“You will be at the top of that list, Flora,” Queenie said with certainty.
Queenie was short and round, with soft gold curls that fell around her shoulders. She carried herself like a queen and acted like one on occasion, too. Flora was tall and lithe, her hair auburn. She was pretty by any standard. When Hattie was with the two of them, she often felt like the plain cousin come to town from the village. Her hair was a dull brown, her figure unremarkable.
Flora gave Queenie’s remark a high-pitched, breathy laugh that Hattie had never heard her make. “Don’t be silly!”
“Don’t be coy,” Queenie said. “You know that you will.”
“The list is quite long, I’m certain. What about Hattie? She might be at the top.”
“The top of what?” Hattie asked.
“Really, Hattie!” Queenie said, sounding annoyed. “How can you be so ignorant of all the news around town? The list of potential brides for the viscount, obviously.”
Hattie laughed. Loudly.
“I agree, it’s hardly a possibility,” Queenie said. “I don’t mean to offend, but he is the Duke of Santiava, and now he’s Viscount Abbott, as he is his English grandfather’s only living male heir. He’ll marry someone with a large dowry and from a titled family. Someone with proper connections.”
Santiava? Hattie vaguely recalled something about it. A duchy, she believed, on the Mediterranean Sea. Once a colony of Wesloria if memory served.
“He’s the sovereign duke, and quite rich,” Queenie continued. “But they say he’s a recluse. One must always be wary of the recluse.”
One must? Hattie hadn’t heard that rule.
“And unmarried, obviously,” Flora added as the three of them departed the shop.
“Won’t he choose a wife from Santiava?” Hattie asked as they walked toward Hyde Park.
“No!” Queenie scoffed, and Hattie was once again left wondering how her education could be so lacking. “He’s come here to claim his title and his fortune and, as everyone knows, be fitted with an English wife. It serves a small duchy to have an English or Weslorian duchess, you know, if they were ever to need the backing of a larger country in times of war or economic hardship. This would practically guarantee it.”
Queenie spoke with such authority about him that Hattie had to wonder if she’d consulted with the man himself. She was dubious that a marriage to Flora could guarantee anything of the sort. But she kept silent.
“Imagine, Hattie,” Flora said, “if you were the link to the might of the Royal Navy should that duchy need it.”
All Hattie could imagine was herself on a leaking, rickety boat. “I won’t be the link to anything, because I’m already engaged.” She smiled.
Flora and Queenie exchanged a look. “You haven’t told her?” Queenie said to Flora.
“Told me what?” Hattie asked, confused.
“Tell her. She can’t walk around without knowing,” Queenie said.
Hattie’s heart dropped. “Knowing what? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, Hattie... Mr. Masterson paid me a call,” Flora blurted. “I was going to tell you. I was waiting for the right time.”
“Well, this is hardly it,” Queenie drawled, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d just urged Flora to tell her.
But tell her what, exactly? That Rupert had called on Flora? How odd—they weren’t so well acquainted. “Mr. Rupert Masterson called on you,” Hattie repeated, to make sure they were indeed speaking of her Mr. Masterson, the owner and proprietor of the Masterson Dry Goods and Sundries Shop.
“He...he came to me in confidence.” Flora punctuated that remark with a look of sympathy.
Hattie’s gut began to do a strange bit of swirling. “Why?”
“He said...that he thought it best if you and he...” She paused, as if trying to find the words.
Elope? That was it! What other reason could he have for needing to speak in confidence to Flora? He must have sought her help. “Elope?” she asked at the same moment Flora said, “Should not pursue things further.”
No one said a word for a moment. Even Queenie kept her mouth shut. “What?” Hattie asked and stopped walking. This was stunningly incomprehensible. She pressed a fist to her abdomen to keep down the sudden swell of nausea. “What...what did...he...or you...say?”
“Oh, Hattie, dearest.” They’d come to the park’s entrance, and Flora pulled her to a bench and sat her down. She took both of Hattie’s hands in hers. “I’m so very sorry, but there is no other way to say it, is there? He would like you to cry off your engagement. End it, I mean. He has come to the unfortunate conclusion that it must be done. But because he has the utmost consideration for you, he means to protect your reputation by having you write him and end it.”
This didn’t feel considerate of her at all—she felt she’d been run over by a team of four. She didn’t even have enough air in her lungs to ask why. There had to be some mistake! She and Rupert were marching headlong into connubial bliss. Weren’t they? He’d recently met her family and, on that very night, had promised he would formally call on her father within the week. And then he’d gone to Flora instead of coming to her? No, this couldn’t be.
Hattie stood up. “I think you’ve misunderstood, Flora.”
“Oh, darling,” Flora said sadly.
“But you must have! It makes no sense!”
“It makes some sense,” Queenie said with a bit of a shrug.
“No, it doesn’t,” Flora said quickly with a glare for Queenie. “Perhaps only a tad.”
“He dined at our home on Sunday!” Hattie exclaimed. “Today is Wednesday! What could possibly have happened between then and now?”
“Mmm,” Queenie said, and wandered off to pretend to look at some roses.
“I think,” Flora said, “that if you were to carefully consider your Sunday dinner, you might imagine at least one reason why. Probably more than one. Probably many.”
Hattie’s heart wanted to leap from her chest. Heat crept up the nape of her neck as she thought back to Sunday dinner at her family home on Blandford Street, near the fashionable Portman Square...or, as Flora had once pointed out, on the less fashionable side of the square, where no one wanted to be.
But Rupert had said it was a fine house. He’d come with a box of chocolates for her mother, and Hattie had been so charmed by that. “But I thought the evening went so well.”
Flora patted her arm. “Well...to begin, he worried about a smell in your house that he believes might be peculiar to cats.”