Page 39 of It's All About the Duke
Marlena felt her whole body shake. “What?” Had she and Eugenia been found out? Had someone finally figured out they were responsible forMiss Truth’s Scandal Sheet?
There was no answer forthcoming so Marlena tried again. “Was she arrested? Was she struck by a carriage? Did she get hit on the head with something? Veronica, you must stop crying, sit up, and tell me. Where is Eugenia?”
Slowly, Veronica quieted and rose to a sitting position, shaking her head, sniffing, and wiping her big, pale-blue eyes. “No, she’s fine I’m sure. It’s Mr. Portington who’s not.”
Confused, Marlena shook her head. “But I don’t understand. When I asked you if something had happened to Eugenia you nodded. So what is this about? Is Mr. Portington hurt? I can’t help you if you don’t give me details about what is wrong.”
She sniffed again. “Mr. Portington bought some eggs.”
Heaven give me patience!
Marlena struggled to hold her tongue. She’d long known that Veronica was emotionally delicate, predisposed to spells of crying, to having days when she wouldn’t eat or get out of bed, but it was ridiculous to be this upset over something as simple and everyday as buying eggs.
And Marlena wanted to tell her that.
But she couldn’t. Certainly not in Veronica’s current state anyway.
Giving herself a few seconds to change her frame of mind from wanting to tell Veronica how silly she was being to cry over this and throw herself into a fit of despair, Marlena rose from her knees. Spouting unkind things wouldn’t help her friend feel better and could very well make her state of mind worse.
With a silent sigh, Marlena seated herself on the settee beside her distraught neighbor, and asked, “Why would his buying food of any kind disturb you so badly?”
“Because they’re Megalosaurus eggs!” she exclaimed, and then covered her face with her hands and started wailing again.
Marlena wasn’t familiar with that word but undoubtedly it was some new type of rooster, chicken, or perhaps a bird that Mr. Portington had heard about. Threatening her friend was the last thing she wanted to do, but at this point, she had to be firm.
“Stop crying please, Veronica, or I’ll have to leave the room until you get control of yourself.”
At that, Veronica dried her eyes, dropped her hands into her lap, and quieted to sniffles again.
“Now, I don’t know what you mean by these Megalo—”
“Megalosaurus eggs,” she responded softly, sniffing into a handkerchief she pulled from beneath her long sleeve.
“Yes. Why is that so bad?”
Veronica kept her gaze down on her hands resting in her lap. “Mr. Portington took the money I was to pay the modiste for Eugenia’s gowns, gloves, capes.” She twisted her fingers together. “All the clothing she needed for the Season. And he bought the eggs with them.”
Marlena still didn’t see why this was so disconcertingto her friend. There was quite a bit of difference in the price of a few eggs and a few gowns. He couldn’t have possibly used all the money Eugenia’s father had set aside for her Season.
“What exactly is a Megalosaurus?” Marlena asked.
“A giant reptile that lived millions of years ago. Bigger than an elephant and taller than a giraffe.”
Speechless for a few seconds, Marlena could do nothing but blink. Rapidly. “I’ve read about large bones and fossils of these bones being discovered in quarries and other places around England and throughout the world, but not the creature’s eggs. I haven’t ever heard of the wordMegalosaurusbefore.”
“One of Mr. Portington’s friends, Mr. William Buckland, said the reptile hasn’t been officially named by the scientific community yet, but it means ‘great lizard.’ He came up with it and hopes they’ll approve the name he’s chosen before the end of the year. Soon anyway. He found the bones but not the eggs. It was a different friend who found those and talked Mr. Portington into buying them, assuring him they are indeed fossilized Megalosaurus eggs from one of these giant creatures. He said that once it has been named and cataloged as such by the Royal Society of Paleontology, the value of the eggs will increase tenfold or more.”
Marlena didn’t know enough about this subject to even talk about it. She did know Mr. Portington had purchased some strange things and all of them were sitting around his house. There was the purported fossil of the extinct and legendary dodo bird, which had cost him a large sum a year or two ago. One of his prized possessions was a burial cloth he claimed came from the tomb of an Egyptian soldier that dated from the times of Ramses II, and there was a tusk from a long-extinct animal that looked very much like an elephant tusk to Marlena.
“What do the eggs look like?” she asked Veronica.
“Dark-gray lumps of coal. They’re about the size of my hands cupped together. They are packed tightly in what looks like a fossilized breadbasket.”
“Oh,” Marlena said, not knowing what else to say about that for now.
She would have to do some reading about this subject before she could really understand what Veronica was talking about. However, that wouldn’t help with the fact that Mr. Portington had used the money Eugenia’s father set aside long ago for her debut.
Marlena knew Mr. Portington had managed to spend all the money left to Veronica by her parents and now he’d obviously started on Eugenia’s. Veronica had lamented to him about his gross expenditures on fossils and artifacts hunts for years to no avail. It was as if he were deaf. Either his eyes and nose were in an article or book about fossils, he was looking at one through a magnifying glass, or he was corresponding by letter with someone about them.
