Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles by Cooper Karina

Author:Cooper, Karina [Cooper, Karina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2012-12-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“Dear me, what terrible calamity brings you to the table so early?”

I looked up from the London Times, pasting a smile upon my lips as Fanny swept into the room. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I’d come to the breakfast table first.

The surprise she’d initially greeted me with faded to worry as she took her seat, lovely in charcoal trimmed with dandelion yellow. “Are you feeling quite the thing?”

“I simply rose early,” I said, reassuringly enough despite the near-lie. “I did not sleep terribly well.”

“And how,” she agreed, nodding with utter propriety at Booth as he laid out a tray before her. Her usual fare, as she preferred it. Fanny’s breakfast did not often change, though the fruits in her jam would with the season. “My poor dear, were you terribly upset by those awful creatures?”

“Thank you, Booth,” I murmured as he set before me another small pot of tea. My second of the morning. He bowed, turned and made his slow, dignified way back to the kitchens where his wife labored. Step-thunk. Step-thunk.

When the spasmodic reverberation of his step faded, I looked back at my paper and said through it, “Certainly not. I simply wasn’t feeling well.”

“As you say.” But the tone of my chaperone’s voice did not suggest that she believed me.

Perhaps rightfully so. Those awful creatures had followed me home.

Among the Society columns in today’s edition of the Times, found earlier after Zylphia had performed a minor miracle and turned me to rights early this morning, the latest on dit from the Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior waited for me. It was not kind. My name was not attached—such things may be too crass, even for the salon—but I had no doubts that today’s moral came at my expense.

To imagine such boldness in the demeanor of a young lady is to wonder at the education that surely has gone missing in her household. Would that such a young, impressionable girl’s mother had the presence of mind to refrain from abandoning her child to the improper and ofttimes vulgar fancies of nannies and simple governesses.

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