“Dimity,” objected Agatha, “should you be getting private correspondences from an unattached gentleman friend?”
“No, but this is the first. I didn’t write to him! And it can’t be that bad; our families are acquainted.”
Agatha was properly concerned. “Has he permission to court you?” Agatha Woosmoss was small, round, and redheaded, with a freckled face that wore a perpetual expression of distressed confusion, not unlike that of a damp cat.
Dimity flushed even redder. “No, but I’m certain he would.”
Sidheag was reading the hastily scrawled note. “It’s worse than simply a letter. He wants to meet with you, in private and secretly!”
“Dimity!” Sophronia said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dimity was truculent. “Because I knew you’d be all Sophroniaish about it. That’s why. It’s not that bad, is it? He probably only wants to chat a bit about the weather or something.”
Sidheag, still in possession of the shocking missive, said, “Since it says here that he intends to come to you on this airship, it can’t be that banal.” Sidheag Maccon was an overly tall young woman, almost of an age with Sophronia. She had a long, proud face and a general attitude of indifference to both manners and dress that drove their teachers to distraction.
Sophronia was having none of it. “Dimity, he’d have to steal an airdinghy and then try to find us. I’ve no idea where we are over Dartmoor, do you? I’m sure he doesn’t. Besides, I don’t think Bunson’s has airdinghies. The whole idea is foolhardy.”
Dimity liked Lord Dingleproops rather more than she ought and was disposed to think well of him. “It must be important, then, mustn’t it? Perhaps it’s a declaration!”
“Oh, Dimity, really!” said Agatha.
Sophronia added, “You’re only just fourteen, and he’s what, sixteen?”
Dimity protested, “My birthday was weeks ago!”
Sidheag, the blunt one, said, “He isn’t even holding yet. He can’t declare without his parents’ permission.” Sidheag could be quite crass, the result of having been raised by men, or Scots, or soldiers, or werewolves, or all four. Since she was also Lady Kingair, her crassness would have been an accepted eccentricity—in a much older aristocrat. In a fourteen-year-old, such vulgarity was as odd and uncomfortable as last season’s hat.
Sophronia took the missive out of Sidheag’s hand and examined it. It under the Earl of Dingleproops’s heading, which gave it a certain weight. But she did wonder what the son was doing with his father’s stationery. Probably using it to write angry letters to poor tradesmen in his father’s name and to torture decent young ladies like Dimity.
“He wants to meet with you on the back squeak deck in a week and a half?”
Dimity nodded. “Isn’t that romantic?”
Agatha protested. “You’re not going?”
“Of course I’m going! He will have come all this way.”
“It’ll all end in tears,” foretold Sidheag morosely.
Sophronia said nothing further; Dimity could be awful stubborn. Privately, Sophronia vowed to follow Dimity. Lord Dingleproops was up to something.