“With a hookah pipe? Hmmm.” Then Eleanor waved it away. “Too dirty with the smoke and all. And not very outrageous either. I think it shall have to be Russian.”
Mellie set her hands tightly in her lap. “But I don’t know any Russian.” She didn’t even knowanyoneRussian. “Perhaps we should return to my scientific work.”
“No, no, I told you. Bluestockings are boring, not outrageous. We need to make you fun.” She suddenly snapped her fingers. “I know! You must sing badly.”
“What?”
“Very, very badly. Such that we all laugh.”
Trevor was just being served the mutton when he shook his head. “But she has a lovely singing voice.”
No, she didn’t. Mellie frowned at him. “Why would you think that?”
He shrugged and gave her a mischievous smile. “Your father told me that once, I think.”
Mellie shot him an irritated look. “Papa meant that I have perfected his cricket calls.”
“Cricket?” the duke asked, using his fork to gesture. “As in with a ball and a bat?”
“Er, no, the insect. My father studies them, you know.”
“So it’s like bird calls only for insects?” the man pressed.
“Yes, exactly,” she said, only belatedly realizing how odd this must sound to anyone outside her father’s circle of friends.
The duchess set down her fork, apparently not liking the mutton. “But why would anyone want to call crickets?”
Good question. She’d asked her father the same thing at the time. “He believed the cricket’s chirp was indicative of a mating ritual. He wanted to test the theory with calls, but he hadn’t the knack of it.”
Lady Eleanor beamed at her. “But you did. Can you do one now?”
“Er—”
“Can you, perhaps, make it into a song of sorts?”
“What?”
Eleanor suddenly brightened. “I know, make it a bit like ‘Greensleeves,’ but for crickets. You know the tune, don’t you?” Then she proceeded to hum a bit of the song.
“What are you about?” That was from Trevor, his voice a mix of outrage and laughter.
The humming stopped, and Eleanor turned wide eyes on Trevor. “It’s perfect, you know. We’ll call her a poor Russian princess, so lonely she only had the crickets as playmates.”
Mellie set her fork down with a click. “But I am not a poor Russian princess.”
“No one will know that. And besides, you do have an eccentric father, right? We’ll say he got his madness from his Russian side.”
“But we’re not Russian!”
Eleanor huffed. “We’ve been over this. All the other countries won’t suit.”
“Stop, Eleanor,” Trevor said. “I won’t have my fiancée made into a laughingstock.”
“But that’s the point, don’t you see? To make her outrageous in a fun way.” And when Trevor just stared her down, she added in a tiny pout. “You needn’t frown at me like that. It was her idea. I was simply making it work.”
Meanwhile, the duchess waved the footman to withdraw her plate. “We still need a story for her.”
Trevor finished off his mutton with a last large bite. “Love match won’t do it?”