Lady Maccon interrupted what looked to be a long diatribe. “I am confident your suffering is quite beyond all description. Shall I call for the Woolsey carriage so you can at least travel back to town in style?”
Felicity looked glum. “It cannot be countenanced, Alexia. Mama will have your head if you send me back now. You know how impossible she can be about these things.”
Lady Maccon did know. But what was to be done?
Felicity sucked on her teeth. “I suppose I shall simply have to accompany you to Scotland. It will be a terrible bore, of course, and you know how I hate traveling, but I shall bear it with grace.” Felicity looked oddly cheered by this idea.
Lady Maccon blanched. “Oh no, absolutely not.” A week or more in her sister’s company and she would go categorically bonkers.
“I think the idea has merit.” Felicity grinned. “I could instruct you on the subject of appearance.” She gave Alexia a sweeping up-and-down look. “It is clear you are in need of expert guidance. Now, if I were Lady Maccon, I should not choose such somber attire.”
Lady Maccon rubbed at her face. It would make for a good cover story, removing her deranged sister from London for a desperately needed airing. Felicity was just self-involved enough not to notice or remark upon any of Alexia’s muhjah activities. Plus, it would give Angelique someone else to fuss over for a change.
That decided matters.
“Very well. I hope you are prepared to travel by air. We are catching a dirigible this afternoon.”
Felicity looked uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “Well, if I must, I must. But I am certain I did not pack the correct bonnet for air travel.”
“Cooee!” A voice reverberated down the hallway outside the open parlor door. “Anyone home?” it rang forth, singsong.
“Now what?” wondered Lady Maccon, fervently hoping she would not miss float-off. She did not want to delay her travel, particularly now that she must keep the regiment and Felicity separated.
A head appeared around the edge of the doorjamb. The head was wearing a hat comprised almost entirely of red feathers, all standing straight upright, and a few tiny puffy white ones, looking like nothing so much as an overly excited duster with a case of the pox.
“Ivy,” stated Alexia, wondering if her dear friend was perhaps secretly the leader of a Silly Hat Liberation Society.
“Oh, Alexia! I let myself in. I do not know where Rumpet has taken himself off to, but I saw the parlor door open, so I deduced you must be awake, and I thought I ought to tell you…” She trailed off upon realizing Alexia was not alone.
“Why, Miss Hisselpenny,” purred Felicity, “what are you doing here?”
“Miss Loontwill! How do you do?” Ivy blinked at Alexia’s sister in utter surprise. “I might ask you the same question.”
“Alexia and I are taking a trip to Scotland this afternoon.”
The feather duster trembled in confusion. “You are?” Ivy looked rather hurt that Alexia would not see fit to inform her of such a trip. And that Alexia would choose Felicity as a companion, when Ivy knew how much Alexia loathed her sister.
“By dirigible.”
Miss Hisselpenny nodded sagely. “So much more sensible. Rail is such an undignified way to travel. All that rapid racing about. Floating has so much more gravitas.”
“It was decided at the last minute,” said Lady Maccon, “both the trip and Felicity joining me. There has been some domestic difficulty at the Loontwills’. Frankly, Felicity is jealous that Evy is getting married.” There was no way Lady Maccon would allow her sister to seize control of a conversation at the expense of her dear friend’s feelings. It was one thing to put up with Felicity’s jibes herself and another to witness them turned upon defenseless Miss Hisselpenny.
“What a lovely hat,” Felicity said to Ivy snidely.
Lady Maccon ignored her sister. “I am sorry, Ivy. I would have invited you. You know I would, but my mother insisted, and you know how utterly impossible she can be.”
Miss Hisselpenny nodded, looking gloomy. She came fully into the room and sat down. Her dress was subdued for Ivy: a simple walking gown of white with red polka dots, boasting only one row of red ruffles and fewer than six bows—although the ruffles were very puffy, and the bows were very large.
“I am assured floating is terribly unsafe, even so,” added Felicity, “Us two women traveling alone. Don’t you think you should ask several members of the regiment to accompany—?”
“No, I most certainly should not!” replied Lady Maccon sharply. “But I do believe Professor Lyall will insist upon Tunstell joining us as escort.”
Felicity pouted. “Not that horrible redheaded thespian chap? He is so fearfully jolly. Must he come? Could we not get some nice soldier instead?”
Miss Hisselpenny quite bristled upon hearing Tunstell disparaged. “Why, Miss Loontwill, how bold you are with your opinions of young men you should know nothing of. I’ll thank you not to cast windles and dispersions about like that.”
“At least I am smart enough to have an opinion,” snapped Felicity back.
Oh dear, thought Alexia, here we go. She wondered what a “windle” was.
“Oh,” Miss Hisselpenny gasped. “I certainly do have an opinion about Mr. Tunstell. He is a brave and kindly gentleman in every way.”
Felicity gave Ivy an assessing look. “And now here I sit, Miss Hisselpenny, thinking it is you who is probably overly familiar with the gentleman in question.”
Ivy blushed as red as her hat.
Alexia cleared her throat. Ivy should not have been so bold as to reveal her feelings openly to one such as Felicity, but Felicity was behaving like a veritable harpy. If this was a window into her behavior of late, no wonder Mrs. Loontwill wanted her out of the house.
“Stop it, both of you.”
Miss Hisselpenny turned big, beseeching eyes upon her friend. “Alexia, are you certain you cannot see your way to allowing me to accompany you as well? I have never been in a dirigible, and I should so very much like to see Scotland.”
In truth, Ivy was vastly afraid of floating and had never before showed any interest in geography outside of London. Even inside London, her geographic concerns centered heavily on Bond Street and Oxford Circus, for obvious pecuniary reasons. Alexia Maccon would have to be a fool not to realize that Ivy’s interest lay in Tunstell’s presence.
“Only if you believe your mother and your fiancé can spare you,” said Lady Maccon, emphasizing that last in the hopes that it might remind Ivy of her prior commitment and force her to see reason.
Miss Hisselpenny’s eyes shone. “Oh, thank you, Alexia!”
And there went the reason. Felicity looked as though she had just been forced to swallow a live eel.
Lady Maccon sighed. Well, if she must have Felicity as companion, she could do worse than to have Miss Hisselpenny along as well. “Oh dear,” she said. “Am I suddenly organizing the Lady’s Dirigible Invitational?”
Felicity gave her an inscrutable look and Ivy beamed.
“I shall just head back to town to obtain Mama’s permission and to pack. What time do we float?”
Lady Maccon told her. And Ivy was off and out the front door, never having told Alexia why she had jaunted all the way out to Woolsey Castle in the first place.
“I shudder to think what that woman will choose as headgear for floating,” said Felicity.
CHAPTER SIX
The Lady’s Dirigible Invitational
Alexia could see it all in the society papers:
Lady Maccon boarded the Giffard Long-Distance Airship, Standard Passenger Class Transport Model, accompanied by an unusually large entourage. She was followed up the gangplank by her sister, Felicity Loontwill, dressed in a pink traveling dress with white ruffled sleeves, and Miss Ivy Hisselpenny, in a yellow carriage dress with matching hat. The hat had an excessive veil, such as those sported by adventurers entering bug-infested jungles, but otherwise the two young ladies made for perfectly appropriate companions. The party was outfitted with the latest in air-travel goggles, earmuffs, and several other fashionable mechanical accessories designed to facilitate the most pleasant of dirigible experiences.