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SPRING

O ver the past six months, Millie Yardley had imagined her return to London in a thousand different ways: triumphant, secretive, somber, tearfully sentimental, and so on.

In truth, the whole matter of rolling past the city line had turned out to be so anticlimactic that she’d missed it entirely, dozing off with her hat tipped over her eyes as the dowager thumbed through a fashion circular on the other side of the carriage.

Perhaps it had been silly to imagine herself fully changed by such a short time away, but after a lifetime within the bounds of a single city, half a year elsewhere had felt utterly transformative, and Millie fully expected London to need a reacquainting with this new and liberated version of her, who had finally broken free of her parents’ yoke in the rocky idyll of the Cotswolds this winter.

No wonder her mother had protested it so desperately!

She must have known, Millie realized, that once her daughters had a taste of freedom, they’d never want to go back to living at home again.

She and Claire had discussed as much more than once as those magical months had passed them by at Crooked Nook.

What was odd was that her brothers seemed to be just the opposite. All three had as much freedom as they wanted and seemed to patently refuse to leave the family doorstep in any permanent way. Men were funny that way, she supposed.

She could only hope that this coming Season would be so successful that the dowager would wish to keep Millie as a companion for the remainder of her days. For the alternative, which would be returning to her mother’s bosom and her behest, was simply too glum a prospect to truly consider.

Perhaps that was why when asked, quite innocently on that first afternoon, if she had been to visit her parents yet, Millie responded with an overly harsh “No!”

Her dearest and oldest friend, Dot Fletcher …

or rather, Dot Cain now that she was married, sat across from her, familiar green eyes wide with surprise at the outburst. She held her teaspoon aloft above her cup with its melting cube of sugar perched on the end for a moment, and responded, “All right, then,” before going right back to stirring.

Millie could feel the embarrassment creeping along her cheekbones. “I will, of course,” she added, with a smidge less volume. “Just haven’t yet. Probably not today. Or tomorrow. I don’t know.”

“You’re in no hurry, you mean,” Dot replied with the ghost of a knowing smile playing on her lips as she tapped the spoon on the edge of her saucer and discarded it.

“I do understand, you know. I felt like I was claiming sanctuary in Silas’s home for the first few months of our marriage, and I bear no ill will against my father or anyone else who was living in my home at the time.

But truly, nothing can compete with the solace and peace of being unharassed. ”

She paused, sipping her tea and staring over Millie’s shoulder out the window thoughtfully before adding, “Sometimes I think all I want in the world is to be left alone for a moment.”

“And yet here you are again,” Millie pointed out, gesturing to the Fletcher family dining room. “Living under your father’s roof, with a husband and a new baby besides.”

Dot grinned, quite unabashed. “Well, what we say and what we do are often in conflict, aren’t they?

Besides, Claire is gone now to the Cotswolds with little Oliver, and Ember moved to her new rooms in St. James months ago.

In any event, this house is much more spacious than Silas’s old flat, and I wanted to oversee the renovations. ”

“It is looking very fine,” Millie said with feeling. “There is life in these walls again.”

The Fletcher house was nigh unrecognizable from the empty husk it had been just a couple of years ago, at the pit of the family’s misfortune.

Dot’s father had suffered a catastrophic apoplexy, and Claire had done an unthinkable thing and run off with Dot’s intended groom, the very same earl from whom they were all now estranged.

It had been revenge against the man that had brought them back together, in the end, and restored things to the way they ought to be.

It was a joy to see warmth and shine here again for Millie, who had practically spent half her life in this house. She had grown up alongside Dot, and now, as adulthood had arrived, their paths were beginning to diverge at last.

“I thought I would see your father and husband here today,” Millie remarked, sipping at her own tea. “I should like to greet them both.”

“They are meeting with a client today, a Portuguese heir to some lost family fortune here in England. They both seem quite beside themselves about it. Papa says it is a substantial enough case that it could lead to Silas being invited to take the silk if it goes well.”

