Her mother?
Her mother, who delighted in having servants and wouldn’t be able to pick out a trunk from a valise, suddenly found herself actively engaged in packing those very items—and in Myrtle’s rooms, no less?
Though in fairness, it was also the last place Myrtle would think to look for her.
Sure enough, when she reached her rooms, Myrtle found her.
Them.
“Mr. Phippen is set to begin immediately,” her mother was saying to her husband as she sorted through an array of jewelry set out on Myrtle’s vanity, then instructed her husband to place the properly wrapped item in the valise.
Ah, they were hiding together.
Then again, Myrtle’s mother had never much been one for being alone. Myrtle had often suspected it was one of the reasons her parents had wished for—and had—their brood of six children.
“The servants have already begun draping the sheets,” her father said. “But for the chambers that will be in use this evening . . .”
She’d hand it to them: they didn’t manage to look even a tad bit guilty.
In fact, they didn’t so much as pause in their work and acknowledge her. Nay, they were far more engrossed in talks of whoever this Mr. Phippen fellow was.
“Who is Mr. Phippen?” Myrtle called out. When neither parent looked up and over, she folded her arms at her chest and resisted the urge to stamp her foot like she’d done as a small, stubborn girl. Not that they would have noticed anyway. “I asked, who is Mr. Phippen?”
That managed to force their attention over to her.
Her mother frowned. “Mr. Martin Phippen is only the best master builder in the whole of London and the one who’ll be overseeing the renovations of our home.”
Alas, Myrtle would have had to have been in London and truly part of the McQuoid brood to have known about the renovations planned for their home. It was just one more reminder of how much a stranger she was here.
Best builder Mr. Phippen forgotten, Myrtle frowned as her parents carried on as they’d been. “You are packing?”
Her parents looked up as one and stared at Myrtle as if she’d just entered the room.
“Your mama is quite capable, dearest,” her father responded for the pair as Myrtle’s mother turned back to the vanity table and the tiaras resting there. “Very much, indeed.”
The attention they paid her proved brief, as with that avowal, husband and wife resumed their rapid discourse, leaving Myrtle in the state that had become increasingly common these last three years.
Oh, Myrtle didn’t doubt for a moment that her mother could have single-handedly done the work of the Sixth Coalition to rid Boney of his quest to conquer the world. Neither, however, did Myrtle believe for one single Scottish minute that her mother had developed a sudden affinity for packing her own belongings.
“We must leave early in the morn,” the countess was saying. “It will allow us just four stops until we reach Scotland . . .”
So they were off to Scotland. The place of her father’s birth and their family’s country estate.
Only, their London townhouse was where they called home.
Or that had been the case.
Those were the memories Myrtle held of so many of her favorite Christmases. In winter and even more so after the little season when the lords and ladies of London scattered to their country properties and the McQuoids had turned the town into a playground of sorts. In fact, some of the earliest memories she still carried went back to days spent skating on the canal in Saint James’s Park or on the Serpentine River in Hyde Park.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, she raised her voice in a manner that would have absolutely extended her sentence at Mrs. Belden’s. “I don’t wish to leave London for the holiday.”
When neither parent acknowledged her, she swept over. “Hullo,” she said, waving her arms back and forth, forcing them to see her. “Did you hear me? I said I do not wish to leave.”
Her mother set down hard the necklace she’d been examining. “You don’t wish to leave?” she asked. “You don’t wish to leave?”
And Myrtle really should have known by that repeated question that no answer was required, and that her mother was set to deliver a scathing lecture.
Alas . . .
She managed a tight nod.
Her mother shot an arm up, pointing skyward. “We have a roof that has begun to leak.”
As if on cue, a single drop of water fell, landing with a surprisingly loud plink in the flowerpot that had been set beneath to catch it.
“The floorboards are rotting.” To punctuate her point, Mother stomped the floor with her foot, and the oak panel dipped in a precarious way. “The walls are drafty.” Even Mother Nature chose to cooperate with the countess. The wind battered the windows, rattling the panes and sending such a chill through the room that, despite a raging fireplace, Myrtle couldn’t keep from hugging her arms to ward off the nip.
Her mother was not done with her, however. “Of all your siblings and cousins, you are the only one to make this difficult. Neither your brothers nor your sisters wish to leave for the holiday. Nor do your cousins. They are good enough to know that if these renovations do not happen at this juncture, then the household will not be ready for this London Season. Am I making myself clear?”
Myrtle had always been hopeless at conceding defeat. “Linnie and Meghan, and for that matter, Cassia, wouldn’t know if they were in Scotland or the sea,” she said, and not unkindly. Her female kin were flighty at best, empty-headed at worst.
Her mother frowned. “I suggest you heed your father’s advice and gather up your Mr. Newberry books and marbles—”
“It is Pride and Prejudice in three volumes By a Lady,” Myrtle gritted out. And it was a sin of the world that the real author must hide her identity away behind a pseudonym. But then, hadn’t Myrtle learned at the hands of her own family that the last thing the world wished was a woman with a voice? “It is Pride and Prejudice, and it was given to me by Miss Cassandra Austen.” The Austens were only Aunt Leslie and Uncle Francis’s neighbors in Hampshire and her favorite family outside of her own. Actually, of late, including her own. “Furthermore,” she went on impatiently when neither of her parents so much as acknowledged her, “I haven’t read Newberry’s books since I was a girl, and those pieces you refer to as marbles are in fact fossils Arran brought—”
Her mother gave a dismissive wave. “Whatever they are. If they matter to you, see them packed up, and either bring them in your valise or tuck them away here, as Mr. Phippen’s men are set to begin work.”
“At Christmas?” In feigned innocence, Myrtle batted her eyes. There were, after all, but two sacred times for the McQuoid mother: the London Season and the Christmastide one. “Never tell me you’re having these poor men begin before the holiday?”
“Of course we would nev—” At Myrtle’s triumphant look, her mother instantly clamped her lips together. She turned an entreating look on her husband. “Harold.”
Just like that, his name a command, Myrtle’s father, ever the peacemaker, stepped between them. He rested his hands on Myrtle’s shoulders and steered her gently toward the door. “Why don’t you run along, dearest, and pack up your marble collection.”