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Lady Farrell might support.

Chapter 4

    C hastity bent back her father's newspaper and kissed him on the cheek when she entered the breakfast room on Wednesday morning. “Good morning, Father.”
    “Good morning, my dear,” he said, returning his newspaper fastidiously to its creases.
    “I want to ask you a favor,” she said, pouring coffee into her cup. “It's a very big favor, actually, so you'll have to think about it before you answer.”
    Lord Duncan regarded his youngest daughter uneasily. “Not sure what you mean.”
    “No, I haven't explained it yet,” she said, giving him a quick smile as she reached for the toast rack. “Could you pass the marmalade?”
    He pushed the silver pot across to her and looked down at his own plate of cooling eggs with obvious distaste.
    “You can't waste those,” Chastity said gravely. “We can only afford a dozen eggs a week. There must be at least two there.”
    Her father shot her a sharp and startled look, then saw her teasing smile. “It's no laughing matter,” he declared, picking up his fork again. But Chastity had seen just the glimmer of reluctant amusement in his eye and it gave her some encouragement. “If you and your sisters had kept me apprised of the situation in the first place, we wouldn't find ourselves in this absurd position now.” It was a statement repeated so often, it had become something of a mantra.
    “There's nothing absurd about it, Father,” Chastity said, spreading butter lavishly on her toast. “We have plenty of money to live quite well, particularly now that Con and Prue are no longer a household expense.” She gave a heavy sigh, shaking her head. “You can have no idea how expensive
they
were to keep.”
    “I do wish you wouldn't talk nonsense at the breakfast table,” Lord Duncan said, burying his nose once more in the newspaper.
    Chastity smiled to herself and ate her toast, waiting. She didn't have long to wait. Her father suddenly peered at her around the side of the paper. “Did you say something about a favor?”
    “Yes,” she said. “It's Wednesday.” She took a second piece of toast.
    He glanced at the front page of his newspaper as if to reassure himself of that fact. “It is. And what of it?”
    “It's the day for my At Home,” she explained. “Wednesdays have always been At Home days. It was Mother's day too.”
    He was looking puzzled. “I remember. Am I being obtuse?”
    “No, not at all. It's just that I would like it if you would be there this afternoon. Con and Prue will come, of course.”
    He shook his head. “Not my kind of thing, Chastity. You know that.”
    “Yes, that's why I said it was a big favor,” she said, refilling his coffee cup. “I need you to help me out with someone. A widow, from Italy. She doesn't know anyone in London, and she's . . . how shall I put it . . . she's more in your age group than ours. You would only need to stay for about ten minutes, just to drink a cup of tea with her.”
    “Tea!”
her father expostulated. “You expect me to drink tea with some foreign woman on a perfectly good Wednesday afternoon?”
    “For a start, she's not foreign,” Chastity said. “She's as English as you or I, but she was married to an Italian. And if you don't want to drink tea, there's always whisky or sherry. And in the last place, what else were you intending to do on a perfectly good Wednesday afternoon?” Now there was a distinct challenge in the hazel eyes and in her lightly teasing tone.
    “Making small talk with a roomful of insipid women is not my idea of a pleasant afternoon,” her father said, vigorously turning the page of the newspaper and folding it back with a crackle.
    Chastity propped her chin on her hand and regarded him steadily. After a minute he looked around the paper and said with resignation, “No more than ten minutes.”
    “Thank you, Father, you're a sweetheart,” she said. “I promise it won't be that bad. Nothing can be too bad for only ten minutes.