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Chapter 1

SOPHIE’S SOCIETY SPLASH

London

June 1833

If only the Countess of Liverpool hadn’t been such an ads would have turned out differently

Perhaps no one would have witnessed the events of the thirteenth of June, the final, legendary garden party of the 1833 season Perhaps London would have happily packed itself into myriad coaches that would have spread like beetles across the British countryside into summer idyll

Perhaps

But one year earlier, the Countess of Liverpool had received a gift of a half-dozen pretty orange-and-white fish that were said to be direct descendants of those beloved of the Shogun of Japan Sophie thought the tale wholly unbelievable--Japan being notoriously insulated froly proud of her pets, caring for the things with near-fanatical passion Six had turned into two dozen, and the overlarge bowl in which the creatures were delivered had been traded for a container that could only be described as pondlike

The fish had sparked the countess’s iination however, and the Liverpool Summer Soiree was oddly China-the even less about China than she did of Japan Indeed, when Lady Liverpool had greeted thee diaphanous silk clearly intended to evoke her prized fish, she’d explained the disconnect "No one knows a thing about Japan, you see It’s terribly private, which makes for no fun when it comes to a theme And China is so very closeit’s practically the same"

When Sophie had told the Countess that it was, in fact, not the sahter and waved one arm replete with silk fins "Don’t fret, Lady Sophie, China has fish as well, I’norant words, but received no acknowledgement For weeks, she’d insisted that China and Japan were not one in the same but no one had been inclined to listen--her rateful for the invitation to such an elaborate affair The Talbot sisters, after all, were exceptional at being elaborate

They, along with the rest of the aristocracy, had turned out in an array of reds and golds, brocades each eous hats that had no doubt kept the ht and day since the invitations had arrived

Sophie, however, had resisted her mother’s insistence that she participate in the farce and, to her family’s dismay, arrived in ordinary pale yellow

And so it was that on that lovely day in the middle of June, Lady Liverpool took pity on poor, uninteresting Sophie--the Talbot daughter as neither the prettiest, nor the , nor the one who played the best pianoforte--and suggested that the young fish-out-of-water ht like to visit with fish in their proper environrateful to exit the party of tittering aristocrats and their coaze--one that carefully avoided her and her family There was, after all, never a stare so blatant as the one that carefully evaded its object This was particularly true when the objects in question were so i ladies Talbot since they’d had their cos out--five in four years--each less welco fewer and fewer as the years progressed

Sophie had always rather wished that her hters Society darlings, but that would never happen As a consequence, Sophie was here, alternately hiding in the topiary of the Liverpool estate and pretending not to hear the insults so regularly whispered about her sisters that they were barely whispered anymore