Night of a Thousand Stars. Deanna Raybourn

your appallingly healthy and boisterous brood of Americans and let me sort this out. Perhaps you could send down some clothes for her if you think about it. She can’t totter about like Miss Havisham in her wedding finery.”

      Mother rose. “Naturally, I’ve already thought of that. Her trousseau trunk is in the car.” She turned to my maid. “Masterman, we cannot expect you to continue in service with Miss Hammond after today’s debacle. We will naturally give you an excellent reference, a month’s wages, and a ride back to London. It was good of you to come this far.”

      Masterman stirred. “On the contrary, madam, I should like to remain with Miss Hammond.”

      Mother blinked. “Whatever for?”

      Masterman’s expression did not change, but I had the strangest feeling Mother might have more easily shifted the Pyramids than moved Masterman from her decision. “Because it suits me, madam,” she replied quietly.

      Mother shrugged. “Very well, but do not be surprised if you find you can’t stick it after all. Miss Hammond can be extremely trying to one’s nerves.” Mother turned and gave me a long look. “One month, Penelope. You have one month to figure out what it is that you want. This is the last time I will clear up a mess you’ve left behind.”

      She turned on her heel and swept from the room. Reginald stepped forward, putting a kindly hand on my shoulder as I stared after her in dismay.

      “Don’t fret, honey. I’ll settle her down. You just rest and don’t worry about anything. And I’ll put some money into your account,” he added softly. Dear Reginald, always solving everyone’s problems by throwing cash at them.

      I summoned a smile and rose on tiptoe to press a kiss to his smoothly shaven cheek. “You really are a very nice man, Reginald.”

      He ducked his head and shook hands with Father before following Mother out the door. Father sat back in his chair with an air of satisfaction.

      “That man ought to be sainted,” he mused. “For miraculous fortitude.”

      “Mother isn’t so bad,” I began automatically.

      “She’s a nightmare,” Sebastian observed in a dry voice.

      “Dear God, I almost forgot you were still here,” Father said, perking up. “It’s grown late. I suppose we shall have to offer you a place to sleep tonight. George can show you over to the inn. They’ve always a room in reserve for one of my guests, and they’ll be happy to accommodate you. As for you—Masterman, was it? There is an extra bed in the guest room upstairs. Help your mistress, there’s a good girl. I think Poppy is half-asleep on her feet.”

      I started to protest that I could very easily make my own way upstairs, but Masterman had taken charge of the situation. I didn’t know if she was more put out at having to share a room or Father calling her a girl, but she pushed me firmly up the stairs and put me to bed with ruthless efficiency. I gave myself up to it, letting her bully me a little since it suited us both. She turned out the light and undressed swiftly, settling herself into the narrow extra bed.

      “You didn’t have to stay on,” I told her sulkily. There had been a certain guilty glee in ridding myself of Gerald, but it was a little blunted with Masterman still there to make certain I didn’t do anything interesting.

      “Yes, I did,” she said, her voice almost fierce in the darkness.

      “But why?”

      “My reasons belong to me, miss. Now go to sleep or you’ll look a fright in the morning,” she said.

      So I did.

       Three

      The next morning Masterman busied herself unpacking my trunk while I found Father at breakfast. I murmured a greeting and slid into a chair, smiling widely at a glowering George who banged a pot of tea on the table in front of me and trudged off for a fresh rack of toast.

      “Poor soul,” I said quietly. “I imagine he was in the war. Is it shell shock?”

      Father lowered his newspaper and gave me a thoughtful look. “You mean his foul moods? No, no. George is a flat-footed Quaker, entirely unsuited to the soldiering life. He’s just churlish. But he is an excellent cook and I’ve never had whiter linen,” he finished. He went on looking at me intently.

      “I behaved very badly, didn’t I? It all seemed so remote yesterday, as though it were happening to a stranger, but today...” I trailed off.

      “Today it is news,” Father said, passing the newspaper.

      There it was, in black and white for all to see. Viscount’s Heir Jilted By American Society Girl. I shook my head. “How awful it sounds. And I’m not really American,” I protested.

      Father smiled. “Thank God for small mercies. At least you sound like one of us. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen you. You have a look of the Marches about you. Puts me quite in mind of your Aunt Julia when she was your age, although your hair is fairer.”

      “If it weren’t for my aunts, I wouldn’t be in this frightful mess,” I said darkly.

      Father raised his brows inquiringly, and before I knew quite what I was saying, the entire story tumbled out, starting with Aunt Portia’s gift of Married Love. I paused only while George brought in the toast, but as soon as he returned to the kitchen, I carried on.

      “And that’s it, minus the gruesome details,” I added. I alluded to a fundamental incompatibility with Gerald, but there had been no actual mention of sex-tides. Some things a girl cannot share with even the most liberal of fathers. I gave him a smile. “You’ve been truly marvellous, and I know it can’t have been easy, not with Mother descending like all the plagues of Egypt yesterday.”

      Father smiled again. “I can cope with Araminta. And I must say, I’m very glad you felt you could come to me. I know I’m little more than a stranger to you really.”

      “But you aren’t,” I protested. “I had your letters. At least Mother let us correspond. And I always think letters are terribly intimate, don’t you? I mean, you can tell the page things you can’t ever say to a person’s face.”

      “Heart’s blood in place of ink?” he asked, his eyes bright.

      “Precisely. Although I seem to be doing a rather good job of telling you what I’m thinking now. I probably shouldn’t have told you any of it, but it seems that once I told it all to Mr. Cantrip yesterday, I can’t stop talking about it. Very freeing, I find.” I plucked a fresh piece of toast from the rack and buttered it liberally. “Of course, now I have to decide what to do with myself.”

      “Surely that won’t be difficult.”

      “Not for a person like you,” I said, nodding to the exquisite framed landscapes on the walls. “You’ve always had your painting. I’m simply hopeless. I was expensively educated to be decorative and charming and precious little else. Mother was right, you know. I never stick with anything because I don’t seem to be good at anything.”

      “What have you tried?”

      I shrugged. “All the usual nonsense they make you do at school, at least at schools for young ladies. Flower arranging, painting, music.”

      “And none of those suit you?”

      “My flower arrangements look like compost heaps, my paintings all look like bogs, and as for music, I have the keenest appreciation for it and no ability whatsoever to understand it. I think it’s because of the maths.”

      “Maths?”

      “Music is all mathematical, at least that’s what our music master told us. And I was frightful at maths, as well.”

      “Rather a good thing your Uncle Lysander isn’t alive to hear you say it. He was