I knew this about these women because, well, I had invented them. The six pairs of eyes studying my every move belonged to six of my favorite heroines: Pandora Effington Wells (Countess of Trent); Gillian Effington Marley Shelton (Countess of Shelbrooke); Marianne Shelton Effington (Marchioness of Helmsley); Jocelyn Shelton Beaumont (Viscountess Beaumont); their sister Rebecca; and Marianne’s daughter, Elizabeth Effington Langley (Lady Collingsworth). “Favorite” being somewhat inaccurate, because I like every heroine I’ve ever written.
Of course I’d never had six of them staring at me before.
“So,” I said again with a short little laugh. You know, one of those odd, high-pitched sounds that’s more like embarrassment, even panic, than anything close to amusement.
“May I?” Marianne Effington smiled in a polite manner, gently but firmly pried the teapot from my grasp, and proceeded to fill the cups of the other ladies with all the skill and grace of the perfect Regency heroine. “You don’t mind do you?”
“Not at all. Works for me.” I smiled gratefully, although I did mind a little. It was hard not to. After all, I was a twenty-first-century woman. I had mastered computers, programming a VCR (still working on the DVD recorder), and parallel parking. It grated that I could be undone by something as simple as pouring tea.
“Perhaps,” Jocelyn craned her neck and peered around me, “if your servants were about…”
“Oh, I don’t have servants,” I said, and immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut. All the ladies stared at me in wide-eyed shock. “Well,” I gestured feebly, “it’s a small house.” At least it was small in comparison to Effington Hall or Shelbrooke Manor or Beaumont Abbey.
Gillian stared. “Do you mean to say there is no butler? No footmen?”
“No underfootmen? No house keeper?” Pandora’s eyes widened. “No maids?”
“Are you trying to tell us that you actually clean your house yourself?” Elizabeth gestured at the room. “Floors and windows and such?”
“Of course.” I shrugged as if it were no big deal and hoped none of them would notice that my windows and floors and such hadn’t been seriously cleaned in a very long time, as evidenced by the unrepentant dust bunnies lingering in the corners of the living room.
A voice in the back of my mind asked why, if I was inviting imaginary people for tea in the first place, didn’t I simply invent make-believe servants to clean the house and serve the tea. Or better yet, why didn’t I just make up a fantasy mansion in the very best part of London and, while I was at it, might as well do something about those extra pounds—
I firmly squelched the voice and refused to listen to another word. For one thing, I already had my hands too full with my imaginary guests to listen to a voice that only existed in my head. That would be really crazy. And for another, somehow it didn’t seem fair to make up servants and a different house, not to mention that weight business. The whole idea of this tea was to invite some of my heroines to visit my world. After all, I lived in theirs periodically.
“Surely you have a cook though?” Rebecca said faintly, as if the very thought of not having a cook was too much to bear.
“I wouldn’t wager on it.” Pandora glanced at the cakes and tarts I had bought at a very frou-frou bakery. “Although those do look tasty.”
“Thank you.” I grinned. “I picked them out myself.”
“And an excellent choice.” Gillian delicately wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth and cast me an affectionate smile. “I, for one, think it’s quite lovely for you to have invited us. I haven’t done anything even remotely exciting in a very long time.”
“It’s an adventure I would say.” Marianne beamed. “Completely unexpected and therefore quite grand.”
“Grand?” Jocelyn drew her brows together. “I’m not at all sure I’d call it grand.” She leaned toward her older sister and spoke under her breath. “She has no servants.”
“Nonetheless, I find it all most exhilarating,” Marianne said firmly.
Gillian nodded. “As do I.”
“I don’t know.” Becky shook her head. “I feel rather vague and indecisive about it all myself.”
Jocelyn studied her. “You do look rather odd. Not pale so much as—”
“Indistinct. No, transparent.” Elizabeth nodded. “Yes that’s it. Transparent. As if one could see right through you.”
Pandora winced. “I hadn’t wanted to mention it; it seemed rather rude. But, well, now that it’s been said aloud.” She cast Rebecca a sympathetic glance. “I must admit I can see right through her.”
“Oh dear,” Rebecca murmured. “I don’t feel transparent, but somehow I can’t quite decide.”
Jocelyn huffed and glared at me. “This is all your fault you know.”
“Mine?” I gasped indignantly. “How is this my fault?”
