Page 7 of Miss Pauline’s Perfect Present (Double-Dilemma #3)
A ugusta found almost every position uncomfortable.
Standing hurt. Sitting hurt. Lying down was worst of all.
All normal, the doctor had said. It was only to be expected when one was eight months along.
Still, she couldn’t help thinking that much of her perception of discomfort arose from the enforced idleness everyone seemed to think necessary.
If she had work to occupy her, she wouldn’t notice every little annoying pain.
But everyone—from her husband to the dowager to all the servants in Lanyon house—did their best to ensure that she did nothing.
If she so much as bent over to pick up a handkerchief she dropped, at least two footmen would rush out from who knew where and a chair would miraculously appear near to hand, as if the negligible exercise must have exhausted her.
They expected her to spend all day lying upon a sofa, a vinaigrette clutched in her hand.
She could never make herself behave that way.
She was a countess now, but she was still Augusta, the lady who had fled an abhorrent marriage to take her chances as a seamstress in London.
In her brief employ at Madame Noelle’s she’d become accustomed to hard physical work, to hours bent over a needle placing tiny stitches in fine silk—and she’d found it perversely pleasurable.
Of course, she was not so naive as to be unaware that pleasure in such work arose largely because she had chosen it rather than having it forced upon her.
Still, she missed it. The work had been a way to measure the value of each day.
So many bodices sewn, sleeves set, petticoats trimmed, flounces added.
Although she no longer spent hours sewing, she’d found other ways to be useful since her marriage nearly two years ago.
She took much more of a role in Madame Pauline’s than most people thought.
The judgmental ton assumed her to be simply a lofty designer who sent her sketches to the modiste to have them constructed by menials.
In fact, Augusta spent a few hours in the workrooms whenever she could, telling her husband that she’d gone shopping or to visit Lady Mariana—who she knew would never betray her secret.
Once she reached the bustling workshop, she delighted in looking over the fine craftsmanship of the seamstresses Pauline had employed, making suggestions, helping in small ways.
Augusta had discovered long before she knew she was with child that she couldn’t live the usual life of a noblewoman of the ton.
George understood that. He was the same in his way.
He also labored for his causes, for the things he was passionate about.
And in support of her, he gave of his effort and energy for her business in any way he could.
In turn, she interested herself in his pursuits, making some of the clothes for the disabled children he housed and fed—above and beyond those produced in the workrooms of Madame Pauline’s.
Augusta paced restlessly around her bedchamber, as she had every night for the last three nights. George had been sleeping in his own room at her request—not because she didn’t want his company, but because she didn’t want her tossing and turning to keep him awake.
He’d protested, of course. “I had something to do with this, you know!” he’d said as he wrapped his arms around her from behind and placed his hands gently on her bulging abdomen.
Augusta had turned her face to the side and closed her eyes, leaning her head back to nestle next to his cheek.
The warmth of his breath always soothed her.
But then, a moment later that rascally infant started squirming around, getting its foot stuck up under her ribs and kicking so that it made her shriek.
“Darling! Are you all right?” George had said.
“Of course! I think it must be a boy, eager to come out and start running and playing.”
Such jokes only mollified Bridlington temporarily.
The larger she got, the worse it was. Lately, every time she paused in the middle of doing or saying something because of some pain that was sharper than usual the earl’s face blanched in panic until she was able to assure him that no, the baby was not about to come. These were just aches to be expected.
Of course, she knew where his true anxiety lay. He was mortally afraid that a child of his would be born with a clubfoot. Augusta had spent many hours assuring him that this was unlikely, and that if it turned out to be the case they would deal with it much more humanely than his father had.
The muscles in her belly squeezed uncomfortably. I can’t stay here any longer. I have to act, Augusta thought with a look at the clock on the mantel. Near midnight. And bitter cold outside. But if she didn’t do something, she would lose her mind.
Of course, she’d have to take someone with her.
