You Must Remember This

Chapter One: A Most Unwelcome Surprise

December 20th, 1814

A very light snow was falling outside the drawing room window. Penelope's eyes followed flake after flake hopefully, only to see them melting as soon as they reached the pavement, the bushes, or the fences. Pity, that. Perhaps it would lay better in the night and she might wake up to a snow-covered street in the morning. It wouldn't solve her problems, not even one, but it would be such a lovely sight.

"Why must you always sit there, Penelope?"

"Why not? I'm surely in no danger of getting freckles in winter."

"Still, there's no reason to make a spectacle of yourself in the window."

"I'm only trying to attract suitors, Mama," she droned. "My plan is that one will stride down the street, catch sight of me, and fall madly in love."

"I would be much happier to hear that if I thought it were true," Portia Featherington grunted, frowning at her embroidery square. "You've put no effort in at any of the parties, even as little as you attend."

"Perhaps I have and you've not been paying attention. You are ever with Prudence, not me. Besides, there have not been enough parties to censure me by." The winter season was never as well-attended as in the spring and summer. Lady Whistledown barely published once a week now, as there was so very little to say.

"That shall change soon enough with Parliament in session."

"They've been in session since November. I don't see things changing now." It's not as if she was allowed, as a woman, to even observe in the public galleries, so even that sort of gossip was closed to her.

"Of course they will. It's nearly Christmas. There are many eligible young men — and less young men that are still more than acceptable — staying in town and looking for frivolity."

"Mother, it's five days to Christmas. As we've attended hardly any parties—"

"You've attended hardly any parties," Prudence said, hovering by the fire and lifting her skirt quite high in the back. It's a wonder that her mother said nothing about that behavior while acting as if Penelope, sitting fully clothed by the window, was somehow the bigger spectacle. "How many times have you begged off now?"

"I was... unwell," Penelope finished, wondering if she should try to contrive a cough.

Her mother cut in before she could, sighing, "Yes, we've all heard of your maladies, your fits of fatigue, dizziness, headaches, colds, your courses — by some miracle — coming twice in a month. I'm certain you shall be taken down by smallpox soon enough."

Penelope now wondered if one could be plagued with a mild case of smallpox, perhaps for three days, nothing so alarming as to summon a doctor. Then again, didn't it involve blisters? Those would be very hard to manufacture. Perhaps typhoid? She had a new ink set and could very easily speckle herself with a purple rash. The fever might be trickier. Perhaps some hot water and a cloth...

"What are you staring at anyhow?" Her sister demanded, having abandoned her place by the fire to crowd Penelope on the window seat.

"If you must know, I'm looking at the snow and wishing it would stop melting. If it's going to be cold and miserable, can't it at least be pretty and covered in glittering white?" Penelope turned to her mother, inspired. "Mama, can we not go to Warwick Lodge for Christmas? There's sure to be some lovely snow there."

"Snow is wet and cold," Prudence said, losing interest and going back to the fire. "I so detest being soggy."

"It's out of the question anyhow," her mother supplied. "How could we staff or even heat that cavernous place, or repair the roof? So unless you wish to be huddled in one room with buckets collecting dripping water, perhaps while facing a horde of angry tenants, or with my mother in Cornwall dining on fish-head pie not even one mile from the docks, I think we are all better off here."