My Particular Friend footnotes: The Poison Pen Affair 9
Beginning with Partial Justice:
‘Have you? That is rather bold of you,’ Charlotte said. I lay on the sopha, listening to them talk and feeling pains in my body that had developed overnight.
sopha: sofa
‘Yes, well, it was my duty. I couched it in the best terms of course, but it was an unpleasant task. The baron, I understand, is an old man and frail, but there is nothing that might stop his son’s bad behaviour other than his father’s displeasure. As the son of a baron, attaining justice will not be an easy thing, and unless Miss Winslowe or Miss Woodsen step forward …’
As the son of a baron and holding no title in his own right, Mr Hickham could not ask to be tried in the House of Lords, and beside such trials were far less common than fiction would have us believe. But it would still understandably be difficult to prosecute such a claim against Mr Hickham.
tête-à-tête: a private conversation between two people