Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 116547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
She glanced at me, her eyes wide. “Which room did the little bug run to!”
It took all my strength not to laugh. “I did not see.”
“Very well. I know how to deal with her.” Hathor huffed, marching back into her room and slamming the door.
“We should continue on, my lady, for things shall get louder,” Bernice added. “Rainy days are never short of…Abena.”
I wished to see what she meant but took her advice. We were just before the doors to the dining room when I heard the marchioness’s voice.
“Truly? You mean it? Clementina is all right?” she exclaimed, and I moved closer to hear without being seen.
“How many times must I tell you yes?”
“How is it that you know such news before I?”
“The coachman went to retrieve my pocket watch in the early morning hours and saw all the servants were in much brighter spirits. He heard it himself that the young lady was well.”
“They made it seem as though she were minutes away from being read rites. Did you not hear the way her mother screamed? Such sounds are made only when—”
“Apparently, the girl truly was upon her last breaths. But that doctor, the one we were introduced to, all but brought her back to life with his bare hands. Evidently, he stayed till past dawn.”
“The bastard?”
“Deanna.”
“What? Is that not what he all but proclaimed to us?”
“You asked about his parents, and he told you the truth. But that is neither here nor there. The man has saved the duke’s daughter. Such a thing, such a brain! I tell you, my dear, truly what makes a man is his mind.”
The marchioness giggled. “You are merely excited at the prospect of speaking to someone who knows all of your great books and philosophers.”
There were muffled sounds from the marquess before he said, “Mark my words, this Dr. Theodore Darrington shall no doubt become well-renowned one day. I have an eye for these things.”
I had never heard the marquess speak so much and so freely.
“Yes, dear. It is still a pity, though,” the marchioness added.
I frowned, not sure why I was a bit annoyed at her tone, but I ignored that feeling for a better one. One of relief…
Dr. Darrington had saved her.
“What has you smiling so early this morning?”
I turned to see Bernice had gone, and now Silva and Damon stood at the stairs. Smiling? Was I smiling?
“Damon, leave her alone.” Silva nudged him.
“What?”
“Clementina is going to be all right,” I said, since that was why I was smiling…wasn’t it?
6
Verity
It had been three days since the concert at the Rowleys’, and since then, neither the rain nor the ton’s interest in the newly famed Dr. Darrington had subsided. Even in the downpour, women still came to visit the marchioness in order to share what information they had managed to gather or to describe the way in which he had either miraculously healed them or someone they knew.
“Your ladyship, Mrs. Marie Loquac is here for you,” Ingrid announced to the marchioness as she entered where we all sat in the drawing room.
“It seems not even the rain could stop her either.” Hathor giggled from behind her easel. “I wonder what sort of news she brings with her this time.”
“Hathor.” The marchioness gave her a stern look as she placed her cake down and rose to her feet. “Do see her in, Ingrid, and have tea sent.”
Hathor quickly moved from her painting to sit beside me at the window. I had not known of her talent for art until I saw her sketches, many of which were of her family.
“Mrs. Marie Loquac? She is the favored modiste, correct?” I asked Hathor, sure I had heard that name recommended to me by one of the other ladies in town.
“Yes, she is the granddaughter of an earl and never wishes anyone to forget. But I much prefer to call her the ton spy,” she mused. However, before she could say another word, the doors opened once more for a rather short, plump woman with rosy dimpled cheeks, green eyes, and wavy brown hair that she had pinned up with a green feather, though her dress was a soft pink. Behind her were two plain young ladies, one holding books and the other a measuring tape and hat. Their hems were soaked in mud, though Mrs. Loquac’s was not.
“Your ladyship.” She curtsied to the marchioness and then once more to Hathor and me both. “How lovely you all look today.”
“We must not take credit for that, as your dresses seem to make us radiant even on a gloomy day such as this,” the marchioness said as she outstretched her arm to gesture for Mrs. Loquac to sit. “I see you’ve brought more designs to part us with our pocketbooks.”