Page 144 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TWELVE
E veryone in the small dressing room stared at Amalie’s face as Harriette painted it with a small brush.
It was much like preparing a canvas, save that the girl’s skin was already as smooth as fine porcelain and needed no scrub with the pumice stone.
Harriette brought her basic pigments with her to Renwick House and after some trial and error had achieved the same tint as Amalie’s skin, the blush of an early spring rose.
The others insisted on watching the proceedings: Lady Amalie’s nurse, because it would be her place to apply the paint hereafter, and Ren, because he wanted to be on hand during the conversation in which Harriette gently informed his sister that her makeup was poisoning her.
The Countess of Renwick also insisted on being in the room, largely to make known her disapproval of Harriette.
“That’s done it, then,” the nurse maid said in a tone of admiration mixed with disbelief. “Ye can hardly see the mark. A shame our girl has to bear it, when she’s so bonny otherwise.”
Harriette wondered if the countess found it harder to accept her daughter’s flaws because her beauty was otherwise so striking.
A plainer girl might have driven her to less despair.
Both Ren and his sister were uncommonly good-looking, and as their mother had little to recommend her beyond wealth and a close attention to grooming, Harriette suspected their beauty had been a gift from the late earl.
It was not inconceivable that a man blessed all his life with a divinely handsome face might detest his less-than-perfect children.
It was unjust of him, but not inexplicable.
“Did you know that medieval painters often left a deliberate flaw in their compositions?” Harriette said. “A friend of mine from school explained it to me once. She said that monks illuminating holy manuscripts would leave a tiny imperfection on purpose, because only God is perfect.”
“God gave me a very great flaw,” Amalie said bitterly. As before, the sleeves of her gown were edged with lace that covered the stump of her left forearm.
“But that keeps you from hubris, the fatal flaw of Greek tragedy,” Harriette said.
“Think of all the ancient mothers of myth who tried to hide or deface their beautiful daughters so they wouldn’t draw the interest of Zeus.
Because how much worse would it be to suffer Hera’s jealousy?
Callisto, turned into a bear. Io, transformed to a cow.
Or Danae, stuffed into a trunk and cast out to sea? ”
“I wish you would stop filling her head with such fanciful tales,” the countess said. “They sound like they come from some terrible cheap romance.”
“They are the most ancient and revered of Gr-Greek myths, M-mother,” Ren said.
“Well, I think your preparation works the same as the other, Lady Harriette,” the nurse announced. “And a sight less dear than what the apothecary demands.”
“I will leave you the exact recipe, just in case,” Harriette said. “Though I hope I will be able to send you fresh supplies from—wherever I am.”
A taut silence emanated from Ren at this reminder that their time together was disappearing. Harriette had agreed to spend her last afternoon in London with him, on the condition they take Amalie to the pleasure gardens. She didn’t trust what she might do or say if left alone with him in private.
“It feels lighter,” Amalie said in a small voice, turning the painted side of her face toward the small hand-held mirror. “Smoother, somehow. Are you certain no one will be able to tell the difference?”
“We’ll add a brush of rice powder and a patch or two, and you will rivet with your beauty. Though I hope you will leave off the arsenic tonic as a rinse, and use water infused with lemon instead,” Harriette suggested.
“This paint is not as opaque as the other from the apothecary,” the countess fretted. “It might fade or run. I don’t see why she can’t continue as she has been.”
“Because the paint she was using was giving her lead colic,” Harriette answered sharply. “If she stops using it, there is a very good chance that all the symptoms that were plaguing her will diminish.
“Besides, do you know how white paint is prepared? By soaking lead in vinegar and layering it in horse dung. Do you want to put horse dung on your face?” she demanded of Amalie.
“No.” The girl shuddered.
“Renwick women make many sacrifices to live up to the high expectations laid upon us,” the countess snapped. “She will do what needs must.”
“She will use my preparation on her face if she wishes for her makeup not to kill her,” Harriette retorted, placing the jar on the dressing table with more force than was necessary.
The nurse gasped, but Harriette did not retreat.
This was Amalie’s life at stake, a girl who had immediately wormed her way into Harriette’s heart, and for her own sake, not just because Ren adored her.
