“Carpets! Oriental carpets, my dear.” Their uncle was chortling, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. “What a good joke! Milli, I wish you had seen your face.”
Milli gave a sniff but said nothing.
“Growling carpets?” said Emma. “How peculiar.”
“Indeed. Very singular,” he replied distractedly, returning his timepiece to his waistcoat.
“What of the missing third class passenger?”
“Never found. Come, my dears, it is time for breakfast!” On cue, his stomach gave an enthusiastic rumble.
“So there was naught else in the crate?” asked Milli, deflated. “No curious beasties? I wonder what the growl was then.”
“Nothing of import—excuse the pun—just the tales of a superstitious seaman who had likely had a cup too many. Ships are known to creak and growl when the weather gets fretful.”
“I should think a seasoned sailor ought to know the difference between the ship’s growling and a crate’s growling. Well, never mind. Is Lord Winterly a duke?” Milli clapped her hands together. “No, wait—an Ottoman Prince!”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Ah yes, lest we forget you are to marry a prince.”
“Afraid I must disappoint you, Milli,” said her uncle, glancing back at his niece. “His lordship is merely a viscount.” He settled himself at the head of the breakfast table and gave his nieces a stern glance over the top of the London Gazette—tacitly defying further conversation—and then disappeared behind it with a satisfied grunt.
Emma turned to see her sister smiling impishly, her chin in her palm and her elbow resting nonchalantly on the table. “Imagine,” said Milli, “an Ottoman viscount! How romantic.”
“Ay, and he saved me from a fiendish gypsy in the fog,” Emma whispered, knowing full well that neither her aunt nor her uncle were paying them the least bit of attention.
“Did the gypsy steal your ghastly spectacles—you ought to thank him.”
“I shall be sure to thank him as soon as he’s cursed you into a toad.”
Milli, seeing that Emma was opening her book to read, stretched out a perverse hand to cover the pages. “Oh, do stop teasing me and tell me all that happened last night.”
Glancing pointedly at her aunt and uncle, Emma promised to tell her everything as soon as they were upstairs. It was little wonder, therefore, that before Emma had taken three sips of her chocolate, she was being forcibly dragged from the room by her impatient sister. Only later, much later, was she suffered to catch her breath and read her book, for Milli was not satisfied until she had recounted last night’s every minutiae, even that horrible spider dream.
Chapter Six
The Watcher
My dear Mary,—I feel as though I have awoken upon the pages of a Matthew Lewis novel! I bethought myself I’d been devoured by a great white spider! Your mad, blind cousin,
Emma.
“Shall we go into town for a bit?” said Emma, sketching the buildings across the street from the drawing room window.
Milli gave an indelicate yawn and stood up from the sofa. “What on earth for?” Coming up behind Emma, she pressed her forehead against the glazing like a woebegone child and glanced up at the moody sky. “Cannot you see it is bound to rain later?”
“It is not raining now, and I really ought to replace my spectacles today.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” complained her sister, “for they suit you ill indeed!”
“Well, I shouldn’t think you’d care. It is not as if you shall wear them, my dear.”
Milli snorted, scrutinizing her sister’s drawing. “I think you wear them so that you can hide behind those rebarbative frames and thereby blend in with all the rest of the sparrows. Emma, I forbid your acquiring another pair.”
“Before you go forbidding me anything, I suggest you first repay the half crown you still owe me. Now get dressed before I leave without you.”
“I shan’t repay a shilling if you threaten to buy spectacles with it!” Without preamble, Milli sashayed from the room before Emma could issue a satisfying retort.
Once they were settled in the coach—Milli having decided to risk muddy petticoats for the purpose of thwarting her sister’s ‘perverse’ spectacle errand—they set off west, by way of Fleet Street and the Strand, having instructed the coachman to stop in Finsbury Square. There they perused the shelves of one of London’s most famous bookshops, The Temple Of The Muses. Much to Milli’s vocal disgust, they loitered there above an hour. But even Milli could not disguise being awed by the beautiful ware room with its cast iron columns. It was by these columns that four circular galleries were supported, bearing book-lined shelves beneath a vast dome, muted daylight pouring in through the cupola at the center.
Once Emma had purchased herself a new book, something less likely to invoke horrid dreams, the ladies then strolled along the busy London streets. They, or rather Milli, admired all the window displays—milliners, tobacconists, linen drapers, mantua-makers, shoemakers, perfumeries, and sundry merchants scattered about the streets. Next they visited a confectioners shop, and then wandered around the more fashionable districts to admire the villas and mansions.
“I wager a sovereign your viscount lives there!” Milli pointed up to a rambling terraced mansion with Ionic columns framing its entryway.
“You shouldn’t wager, it’s indecent.”
When the door opened and a portly old man emerged with his lady and a little white dog, both sisters glanced at one another and giggled as they hurried off.
Milli’s gait slowed as the sisters passed before a modiste’s boutique window. “Emma, is that not the most beautiful muslin you have ever seen!” Her voice was rapturous as she pointed to a delicately embroidered muslin within. “Oh, let’s go inside!”
“Whatever for? You just gambled your last sovereign away.”
“Do be serious.”
“Do you not already own a muslin exactly like that?”
“Upon my word, Emma, you must see that this is vastly superior muslin. I know I shall absolutely die if I do not have it!”
“Then by all means,” Emma replied, gesturing towards the door with an impatient sigh, “we cannot have you dying before supper.”
But Millicent, upon entering the shop, was quickly diverted by a pretty turban and its melange of colorful plumage. The younger Miss Rose was not at all circumspect in her exclamations and awe, but on noticing the cost of the desired item, her felicity quickly waned. Her hopes were then instantly dashed again when she picked up and admired a lovely blue silk fan with a very extravagant price tag.
“Ten shillings!” Milli gasped in horror ere she carefully placed the costly piece back whence she’d found it. “I cannot even purchase a fan without being reduced to impecuniosity!”
“Well, at least you shall be fashionably impecunious.”
“And did you not see that hat, Emma? I am convinced that I shan’t find better feathers anywhere else in the world were I to spend a lifetime looking!”
“There, there,” said Emma, endeavoring—and failing—to hide her mirth, “it may be for the best lest you wish to look as bird-witted as I sometimes fear you must be. Besides” —Emma gave Milli’s empty purse a knowing poke— ”you haven’t a feather to fly with.”