“Goodness,” Millie breathed, her eyes going wide. “So young?”

“I know.” Dot shook her head as though she could scarcely believe it herself.

“I don’t know the details yet, of course, but if Silas still aims to eventually take a judge’s seat, then becoming a member of the King’s Council at a shockingly young age is certainly one way to go about it.

I’ve cautioned him not to count his hens before they hatch, but I’m afraid that has fallen on deaf ears. ”

“Well, yes, I imagine so. He must be dizzy with excitement. Anyone would be. A mysterious foreigner and a lost family fortune leading to achievement of his life’s goal years ahead of schedule? It’s something out of a dream!”

“Yes, well,” Dot said with a heavy sigh. “Dreams often take bizarre turns, don’t they?”

“Oh, let him revel in the thrill,” Millie chided, flapping her napkin in Dot’s direction.

“You can be sensible once something concerning actually occurs. In the meanwhile, coo over your new baby and let your father be his level-headed counsel, since he seems to already have volunteered for the role.”

“Hm,” said Dot, in the way she often did when she intended to ignore Millie’s advice.

Millie hid her smile with another sip of tea and awaited the inevitable change of subject.

“ So , companion to a countess,” Dot said like the chiming of a clock, shaking her blonde head as she set her empty teacup down and rested her hands over her belly, which still retained the slightest swell from her recent pregnancy.

“It is an exciting vocation, isn’t it? Speaking of expected presences, I had thought the dowager would be joining you for tea today. ”

“She had business to attend to,” Millie said with a shrug, “and I thought it would be nice to catch up, just the two of us. But I will be sure to broker a proper introduction soon, I promise.”

“I assure you that you are the one I wanted to see,” Dot said with a sparkle in her eye. “Besides, now we can talk freely and speculate about what you’ll get up to in your new position. I’m desperate to know what sorts of exclusive corners of Society you’ll see in the coming days.”

“It might end up being rather dry, unfortunately. I can show you the agenda next time we meet,” Millie replied with half a smile. “Some of the entries are rather cryptic, though.”

“Oh? Such as?”

“Well, tonight we’re going to the opera, which is straightforward enough.

But next Wednesday, it simply says the Spinsters in large letters.

Spinsters is capitalized, as though they are some sort of conglomerate.

I asked her about it and she waved me off, so your guess is as good as mine, but she told me I ought to find some quality cigars to have on hand for the occasion! ”

Dot looked impressed. “Cigars for the Spinsters,” she mused. “How intriguing. I wish I were invited. Perhaps Lady Bentley is part of some secret society, despite being a widow and not a spinster?”

“Perhaps,” Millie agreed, shifting in her seat.

“But it could also simply be a gathering of old women for a game of bridge, which isn’t very exciting at all.

Beyond the odd undecipherable entry, there are the usual things: invitations to balls and teas and luncheons, of course.

There were several of those waiting for us when we arrived at the townhouse in Mayfair this morning. ”

“I may actually see you at a few of those, by the by,” Dot put in, fluttering her lashes innocently.

“What? Are you debuting, Dorothy Fletcher? After getting married?” Millie balked, wrinkling up her nose. “What madness is this?”

“No madness,” Dot replied with a laugh. “A dear friend of the family has a daughter who is debuting, and he has asked me to assist and chaperone her to a few events, to mentor her somewhat if I am able, and I do not know that I am. But I shall endeavor to try.”

Millie tilted her head with interest. “You? In the ballrooms and tea houses? Dot, you’ve no map for such things.”

Dot laughed because it was true. “I am not so completely hopeless, Millie. There was the year where Freddy courted me, you recall, and since marrying Silas, I’ve attended a decent number of soirees and the like.

Besides, I can’t watch you over there buying cigars and prowling Almack’s without a little vocation of my own, can I? ”

“You could, in fact,” Millie said with a quirk of her lips, winning a delighted laugh from her oldest friend. “Well, I shouldn’t mind the company if our paths cross, regardless. Who is this girl you’re guiding about? Perhaps I can keep an eye on her as well.”