“She also needs plenty of fresh air, exercise, and nourishing foods,” Harriette added. “That is why Ren and I plan to take her to the pleasure gardens today and stuff her with tarts.”
She avoided looking at Ren as she used a different brush to dust rice powder over his sister’s face.
Her stomach twisted into knots. The clock was ticking on her time with him, and it took every ounce of willpower not to throw herself into his arms. Her body was still in a state of arousal from sketching him that morning, staring at his bare chest, inspecting the shape of his bare legs and feet, noticing each time she stared too long and the sheet draped over his groin stirred with his arousal.
Their early youthful friendship had made her move too fast with him, made all the customary barriers and social niceties irrelevant.
She knew his mind and now she knew his body, a carnal, elemental knowledge that made her proprietary and jealous.
She had made the other sketches to make him delectable to the ladies; she had made that last sketch of a nearly nude, aroused Renwick for her own delectation alone.
But some other woman would get to marry him. Some other woman would get to claim that primary place at his side. Mother of his children. Mistress of his home.
Well, good for her, Harriette thought as she stuck a tiny silk patch in the shape of a heart atop Amalie’s cheekbone.
Harriette wasn’t the least bit motherly.
Or domestic. She didn’t have a nurturing bone in her body, as her mother and aunt and all the women of her household could attest. She was selfish and headstrong and she wanted to spend all her free time painting. She would make the most terrible wife.
“You cannot take my daughter out of doors!” the countess said with a gasp. “I forbid it! You would expose her to ridicule, and shame, and—worse.”
Harriette snapped the lid shut on the tiny box that held her vast assortment of patches. “Countess, I am afraid I cannot agree with you that Lady Amalie should be hidden in the dark. There’s not a woman in London who doesn’t have smallpox scars, or a limp from rickets, or missing teeth?—”
“I beg your pardon, but I have none of those!” said the countess, outraged.
“—and I see no reason that anyone not matching your impossible notions of beauty should not show their face among the rest of God’s creatures,” Harriette finished.
“You would need to believe that, looking as you do!” Her ladyship threw Harriette a scornful glare.
Ren, the nurse, and Amalie all turned their heads to regard Harriette, searching out the basis for this accusation. An embarrassed flush rose over her bosom. Ren followed the path of color with his eyes, letting his gaze linger on the swell of her breasts, and the blush deepened.
“Nevertheless.” Harriette lifted her chin, drawing on the knowledge of her new rank.
She was a duchess-to-be by right; her ladyship was merely a countess by marriage.
She hated that these distinctions should matter, but she meant to take advantage of them if they did.
“You do Lady Amalie a disservice by making her too ashamed to enjoy the pleasures that should be hers by right. Friends. Social interests. Strolls through gardens.”
“I am her mother,” the countess huffed. “I know what is best for her, and I?—”
“Renwick?” Harriette asked, meeting her ladyship’s steely glare.
He cleared his throat. Wrong of her, so wrong, to call on him to take her side in this debate. She oughtn’t pit him against his own mother.
“No one has asked Am-Amalie what she w-wants,” Ren said quietly.
Harriette stiffened and turned to the girl, who cast a helpless gaze between the faces staring at her, waiting. “Lady Amalie, I beg your pardon. Would you like to go to the pleasure gardens today?”
Amalie held up her empty, lace-hung sleeve. “There is still this. I—I can’t abide for people to pity me.”
“Rhette has a solution for you,” Ren said gently. “I think—I think you ought to see it before you de-decide.”
“I see that no one will listen to her mother,” the countess said shrilly. “I see that I shall be ignored, though I am in the right.” In a great huff she picked up her flaring skirts and sailed out the door, muttering imprecations all the way.
“Right, then, I’ll fetch your bonnet, lass.” The nurse bustled toward the wardrobe. “Something to keep your face from the sun.”
Ren announced that he would wait for them downstairs and exited the room. Harriette checked that her hat was securely fastened to her powdered coils of hair and then took Amalie’s arm as they leisurely descended the curving staircase, giving Ren plenty of time to proceed unobserved at his own pace.