is Miss Verity Sinclair,” Olivia said. “I told you about her. Verity, my mother.”
Verity bobbed a curtsy. “Very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Townsend.”
Her hostess greeted her with a sweet, if lazy, smile.
“And that is my dramatic sister Beatrice,” Olivia continued, indicating the girl holding the book. She pointed at the boy with the sling. “My reprehensible brother Peter.” The boy made a dreadful face at her. “My sister Selina and brother Gerard.”
Verity guessed that the latter two were about eight and five. They were bent over a board game and barely acknowledged her arrival.
“And that is the lot of us, except the oldest,” Olivia finished. “Winthrop is away at school.”
All of the Townsend brood resembled their mother, sturdy and dark-haired, except Olivia. “I’m the image of my father,” said the latter, seeming to read Verity’s expression. “Everyone remarks on it. Winthrop is the same.”
Mr. Townsend must be a rather small, slender man, Verity thought. She wondered if his wife dwarfed him.
“We don’t stand on ceremony here,” drawled Mrs. Townsend, returning to her chaise.
It seemed an understatement. In any household Verity had ever visited, children this age would be in the schoolroom.
Selina reared back and whacked Gerard over the head with a throw pillow. He retaliated by pelting her with game pieces.
Mrs. Townsend laughed. “Barbarians.”
“Get a pillow of your own,” Peter urged Gerard. “You’ll soon run out of ammunition.”
No one looked at all self-conscious, Verity noticed. She would have been mortified at such a scene in her own home. She couldn’t even imagine a parallel at Dean Sinclair’s staid residence. Of course, she had no brothers or sisters.
Selina and Gerard swatted at each other with pillows for a while. Peter cheered them on. Beatrice paged through her book. Mrs. Sinclair laughed at them. After a bit, as the shock wore off, it began to seem rather…refreshing.
“Come out of this bedlam,” said Olivia then. “We’ll go to my room, where we can hear ourselves speak.”
Beatrice made a move as if to join them. Olivia put her off with a gesture, and the younger girl looked hurt. But only briefly. She returned immediately to her book.
“I suppose you think you’ve entered a madhouse,” said Olivia as she led Verity up another flight of stairs.
“Oh, no.”
“Of course you do. With my raucous brood of brothers and sisters. And Cranford off somewhere watering the wine and filching the brandy. We call him our bibulous butler. But this is how we are. Mama married my father to escape a direly strict family. She says she was never so happy as when they cast her off entirely. She teaches us the proprieties, of course, but she vowed to let her children do as they pleased at home, and generally we do.” Olivia smiled down from an upper step. “Papa was raised without any manners at all in a dreadful slum. Instead of learning polite behavior, he became very, very rich. He says that caring what other people think is like locking on your own manacles.”
Verity felt dazed at this spate of personal information. “You don’t worry that people will…object?”
Olivia laughed, sounding remarkably like her mother. “Oh, I’m exaggerating for effect, as Beatrice would say. Generally I behave. Last fall in Northumberland I spent several weeks as chief toadeater to an earl’s daughter.”
Verity shook her head. “You did not.” She couldn’t imagine her unconventional new friend in such a role.
“I assure you, I did.” Olivia opened a door off the upper corridor and led Verity into a bedchamber.
Verity stopped short, dazzled by a riot of multicolored silk. Long swaths of the fabric draped the ceiling and walls, the bed and the two long windows. Scarlet, cobalt blue, emerald, gold, too many hues to count. “Oh!”
“Do you like it?” asked Olivia. “They’re saris—the things women wear in India. Papa brought them back. I think they’re lush!”
“They’re astonishing.” Verity felt as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale.
“Would you like some? I can get all I want from Papa.”
“Oh! Thank you. Yes.” Not that she’d be allowed to drape her room in this way. Not yet. But when she had a house of her own, she’d do as she liked.
“Splendid,” said Olivia. “You can leave your bonnet on the bed.”
Inspired by the household’s free spirit, Verity untied the ribbons and tossed her hat onto the silken coverlet. Her pelisse followed with a flourish.
“Come and sit.” Olivia plopped down in a brocaded armchair beside the fireplace. Verity took its mate on the other side. “Now we will plot,” she added.