“Miss Hannah Lazarus. She is our banker’s eldest daughter.” Dot paused, giving a little tilt of her head and a blink of her large, green eyes. “She reminds me a lot of you, actually.”

“Then God help her,” Millie muttered, and meant it. If there was any justice in the world, every pinching, dour-faced modiste she’d had to see for her own Season was long retired and beyond reaching this debutante, who apparently shared Millie’s many misfortunes.

She pictured poor Miss Lazarus as herself at nineteen, a generously built girl with a mother who insisted on buying dresses that were always just a bit smaller than they should be and stays reinforced with whalebone and steel to make them fit. She winced.

She hadn’t yet investigated the shipment of gowns the dowager countess ordered for her back in Crooked Nook, but she knew she was going to be expected to wear one of them to the opera tonight.

One did not snub such a gift. But, as long as they stayed sealed in their box, Millie could imagine they were not going to pinch and cinch her to the point of turning blue.

Millie had never had a proper Season. A modest dowry was reserved for her, of course, and she had been bought those fine, beautiful, torturous dresses and brought to a few polite events and introduced to young men who stared at and spoke directly to her bosoms. She had also been introduced to their mothers, who stared at and did not speak to her waistline with disapproving frowns or otherwise muttered things about “fertile hips” behind their fans.

They said other things too. Cruel things about Mrs. Yardley. Things Millie knew they both could hear.

The matrons must have known too. They wouldn’t bother to lower their voices, whispering in singsong behind their fans. “Poor thing, sad, skinny Lacey Yardley, so spindly her bones could start a fire, and somehow her daughter is plumper than a Christmas goose!”

And they’d giggle while Mama turned pale and everyone else pretended to go temporarily deaf.

Millie had, shockingly, not received any proposals.

It was around that time that Claire had really begun to blossom into a great beauty while still studying with her governess.

She was neither plump nor spindly, but perfectly fashionably shaped, slender but gently endowed with feminine curves in the appropriate places.

She had an angelic face and gentle manners, and in her, Millie knew her mother saw the triumph in Society she had always dreamed of.

So all attention had moved to the younger sister, and at last Millie could breathe again, both literally and figuratively.

The shift into assumed spinsterhood had been so quick and so simple that Millie could point to it in her diary, on the day of that final social engagement, when they’d come home to see Claire balancing books on her head in the stairwell and realized that she was the family’s great hidden jewel.

Her eldest brother, Zeke, had asked her back then if it bothered her. He was always the observant one, always the carer, but she had told him truthfully that she was relieved. Much like Dot had said, sometimes, all a girl wanted was to be left alone.

And besides, better to be unmarried than to be married poorly.

Someone ought to tell that to little Miss Lazarus before she started playing the marriage mart in earnest.

“Come, Vivian should be roused from her nap by now and ready for feeding,” Dot said, scattering Millie’s thoughts of young girls and their woes.

“I don’t hear her screaming about it just yet, but that doesn’t mean she won’t.

The nurse is very impressed with the volume of her cries. Says she has her father’s presence.”

“What does Silas say?” Millie asked.

“That he’s very proud,” Dot replied with a wistfulness that could only come from someone hopelessly besotted.

“It’s lovely, you know, that you named the baby for your mother. It made my mother cry when she heard about it. I know because the letter I got was all tear-stained.”

“She has sent many gifts, and visits when she can,” Dot told her, a smile in her voice. “She says she’s doing it in my mother’s honor, since she can’t be here to dote on the baby herself. It’s very sweet.”

She stopped just short of the door and turned, blinking with realization. “Oh! I almost forgot. Mind the cat when we go in. She won’t leave the nursery during the day and likes to menace newcomers when they approach the cradle. She’s harmless, really, she just has a mischievous spirit.”

“I like cats,” Millie said quickly.

“Excellent,” Dot answered, her shoulders relaxing a little. She turned the knob and gestured for Millie to follow her into the room. “Hopefully Queen Mab likes you right back.”