She was walking toward the door to her dressing room when it opened from the other side and Phyllida Carp, her dresser, bustled into her room.
Phyllida, whom Augusta had known as Miss Carp at Madame Noelle’s, had lost her position when her hands became too arthritic to do the fine sewing required by the modiste.
She therefore wasn’t suited to work at Madame Pauline’s either.
Rough-edged though she was, she did have an unerring eye for fashion and took eagerly to the role of dresser Augusta offered her.
Although when Augusta had first come from Devonshire to work at Madame Noelle’s and Miss Carp had greeted her with a certain amount of disdain, she soon recognized the true qualities of the penniless baronet’s daughter.
She saw that Augusta had real skill, and more importantly, an eye.
“My Lady, I ‘eard you walkin’ up and down like a restless spirit, and I thought, I did, ‘Her La-ship needs a bit of air to settle her,’ so I says to myself, Miss Carp, you just go and get her bundled up warm and yerself too and go out and take a turn around the square.” As she spoke, she fetched Augusta’s warmest cloak from the armoire as well as her boots and a long, knitted muffler.
Once her mistress was suitably attired, she fetched her own pelisse and hat.
“Sweet Phyllida, you know me so well,” Augusta said, laying a hand on the elderly lady’s arm. “I hate to make you go out so late when it’s so cold!”
“Hush M’Lady. A bit o’ cold won’t do me no harm.”
Augusta shook her head. “You can’t fool me. I know you hate it. But I’d be so grateful. We’ll have to be quiet. I don’t want to wake his lordship.”
She shouldn’t be doing this, Augusta thought, knowing how the cold would inflame Phyllida’s joints and give her such pain.
But ever since Augusta had saved her from penury when Madame Noelle let her go, and then paid her considerably more than her position as a seamstress ever had, Phyllida had become her mistress’s fiercest protector.
They crept down the long hallway to the back stairs, so familiar to Augusta from the days when she and Mariana had come and gone stealthily from the house, bent on mischief.
Once they were out on the square, Augusta said, “I’d like to walk to Pauline’s. I have a strange intuition, a desperate need to be active and doing. I need the feel of a needle and thread in my hands.”
Phyllida stopped dead. “Your La’ship! Won’t the shop be locked up and everyone abed for the night?”
Augusta shrugged. “Possibly.” Then she reached into her cloak pocket and drew out a key. “But we can go in and we won’t disturb anyone.”
The two of them hurried through the almost-deserted streets—as well as they could over the slick flagways, anyway.
Rather than staying a respectful distance behind her mistress, Phyllida kept a firm hold on her elbow, muttering warnings and admonishments as they went.
When the season was in full swing in the springtime, they might have been spotted by any number of people out walking or driving to rout parties and balls, coming home from the theatre or the opera, or on their way to gaming hells and gentlemen’s clubs.
But the frigid weather kept all but the most intrepid souls indoors.
Aside from a few carriages and hacks, they encountered almost no one.
Pauline’s was not far, and Augusta’s fur-lined cloak kept her tolerably warm.
Only her feet felt like blocks of ice by the time they arrived.
She unlocked the door and she and Phyllida crept in.
All was dark. The fires were banked, as she knew they would be at that hour.
She hoped that Sally would not awaken at the sound of the tinkling door bells and be frightened.
But the maid generally slept soundly, and her room near the kitchen was far away from the front door.
“See if you can light a taper from the embers,” she whispered to Phyllida, who withdrew a screw of paper and two candles from the recesses of her capacious cloak.
“Already done, My Lady,” she said, and hurried to light the paper and the candles, casting a warm, flickering glow around the showroom.
Augusta smiled at what she saw. Two or three of her most elegant creations hung from wrought-iron stands or headless torso forms that had been made to match the sizes of some of their best clientele.
Unlike Madame Noelle’s, the room was otherwise only decorated with mirrors and tasteful furnishings.
“We must be quiet as mice. I don’t want to wake Pauline. She deserves her rest.”