up into Simon’s face again, she sighed. “What?”
    “Military precision isn’t quite in fashion. Try again, please. Less rigid this time.” Her second bow wasn’t as stiff, but it made her look like a tiger ready to spring. “Better,” Simon said. “We can work on that.”
    “Wonderful.”
    He helped Joan and Eleanor to their seats, noting briefly that a footman would do so at any real party. “Leave your elbows off the table,” he told Joan, “and don’t let your back touch the chair.” Then he asked Eleanor, “Am I missing anything?”
    “No, not at all.” She added to Joan, “You’d take your gloves off and leave your hat on, but that’s a bit academic at the moment.”
    “I’ve been down to the village lately,” Simon said, pouring the tea and trying to remember how to start proper conversation. “Things seem to be going well.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.” Eleanor lifted her teacup carefully, took a sip, and then took a breath. “The rain we had the other day should do a great deal for the farms, shouldn’t it?”
    “Yes. The dry weather’s been a worry lately. I hope this rain eases the farmers’ minds.” He added to Joan, “Lift the cup, not the saucer,” and racked his mind for a new, less insipid topic of conversation. “I understand you’ve been reading Edward Bellamy’s book, Ellie?”
    “ Looking Backward ? Yes, it’s quite good. Very unlikely, of course, but you do almost believe in such things when you’re reading it. Have you read it?”
    “Yes.” It had been a few months earlier, before Joan. Back then, he’d thought about utopian philosophy, talked over Bellamy’s ideas at his club, and wondered about socialism and about America. Now he thought of two hundred years in the future and tried not to glance at Joan. “I preferred some of his earlier works myself, the ones that didn’t get much attention. But it was quite well done.”
    Eleanor nodded. As Simon passed the tray of cucumber sandwiches, she took one but left it on her plate, and her approach to the pastries seemed just as much form. They fell into a conversation about books, though, almost as light and easy as such had been in the old days, and Simon rejoiced that Eleanor listened and smiled and even told one short story about a strict teacher she’d had.
    By the end of the tea, he’d begun to feel a bit like that teacher himself. He’d told Joan to keep her arms at her sides, to take smaller bites, and to hold her teacup by the handle. He’d warned her against letting her eyes drift from the other people at the table, letting her expression grow too serious or too bored, and taking more than one sandwich or scone at a time. Simon chose not to address the fact that she’d eaten five sandwiches and two scones with cream. They could talk about that when she wasn’t quite as thin.
    Joan followed his instructions precisely. He never had to warn her twice, and she didn’t complain or even speak, just nodded quickly to acknowledge a point. Toward the end of the meal, though, her smile was beginning to resemble a grimace.
    Afterward, once Ellie had taken herself off to read in the study and the