Petticoat Rebellion Read Online Free PDF Page B

links with pendant flowers, set with emerald chips.
    At five to seven, Abbie went to collect the girls, who had gathered in Lady Susan’s chamber. They looked like a bouquet of spring flowers in their pastel gowns of modest design and their fresh faces. Young ladies were not allowed to display their shoulders at Miss Slatkin’s Academy. That treat must wait until they made their debuts, but they were allowed to wear simple jewelry. Pearls were the favorite choice. Lady Susan’s pearls, however, were allowed to boast a pear-shaped diamond pendant.
    “I shall remove my jewelry before we go to the circus,”she said. “You should all do the same, ladies. There are bound to be cutpurses there.”
    “Why can’t we wear our jewelry, if it’s only purses they cut?”Annabelle asked.
    “It is not only purses they cut, Belle,”Lady Susan explained. “They are common thieves.”
    “I should love to meet a cutpurse!”Kate said, smiling at such a delightful notion.
    Abbie felt a sense of anticipation at the prospect of her first dinner in such a stately home as she led the girls down the gracefully curved staircase, with the marble floor gleaming below. The girandole overhead threw dancing diamond reflections on the marble. She envisaged a vast display of silver and crystal on the table, with footmen lurking at every shoulder and dainty dishes whose ingredients and manner of eating would be a mystery. What never occurred to her was that there would be anyone but themselves for dinner.
    When she led the ladies into the saloon, she stopped and emitted an audible gasp. It was him! The lecher from the circus, sitting with Lady Penfel and making himself very much at home. He looked exquisite in a burgundy jacket, with a largish diamond pin sparkling amid the folds of his cravat. His jetty hair and swarthy complexion held some suggestion of the gypsy. Who could he be? She looked about, half fearing O’Leary would be lurking in some corner, but at least he was not there. When she returned her gaze to the stranger, he had lifted his quizzing glass and was studying the girls. As she looked, the glass turned in her direction and stopped.
    “Surprise!”Lady Penfel cried, smiling from ear to ear, and looking more like a lightskirt than ever in a royal purple silk gown that displayed several inches of wrinkled chest that a large diamond necklace did not begin to conceal. “Algie has come home to see the circus.”
    Lord Penfel rose and bowed to the ladies. His laughing eyes turned to Miss Fairchild, the quizzing glass held in midair now. “I have been looking forward to this,”he said. “The ladies were strangely reluctant to reveal their names in the meadow this afternoon. Now, which one, I wonder, can be the schoolmistress?”
    “She is the old one,”Annabelle said nodding at Abbie. Kate pinched her. “Ouch! Oh, do I mean the older one? Older than us.”
    “Older than we,”Lady Susan corrected her.
    “Caparisons are odious, ladies,”Lord Penfel chided, and redirected his gaze to Abbie.
     

Chapter Five
     
    As they approached Lady Penfel, Abbie noticed two other young gentlemen standing by the closer fireplace, talking. One was still in his teens, to judge by his coltish appearance. He was tall and slender, all arms and legs and awkward movements. When he had outgrown his adolescence, he would be handsome. He had something of the look of Penfel around the eyes, and the same dark hair. The other was an older, altogether less prepossessing gentleman with blond hair. A pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose lent him a bookish air, though his shoulders were broad. The two gentlemen stopped talking and turned to examine the ladies as they entered, then went forward to meet them.
    Lady Susan was not tardy to put herself at the front of the line to greet her cousins. Always a demon for propriety, she greeted the older brother first. “Penfel,”she said. “I had not heard you were to be here. I thought you were at