“You’re a Whig!” she said, fluttering madly. “Is that why your papa hid you away?”
Phillip accepted two filled glasses from the footman. “I’m a farmer. You are both sworn to secrecy.” He’d just ensured they’d repeat the conversation word for word to any willing ears, of course, which was fine with him.
“Hecate means well,” Flavia said when Phillip would have made his escape. “Her heart was broken at a young age—younger than we are now—and she has never recovered.”
“And she has unfortunate antecedents,” Portia said. “We aren’t clear on the particulars, but Eglantine says we must make allowances. My antecedents are quite in order.” She batted her lashes at Phillip, and Flavia smacked her with the fan.
“Mine are too,” Flavia said. “And I don’t gossip half so much as Portia does.”
Not for lack of trying. “Do we know who broke Miss Hecate’s youthful heart?” The question was doubtless a breach of eight social commandments, but if Hecate had to watch the object of her first attachment turning down the room with every other woman in Mayfair, Phillip wanted to know who the dunderhead was.
“Cousin Johnny,” the ladies said in unison. “He went for a soldier in his dashing regimentals. Off to Canada, and he refused to take Hecate with him.”
“He took Cousin Emeril, though,” Portia continued, circling the rim of her glass with her index finger. “There is that. Emeril was a bit much, even for a Brompton, though he’s not as bad as Uncle
Frank. Uncle prefers life on the Continent, which Mama says is mercy. Both cousins took a fancy to the New World, which is not a mercy. We get occasional letters, but they all say the same thing: ‘Canada is beautiful, give my love to everybody.’”
“I wouldn’t like that very much,” Flavia observed. “‘Give my love to everybody,’ when Hecate gave her heart to Johnny. Very romantic and tragical. It explains a lot.”
“Do you waltz?” Portia asked, sending her sister a repressive look. “We do. We were given permission last year, and I’ve stood up with your brother.”
Before Phillip could answer, Flavia was sticking her oar back in. “That was only the once, Portia. Tavistock promenaded with me. That counts as standing up as well.”
“Does not.”
Both occasions likely counted as Hecate inspiring Tavistock into some charity work. “I do not waltz,” Phillip said. “I haven’t been given the nod.”
Flavia, who looked to be on the point of sticking her tongue out at her sister, sent him a keen glance. “It doesn’t work like that. If Hecate told you it did, then she’s in error.”
An occasion for gloating, clearly. “I have not been given the nod by Miss Hecate, and I account her a faultless arbiter of all matters social. If you ladies will excuse me, I am overdue for my first lecture of the evening.”
“Apologize like you mean it,” Portia advised. “Look sincere. Tearing up might be a bit much in your case, but Flavia and I have resorted to desperate measures from time to time. Hecate can be so…”
“So Hecate,” Flavia said. “She can’t help it, so don’t try to reason with her. She means well, and she… she means well, and she’s getting on. Spinsters are deserving of understanding.”
On that magnanimous proclamation, both magpies fell silent.
“I will bid you ladies good evening,” Phillip said. “Enjoy your punch, though you might want to consider limiting yourselves to two glasses each. One can think oneself quite clever when tipsy, though in fact, we often become gibbering fools when we overindulge. I speak from experience.”
He nodded and beat a retreat. Portia looked puzzled, but Flavia was smacking her closed fan against her palm as if she might just possibly have comprehended an unappreciated reprimand.
The most recent of many, no doubt.
Phillip detoured to the buffet where he found a tray and filled a plate with this and that. He half expected Hecate to have deserted her post, but she yet occupied a bench among the potted lemons. In the waning evening light, she looked not quite so tired as she had earlier in the day, and not as if she’d been rehearsing any lectures either.
“Shall we eat here,” Phillip asked, “or find a table?”
“Let’s use the side terrace.” Hecate rose unassisted and surveyed the laden tray. “You’ve been naughty.”
“I’ve been hungry. I was also accosted by Pythia Minor and Pythia Major, who strike me as having left the schoolroom far too soon.”
“Portia and Flavia. They are Edna’s current projects, and you must avoid anything approaching privacy with either one.”
Hecate wended between lemons, oranges, ferns, and camellias until she came to a door that opened onto a blessedly quiet terrace.
“Do Portia and Flavia ever separate long enough to be private with anyone?” Phillip asked. “I took them for twins.”
“They are eleven months apart. Portia is the elder, and yes, for strategic purposes, they separate. They nearly succeeded in compromising a viscount’s pride and joy last year. They didn’t want to marry him. They wanted to blackmail him.”
“I’m not wealthy,” Phillip said. “You will please inform them of my poverty in no uncertain terms. Blackmail would be pointless. Then too, the appeal of becoming a social outcast is growing on me.” He set the tray on a wrought-iron table near a balustrade that faced the wooded border of the park.
“You see those oaks?” Hecate said, gesturing to the line of trees thirty yards off.
“We walked through part of them earlier today.”
“And you rejoiced to be in the out of doors. You can probably trail game down unseen paths, identify every bird by its call, and tell the savory mushrooms from those that can kill.”
“I admit to being at home in the woods and fields. I hope every child has the good luck to spend a few summers exploring hedgerows, meadows, brooks, and good climbing trees.”
“Portia and Flavia know polite society’s underbrush, birdcalls, and wildflowers the same way you know the countryside. They are at home lurking near punchbowls. They pore over Debrett’s as you’d read tracks on the muddy banks of the Twid. Underestimate them at your peril, my lord.”
Hecate delivered not a lecture, but rather, a serious warning, and Phillip took it as such. “If compromising is on the list of acceptable wilderness tactics here at Nunnsuch, why are you permitted to be private with me?”
Hecate gestured to a cushioned seat.
“I beg your pardon.” Phillip dutifully held her chair for her before taking the one next to it. “Sorry. They flustered me. One doesn’t expect an interrogation from a pair of giggling ninnyhammers.”
Hecate took up a table napkin and spread it on her lap, which reminded Phillip to do likewise.
“I am on the shelf,” Hecate said. “Firmly, completely, irreversibly. You could spend the night under my bed, and my family would not take it amiss. Spinsterhood was the bargain I struck with my father. The family’s first tactic was to try to marry me—and my fortune—off to a cousin or in-law. Keep the money where it will do the most good.”