Marianne looked at me as if I had an IQ too low to support life. “You haven’t, oh, done anything with her, you know. She hasn’t been fleshed out, as it were.”
“She’s little more than an outline.” Gillian thought for a moment. “Waiting for color, definition, that sort of thing.”
Elizabeth stared in admiration. “That’s very good.”
“It’s simply what comes of being married to an artist,” Gillian said in a knowing manner. “One finds oneself looking at all sorts of things in an entirely different way.”
“Please, what ever you do, don’t get her started on the effects of light at various times of the year.” Pandora grimaced.
“Light is scarcely an issue, we’re discussing Rebecca,” Marianne said firmly. “Besides, the light is shining right through her.”
I looked from one woman to the next. “I’m really sorry about this.” I nodded toward the rapidly fading Rebecca. “But I don’t get it. How is this my fault?”
“Oh for goodness’ sakes.” Jocelyn rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “It’s your fault because you haven’t written her story yet.”
“She has no substance. No texture. No solidity.” Marianne rested her hand on the ever more translucent hand of her youngest sister. “She’s never been more than a minor character.”
“She’s popped up in three books.” I tried not to sound defensive.
“Four,” Rebecca said faintly.
“Are you sure?” I thought for a moment. They were right. But of course they would be. They were usually right. I had written them that way. “Sorry, you’re right. Three as a teenager and one as an adult.”
“A happily married adult with children of her own, as I recall.” Gillian’s cool gaze pinned mine, and I realized she was the daughter of a duke. I had written her well. “Although you’ve never mentioned who she married.”
“I’m not feeling at all well,” Rebecca murmured.
“But what ever you do”—Pandora’s gaze narrowed—“do not marry her to a man named Charles.”
“We all know what happens when you name a man Charles.” Marianne sipped her tea in a resigned manner.
Gillian and Elizabeth traded glances.
I probably should have expected this. Whenever I need a dead husband in a book I usually name him Charles because my husband’s name is Charles. It’s a joke. Really. Admittedly, sometimes Charles dies slowly and with a great deal of pain, but even the real-life Charles sees the humor in it—most of the time. I drew a deep breath. “My husband thinks it’s funny.”
“My first husband,” Gillian began, “my dead first husband wouldn’t think it was the least bit amusing. Knowing his fate was sealed simply because of his name.”
“Nor would mine,” Elizabeth added.
“Although he’d be just as dead if she had called him Ralph or Edwin.” Jocelyn nodded in my direction. “If it suited her purposes to have him dead, he’d be dead. She’d write him that way.” Her gaze met mine and she grinned. “And I, for one, rather like your Charles joke.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She leaned toward me. “I daresay it keeps your husband on
his toes.”
I choked back a laugh. “Yeah, it’s kind of fun.”
Marianne cleared her throat and nodded toward Rebecca. “About Rebecca.”
“Perhaps I should go.” Rebecca’s voice had little more substance than her appearance.
Marianne glanced down at her hand. A minute ago it had rested on top of Rebecca’s. Now it went through her sister’s hand. It was very creepy, especially for afternoon tea. “That might be best, dear.”
Rebecca sighed, forced a brave, if vague, smile and silently faded away.
It was more than a little unnerving, even for me.
“That was certainly odd,” Gillian said under her breath.
“Still, it’s not as if we aren’t just as imaginary as Rebecca. Even if we’re not quite as,” Jocelyn grimaced, “transparent.”
“True enough, I suppose.” Pandora sighed. “We are simply products of a fertile imagination.”
“Or not,” Gillian murmured.
All eyes turned pointedly toward the nowempty spot on the sofa, where not even a dent in the cushions indicated where Rebecca had been.
I wondered it if was too early in the day for a Cosmopolitan. I’d bet my guests would love Cosmos. Or a lemon drop. Or one of those mango martinis…
“As odd as that was, it cannot be compared with being at tea with your mother and your aunts and realizing at this very moment”—Elizabeth wrinkled her nose—“they are younger than you are.”
“I thought that might be a problem,” I said more to myself than to them. But hey, what was I supposed to do? I had invited each heroine at the point where I knew her best, which was the end of what ever book was about her. Unfortunately, that meant that a twenty-one-year-old Marianne was sitting in my living room beside her twenty-nine-year-old daughter.
