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Chapter 15
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Lady Upworth has written that Estcot has returned to town. I never told her that he was the one who had caused the rift between Langley and myself. Apparently he left Town around the same time I did. He has returned, and under a cloud. He has gotten some country squire's poor daughter pregnant. She refused to marry him and even attempted to take her own life to avoid it. Once the story got out, he was completely ruined in the eyes of the ton. He has finally gotten his just deserts.
February 24, 1804
Journal of Anna Selwyn, Countess of Langley
Thea spent the rest of the musicale with her mind racing. She could not absorb the fact that her own flesh-and-blood sister sat not five feet away. When the hostess finally stood to thank everyone for coming and invite them to refreshments in the other room, Thea heard the words through a fog.
Miraculously, both her aunt and Lady Boyle woke immediately and put on the perfect performance of someone who had listened the entire time and enjoyed it. She would have been highly amused at their antics if she weren't in such a state of shock.
"Are you ready to go, dear?"
Thea stared at her aunt. They had come just to sit through two hours of untrained musicians?
Not to mention the fact that Lady Upworth knew perfectly well that Irisa sat beside her.
"There is a buffet in the other room," Thea said, not yet ready to deal with the other.
Lady Boyle tut-tutted. "No good. She's a skinflint, that one. Much better food at home."
If she could sit through interminable hours of entertainment that was anything but they could suffer an indifferent buffet to assuage her hunger. "Listening to the music has increased my appetite."
"Don't know how it could have. Fairly ruined mine," said Lady Boyle.
"I believe I could use a glass of punch," Lady Upworth remarked, her gaze assessing as she looked from Thea to the young woman beside her.
Irisa was speaking to someone to her right, so was not part of the discussion, but Thea felt sure her sister would be staying as well. The question was, how did she feel about meeting the other woman for the first time? Certainly, she would not make herself known to Irisa, but even to simply speak with her when her whole life they had never even been able to share a correspondence…
At that moment, Lady Boyle capitulated. "Come along, then." She led the way toward the other room. "It'll please our hostess that we've decided to stay for the buffet. Most of her guests leave after the music."
Thea felt a spark of trepidation. If the buffet were worse than the entertainment, it must be awful. Still, she was hungry, and if she ate nothing, what would her excuse for staying be?
She saw that Lady Boyle had been right about most of the guests leaving because there was a very short line at the buffet table and only a few of the eating tables were occupied. She found punch for her aunt and saw both Lady Upworth and Lady Boyle seated before making her way to the food table.
As she surveyed the fare offered, she didn't see the reason for such a lack of enthusiasm. True, the food had none of the flare or color that she would have found at a buffet back home, but then most of England's food was bland compared to the fare she had been raised on.
As she took a lobster patty and placed it on the small china plate, she heard a soft voice to her left.
"Do you think we acquire the ability to sleep sitting up as we get older, or is it something one is born with?"
Feeling uncertainty and excitement in a volatile mixture inside her, Thea turned to Irisa. "I don't know, but I'll admit I have wished more than once for the knack."
Putting out her hand, her sister said, "I am Lady Irisa Selwyn." Turning to a lovely, willowy creature with brown ringlets cascading down her back, Irisa said, "This is my bosom beau, Cecily."
The brunette smiled charmingly. "You will have to forgive Irisa's impetuousness. She forgets herself."
Irisa laughed, the sound touching Thea's heart. Her sister's laughter. She had not been sure she would ever hear it.
"Don't mind Cecily," Irisa said. "She would wait to have our chaperones introduce us, but that seems silly to me. You are here with my aunt, after all."
Thea felt a rash of gladness at Irisa's flouting of convention. "It's nice to meet you both. My name is Thea Sel—" She could not give Irisa her real name. Not yet. She pretended to cough and then said, "Selby."
"Miss Selby, you are here with Lady Boyle and Lady Upworth, aren't you?" Cecily asked, apparently questioning Irisa's claim that Thea had arrived with her aunt.