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“Oh! It’s very nice to meet you, Flora. And you as well, Malcolm.” She reached over to pat George’s cheek.
As Lady Anne straightened again, Will shook Sir Fitzwilliam’s hand. “I see His Grace is as warm as ever,” he muttered.
“Some things never change. Malcolm Ramsey, chief among them.” Emmie’s father patted his pretend grandchildren on the head, like they were dogs. “I’m glad you finally decided to allow these young ones into the daylight, William. A man wants to see his line continue, even if it’s under another family’s name.”
Will shrugged. “I blame the physicians, telling us to keep them away from everyone. Thankfully, they’ve improved this autumn.”
“Is Penelope here?” Emmie asked, even though she already knew the answer to that. Cousin Penelope would never miss a chance to ingratiate herself with their grandfather.
“Yes. They arrived a day early, I believe, she and Howard and the three little ones. The children are playing down by the pond, if yours would like to join them.”
“Do you wish to join them?” Emmie asked.
“Yes, please,” Rose answered, and George nodded.
“Very well. Nothing too strenuous,” she instructed, since they had been invalids for most of their pretend lives, after all. “And we’ll see you inside for luncheon.”
Holding hands, the Fletcher children trotted off toward the Welshire Park pond, and Emmie sent up a quick prayer that at the end of the next three days she and Will would still be calling Winnover Hall home.
Two hours later, Penelope Chase took the seat to Emmie’s right, roughly in the middle of the absurdly long dining table. “I was wondering if you would make an appearance at all,” her cousin said without preamble.
“Hello, Pen. It’s good to see you, as well. And thank you for your concern, but we’re fine. Luckily the coach was on level ground when the wheel came off.”
The blond-haired woman leaned backward to peer around Emmie’s shoulder. “William. You’ve finally deigned to acknowledge your children. I was beginning to think you’d made them up.”
Emmie forced a laugh. “We can’t all have children as healthy and round as yours. Speaking of which, where are the little ones?”
Her cousin gestured toward the east wing of the house. “You know how Grandfather is, with his ‘Children are best neither seen nor heard once they’ve been added to the family.’ He set up a separate table for them in the small ballroom.”
Oh dear. She’d wanted a few moments to ask Rose and George how they’d fared, if they needed any more information, and if they were enjoying themselves. They’d considered Winnover to be opulent, so Welshire Park must have been like a maharajah’s grand palace to their eyes.
“I spoke with my Frederick,” Pen went on, naming her oldest. “I told him specifically to make Malcolm and Flora feel welcome, since they’ve never met any of their own relations before.”
“That’s very kind of you.” As she recalled, Frederick was a spoiled little twit a few months younger than George, but that only meant that George and Rose would have no difficulty outsmarting him.
“Are you ever going to confess that you played me for a fool, Emmie? Or at least admit that the entire time you were congratulating me for winning Winnover Hall you and Will had a plan to wed first?”
Emmie smiled. “When I spoke to you, I had no idea I would be marrying Will.” On her other side, his fingers brushed her elbow. “I am, however, very happy to have done so. And not just for the sake of Winnover.”
Her cousin’s eyes narrowed. “Keep your nasty little secrets to yourself, then, you and your perfect life. I don’t care.”
At the moment her life didn’t feel so very perfect, but they seemed to be close to keeping their secrets, which would have to be enough.
Down at the far end of the table, so distant he might have been in another shire, the Duke of Welshire stood. Picking up a glass and a knife, he rapped one against the other, even though the room fell silent the moment he rose.
“Thank you all for coming to my birthday party,” he said. “Most of you know what I think of you, but it does my soul good to see so many who carry the Ramsey bloodline gathered about me. Watered down as it’s become, it’s still my legacy. And some of you are even respectable. So, happy birthday to me.” He lifted his glass.
Everyone stood, echoing the birthday wishes but not the insults, and drank. They all sat again, and as the servants brought around the first course, Emmie heard a sound in the distance. A distinct, high-pitched shriek that sounded like a very angry, and very familiar, young man. Oh no. She pushed to her feet. “Excuse me.”
She hadn’t been to Welshire Park in years, and it took her a moment to find the small ballroom. As she searched, the sound of glass breaking led her past two more doorways and down a short hall, and then she stepped into… hell.
“Say that again, you ass!” George demanded.
Ten-year-old Lord Ramsey pushed the boy in the shoulder. “I said, you don’t belong here. The servants eat in the kitchen, and you’re not even fit to be there.”
“In the stable, maybe!” Frederick Chase chimed in—and abruptly took an egg to the forehead.
More raw egg hit Emmie in the shoulder, the sound an odd combination of crack and squelch. Wet dripped down her cleavage and her lavender bodice, down to the ribbon at her waist, a sickly yellowish green further marred by flecks of eggshell.