“That is awkward,” Gillian said sympathetically, but you could tell she enjoyed being thirty again.
“I quite like it.” Marianne beamed at her daughter.
“What was that you said earlier?” Jocelyn thought for a moment. “Ah yes, ‘works for me.’”
The other women laughed, although Elizabeth was definitely less amused than my other guests. But laughter eased what ever tension there might have been, and the gathering broke into animated conversation. They spoke to one another the way sisters or friends did who hadn’t seen each other for a while. I wondered what happened in their worlds when I wasn’t writing about them. Did it continue as I had set it up? Were there huge changes and events, triumphs and tragedies, in their lives that I would never know anything about because they weren’t pertinent to the next book? Or did everything stop? Did they just stand still waiting to be resurrected for another book in which they’d be thirty years older?
Interesting thought. A little weird but interesting. Maybe we could talk about that.
I looked expectantly at my little group of chattering heroines. I hated to interrupt, but this was my tea party and I had vacuumed and bought tarts and everything. I cleared my throat.
No one noticed.
“Excuse me,” I said politely.
With an absent glance, Marianne refilled my cup and continued talking to Pandora. Other than that, they ignored me.
“Pardon me,” I said once more with more force.
Again, it was as if I didn’t exist. If it wasn’t so annoying it would have been pretty ironic.
“Hey! Ladies! Yo!” I glared at the assembly. “I didn’t invite you all here so that you could chat amongst yourselves. This isn’t what I had in mind.”
Pandora raised a brow. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly. I just thought it would be…fun. You know, to hang out together.”
“Hang out?” Gillian’s brows drew together in confusion.
“Spend time together.” I really had to watch my language. I met the gaze of each woman in turn. “In one way or another, each of you represents the best of me and the worst of me. Some of you have the characteristics of my closest friends. Good”—I met Jocelyn’s gaze—“and bad.”
Jocelyn’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you look at me?”
I ignored her. It felt good. “In many ways, each and every one of you is who I would like to be. I know you better than I know my best friends and I want to talk to you. Not watch you talk to one another.”
“Of course you don’t.” Marianne reached over and patted my hand. “We’ve been horribly rude. Do accept our apologies.”
“No problem,” I muttered. It was hard to stay annoyed at them. They were so charmingly written.
“Now then,” Pandora said brightly. “What shall we talk about?”
“Family? Friends? The latest fashions?” Elizabeth frowned. “Although it might be somewhat difficult to agree on what constitutes latest.”
“We could talk about art or literature or politics,” Gillian suggested.
“Or men,” Jocelyn said casually.
“Men?” I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Who knew what they might say? On second thought, it probably wasn’t a bad idea.
“Excellent idea.” Marianne beamed. “Are we agreed then?”
“Men it is.” Gillian grinned.
Pandora laughed. “Men.”
Elizabeth hesitated then sighed. “Men.”
Everyone looked at me as if they expected me to lead the discussion. Like I was a counselor and they were waiting for group therapy. Please. In spite of their imaginary nature they were probably far more stable than I was at the moment.
“Okay then. The topic of discussion,” I braced myself, “is men.”
To be continued…
About the Author
VICTORIA ALEXANDER was an award-winning television reporter until she discovered fiction was much more fun than real life. She turned to writing full time and has never looked back.
Victoria grew up traveling the country as an Air Force brat and is now settled in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, two teenaged children, and a bearded collie named Sam. She firmly believes housework is a four-letter word, there are no calories in anything eaten standing up, procrastination is an art form, and it’s never too soon to panic.
And she loves getting mail that doesn’t require a return payment. Write to her at P.O. Box 31544, Omaha, NE 68131.
www.eclectics.com/victoria
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By Victoria Alexander
A LITTLE BIT WICKED
LET IT BE LOVE
WHEN WE MEET AGAIN
A VISIT FROM SIR NICHOLAS
THE PURSUIT OF MARRIAGE
THE LADY IN QUESTION
LOVE WITH THE PROPER HUSBAND
HER HIGHNESS, MY WIFE
THE PRINCE'S BRIDE
THE MARRIAGE LESSON
THE HUSBAND LIST
THE WEDDING BARGAIN
Coming Soon
WHAT A LADY WANTS
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A LITTLE BIT WICKED. Copyright © 2007 by Cheryl Griffin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader December 2006 ISBN 978-0-06-121417-2
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