Everyone knew about Dotty's huge dowry. Hugh and Nick had not been able to keep it completely secret, and it was the kind of thing that got around very quickly. Now it was the talk of London. Hugh guessed it was being discussed this very moment at half the tables at least.
Looking around, he caught the eye of one guest who was not happy--indeed, she wore a miserable, cheated look, like a eunuch at an orgy: Aunt Augusta.
"London society has degenerated completely," Augusta said to Colonel Mudeford.
"I fear you may be right, Lady Whitehaven," he murmured politely.
"Breeding counts for nothing anymore," she went on. "Jews are admitted everywhere."
"Quite so."
"I was the first countess of Whitehaven, but the Pilasters were a distinguished family for a century before being honored with a title; whereas today a man whose father was a navvy can get a peerage simply because he made a fortune selling sausages."
"Indeed." Colonel Mudeford turned to the woman on his other side and said: "Mrs. Telston, may I hand you some more red-currant sauce?"
Augusta lost interest in him. She was seething at the spectacle she had been forced to attend. Hugh Pilaster, son of bankrupt Tobias, giving Chateau Margaux to three hundred guests; Lydia Pilaster, widow of Tobias, sitting next to the duke of Norwich; Dorothy Pilaster, daughter of Tobias, married to Viscount Ipswich with the biggest dowry anyone had ever heard of. Whereas her son, dear Teddy, the offspring of the great Joseph Pilaster, had been summarily dismissed as Senior Partner and was soon to have his marriage annulled.
There were no rules anymore! Anyone could enter society. As if to prove the point she caught sight of the greatest parvenu of them all: Mrs. Solly Greenbourne, formerly Maisie Robinson. It was amazing that Hugh had the gall to invite her, a woman whose whole life had been scandal. First she had been practically a prostitute, then she had married the richest Jew in London, and now she ran a hospital where women who were no better than herself could give birth to their bastards. But there she was, sitting at the next table in a dress the color of a new copper penny, chatting earnestly to the governor of the Bank of England. She was probably talking about unmarried mothers. And he was listening!
