Unmarried Lady Sorts of Things

By Lady Olivia Bevelstoke, Unmarried Lady

Wear pastel colors (and be quite glad if you possess the correct complexion for such hues). Smile and keep your opinions to yourself (with whatever success you are able). Do what your parents tell you to do. Accept the consequences when you don’t. Find a husband who won’t bother to tell you what to do.

It was not uncommon for Olivia to formulate such epigraphic oddities in her mind. Which might explain why she so frequently caught herself not listening when she ought.

And, perhaps, why she might have, once or twice, said things she really should have kept to herself. Although in all fairness, it had been two years since she’d called Sir Robert Kent an overgrown stoat, and frankly, that had been far more charitable than the other items on her mental accounting.

But digressions aside, Miranda now got to do married lady sorts of things, for which Olivia would like to have formed a list, except that no one (not even Miranda, and Olivia still had not forgiven her for this) would tell her what it was that married ladies did, aside from not having to wear pastel colors, not having to be accompanied by a chaperone at all times, and producing small infants at reasonable intervals.

Olivia was quite certain there was more to the last bit. That was the one that sent her mother fleeing from the room every time she asked.

But back to Miranda. She had produced a small infant-Olivia’s darling niece Caroline, for whom she’d happily throw herself under hooves, equine or otherwise-and was now on her way to producing another, which meant that she was not available for regular afternoon chitchat. And as Olivia liked chitchat-and fashion and gossip-she found herself spending more and more time with Anne, Mary, and Philomena. And while they were often entertaining, and never malicious, they were, slightly more than occasionally, foolish.

Like right now.

“Who are they, anyway?” Olivia asked.

“They?” Anne echoed.

“They. The people who say my new neighbor killed his fiancée.”

Anne paused. She looked at Mary. “Do you recall?”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t, actually. Sarah Forsythe, perhaps?”

“No,” Philomena put in, shaking her head with great certitude. “It wasn’t Sarah. She only got back from Bath two days ago. Libby Lockwood?”

“Not Libby,” Anne said. “I would have remembered if it were Libby.”

“That’s my point,” Olivia interjected. “You don’t know who said it. None of us does.”

“Well, I didn’t make it up,” Anne said, a touch defensively.

“I didn’t say you did. I would never think that of you.” It was true. Anne repeated most anything uttered in her presence, but she never made things up. Olivia paused, collecting her thoughts. “Don’t you think it’s the sort of rumor one might want to verify?”

This was met with three blank stares.

Olivia tried a different tactic. “If only for your own personal safety. If such a thing were true-”

“Then you think it is?” Anne asked, in a rather pinning-you-down sort of voice.

“No.” Good heavens. “I don’t. But if it were, then surely he would not be someone with whom we would wish to associate.”

This was met with a long beat of silence, finally broken by Philomena: “My mother has already told me to avoid him.”

“Which is why,” Olivia continued, feeling a bit as if she were slogging through mud, “we should ascertain its accuracy. Because if it’s not true-”

“He’s very handsome,” Mary cut in. Followed by, “Well, he is.”

Olivia blinked, trying to follow.

“I’ve never seen him,” Philomena said.

“He wears only black,” Mary said, rather confidentially.

“I saw him in dark blue,” Anne contradicted.

“He wears only dark colors,” Mary amended, shooting Anne an irritated glance. “And his eyes-oh, they could burn right through you.”

“What color are they?” Olivia asked, imagining all sorts of interesting hues-red, yellow, orange…

“Blue.”

“Gray,” Anne said.

“Bluish gray. But they’re quite piercing.”

Anne nodded, having no correction to attach to that statement.

“What color is his hair?” Olivia asked. Surely this was an overlooked detail.

“Dark brown,” the two girls answered in unison.

“As dark as mine?” Philomena asked, fingering her own locks.

“Darker,” Mary said.

“But not black,” Anne added. “Not quite.”

“And he’s tall,” Mary said.

“They always are,” Olivia murmured.

“But not too tall,” Mary continued. “I don’t like a gangly man, myself.”

“Surely you’ve seen him,” Anne said to Olivia, “what with his living right next door.”

“I don’t believe I have,” Olivia murmured. “He only let the house at the beginning of the month, and I was at the Macclesfield house party for a week of that.”

“When did you return to London?” Anne asked.

“Six days ago,” Olivia replied, briskly returning to the topic at hand with: “I didn’t even know there was a bachelor in residence.” Which, it belatedly occurred to her, implied that if she had known, she would have tried to find out more about him.

Which was probably true, but she wasn’t going to admit to it.

“Do you know what I heard?” Philomena suddenly asked. “He thrashed Julian Prentice.”