Even now Josie could feel the reassuring pressure of whalebones around her body, holding all her extra flesh in place. True, it was uncomfortable, and it made her feel rather like a wooden puppet at times, especially while dancing.

“I do not agree,” Griselda said. She appealed directly to Sylvie. “Josie is convinced that she must wear this horrendous contraption that Madame Badeau espoused. As you can see, she barely sits with ease.”

But to Josie’s relief, Sylvie didn’t jump to Griselda’s support. “I expect that Josie finds the garment rather comforting.”

“I do,” Josie said with emphasis. “I shall wear it whenever I am seen in public. Can you imagine if I took it off? They would stop calling me a Scottish sausage and say that I had swelled into—into a sausage patty!”

“They will lose interest,” Sylvie said. “Particularly after Griselda diverts Darlington’s attention to herself.”

“I do believe that I shall drop my shoe,” Griselda said. “A fan is too obvious, almost pedestrian. And these are very nice slippers. I’d forgotten how much I like them.”

They all looked to the ground. Griselda’s slippers were cream silk embroidered with pale blue, very small fleur-delis. Her stockings were the same color, with pale blue clocks.

“I am so happy to be entering your family,” Sylvie said. “I could not bear to be sister to a woman who did not understand the importance of shoes.”

Griselda smiled at her and dropped her skirts. Her eyes were more excited than Josie had seen them in ages, and she had a little smile hovering on her mouth. She took a miniature pot of color from her reticule, rubbed it on her lips, and then made a playful pout before the mirror. “I feel quite different. Rather wicked, I suppose.”

“But surely you have not enjoyed your widowhood entirely alone?” Sylvie said, looking rather appalled.

“No, no,” Griselda said, “there have been small attachments here and there, but I have never deliberately planned anything of this nature.”

Josie just stopped herself from gasping.

“Therein lies the difference between the two of us,” Sylvie said. “For you are half French, and I am fully French. Consequently, I cannot imagine embarking on any sort of romantic adventure without a good deal of planning. I would owe it to myself.”

Griselda laughed. “You sound so sophisticated, Sylvie, and yet I have observed you with my brother. The two of you are remarkably chaste, are you not?”

“I am always chaste,” Sylvie remarked. “I have yet to see the reason why I should allow any advance in intimacy on the part of a man. I’m afraid that planning does tend to reduce one’s tendency to be reckless.”

Griselda paused in the door.

Sylvie grinned at her. “Avance pour vaincre!”

“I shall report on my conquest later this evening,” Griselda said. “Josie, may I remind you that you have several dance partners waiting for you, when you choose to emerge.”

Tess was tucking an errant curl high on her head. “I must return to the floor as well.”

“Lucius will be looking for you,” Josie said.

“It is an excellent thing to have a husband looking for one, rather than the other way around,” Sylvie said. “I shall emulate you.”

Tess smiled at her. “I have been remarkably lucky in that regard.”

6

From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Third

I fear it will reveal my arrogance if I say that I did fulfill the command of the duchess—shall we term her Hermia? My skills I consider to be God’s providence and gift, for the duchess informed sometime later that God had pricked me out for women’s pleasure…and I have devoutly followed His directive ever since.

T hurman walked up to the Sausage as if he’d been introduced. In a way, he felt as if they were old acquaintances. Surely if he, Thurman, actually talked to the Sausage, Darlington would come to the Convent to hear his tale. He could send him a message, telling him that he had a story Darlington couldn’t miss. Thurman felt panic at the idea of not having Darlington at his side. Not having Darlington’s witticisms and cutting observations to pass the time.

“I’m a friend of Darlington,” he said by way of invitation.The Sausage blinked at him and then looked away, staring at the wall over his shoulder. “I would rather not be reminded of your friend’s ill-bred phrases.”

“Ill-bred? He ain’t ill-bred,” Thurman protested.

She still didn’t look at him. But: “Despicable Darlington,” she said mockingly. “I vow the phrase is quite appealing.”

Thurman scowled. What he should do is dance with the piglet. That way he could make a great story out of how she trod on his feet with her little hooves and squealed in his ear. “Would you like to dance?”

She glanced at him for a second and then turned her entire head so she was staring at the wall again. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not? You’re desperate, aren’t you?”

“You’re some sort of fiend,” she said. “Why on earth are you being so impolite? To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never met.”

The disgust in her voice gave him a thrill of power. It wasn’t just Darlington who could come up with cutting phrases. He could too. “I don’t mind being a fiend as long as you don’t cast me into a swine,” he said.

“You are swine,” Miss Essex said, glaring at him instead of the wall. “Oink, oink, Mr. Whatever Your Name Is. Why don’t you trot back to whatever vulgar little pen you came from?”

Somehow his little jest hadn’t come across with the same aplomb that Darlington achieved. She was looking at him so that he—he—felt uncomfortably aware of his rounded stomach. Everyone knew that weight in a man was a good thing. Made him strong and long-living.

But Thurman had the same quivering sense of failure that he used to have when he was called before the class to do the multiplication tables. Miss Essex had a powerfully nasty gaze. In fact, he hated her.

She wasn’t done talking. “You are the sort of man who pinches maids,” she was saying. “I can’t imagine how you found your way into this ball.”

Thurman felt that in his gut: he was sensitive about the fact that his family’s wealth came from running a printing press. He always laughed it off as his grandfather’s intellectual fling, but he knew his claim to the title of gentleman was fragile.

“You are the sort of woman who will never be so lucky as to be pinched,” he said, tasting Darlington’s acid tones on his tongue. He could be as cutting as Darlington. He moved a little closer. He really loathed this plump Scottish girl. If he had his way, fat Scottish girls would never be allowed into a ton party at all. “You’ll never be lucky enough to be tupped either,” he said.

Then he just stood there, watching her. To tell the truth, he was rather surprised at himself for voicing such a thing in the midst of a society affair.

She got a little red in the face, so she must have known what tupping was. “You are—filth,” she said.

Her voice was shaking. He rather liked that. She turned and darted away, and Thurman didn’t move. He could feel rage swelling in his chest the way it used to when the schoolmaster flogged him for not knowing his tables. It was all tangled together in his mind: Darlington was gone, the Convent was gone, what would he do at night? Without Darlington, people would think he was stupid. It was all the Sausage’s fault, because Darlington didn’t drop him until he had those thoughts of morality.