Page 82 of The Ladies Least Likely
Taking a deep breath, holding her hands behind her exactly like a pupil in dame school, Derwa stood and recited her ABCs in a swift, jumbled rush.
This performance was met by a look of horror from her mother. “A waste of time, that!” Eyde cried. “When will you ever need your letters, cheel?”
“Nay, I think it past time she learned her letters and her figures, too,” Amaranthe protested.
“In truth it’s far past time I taught you as well, Eyde.
We ought to set aside time each day to learn together.
” She felt a stab of guilt that she’d not done so earlier.
She’d let her own concerns and her own work take precedence.
“I’ve never needed all it afore,” Eyde said, astonished.
“But think what you could do,” Amaranthe answered. “Be a housekeeper in truth in a house like this. Start your own shop. Be dresser to a great lady,” she hinted, for she knew well of Eyde’s greatest, if secret ambition.
With regret, Amaranthe laid the leather book aside. She’d scarce had time to read parts of it, much less imagine what she might do with the contents. Soon. Soon Hunsdon House would be running smoothly, and she would withdraw to her own small house.
Leaving the children. And Grey.
Eyde stood dazzled a moment as if dreams danced before her eyes, but then shook her head to clear it. “It’s past time to dress you, mum, and Lady Camilla be needed above. You, me pisky,” she addressed her daughter, “down you go to help Mrs. Blackthorn and Mrs. Wheatley with the denner.”
“Dreckly,” Derwa drawled, and dropped a quick curtsey before she scooted out the door, leaping ahead of the playful swat aimed at her bottom and taking the Penman with her.
“Now to get you stripped up fitty,” Eyde pronounced, shooing Amaranthe out the door and toward the duchess’s chamber, which had been taken over as Amaranthe’s dressing room.
Her compunction had lessened only slightly at rifling through Sybil’s belongings for purposes of her own adornment.
The week had been a valuable lesson in how much differently a woman was perceived, and respected, when she turned herself out fine.
Plain Amaranthe Illingworth would be run down by a horse in the street, but Amaranthe Illingworth in a sack gown of figured silk or a robe of embroidered brocade could stop traffic.
More rewarding yet was the momentary stupefaction on Malden Grey’s face each time he saw her turned out in a new ensemble.
Tonight was possibly her last at Hunsdon House, now that she had the household accounts straightened and the staff in place.
Tonight was the last opportunity to make the request she’d been trying for days to frame, and she would add every weapon to her arsenal that she could.
Thus she didn’t protest when Eyde laid out the most elegant gown yet, a robe d’anglaise of ice-blue silk the color of Malden Grey’s eyes.
The open skirt, folded back by golden tassels, revealed a front panel of goldenrod silk that matched the yellow cuffs on the three-quarter length sleeves.
The decolletage of the gown dropped nearly to her nipples, but Eyde plucked out every scarf and neckerchief Amaranthe tried to place over her bosom.
A golden tassel wrapped around her waist accentuated the enormous false rump that plumped the skirt and train behind her, creating the retroussé effect that was the peak of current fashion.
Elbow-length white gloves and a circlet of the duchess’s pearls at her throat were all the embellishments needed to make the costume complete.
Amaranthe didn’t have the leisure or patience to submit to the kind of hair dressing such a gown required, which would include hours of brushing to arrange her own hair over the pads and frames, then another hour to powder the whole.
Instead she let Eyde affix one of the duchess’s old wigs, a cloud of delicate white that soared around her face and left a fringe of curls over her neck.
Eyde plumped up a discarded ostrich feather for a headdress, and when she turned to face the mirror, Amaranthe didn’t recognize herself.
She looked grand. She looked alluring.
She looked like a woman a man would not forget nor easily let go of when she tried to bow out of his life.
The notion surprised her, and she fussed with the buttons on her gloves to hide a sudden blush as Eyde rifled through the duchess’s dressing table.
Did she want Malden Grey to pursue her? The idea was absurd.
She wanted him to let her take the book of Theocratus home with her, and she wanted him to ask no further questions about her use of it.
She wanted him to invite her to dine with him and the children, now and again. She wanted a chance, just one more, to ride in a carriage with him and have his leg press alongside hers.
She wanted him to wish to kiss her. And she wished to kiss him back.
The idea made her blush so fiercely that Eyde put the small pot of rouge back where she found it. “No color needed on your cheeks, mum!” she exclaimed. “But perhaps a bit of paint for your lips?”
“No paint, Eyde, it will feel too strange. I already seem very unlike myself.”
Eyde stood next to her, admiring her creation in the long cheval glass. “A duchess dresses like this every day,” she noted.
“The odds of me becoming a duchess are the same as me stumbling across the lost books of the Sibylline oracle,” Amaranthe said. “Shall I go down?”
“You may go down, but I daresay that Mr. Grey will be up at the very sight of you,” Eyde remarked.
“Whist!” Amaranthe hissed at her, and Eyde laughed as Amaranthe flounced from the room, ears burning.
“Gor, look at you, old girl!” Joseph exclaimed when Amaranthe entered the parlor where the family was assembling. It was one of the formal state rooms, an elegant and, to Amaranthe’s eyes, rather forbidding display of wealth and taste.
The prevailing colors of blue and gold, an exact match of her dress, confirmed her suspicion that these were Sybil’s favorite hues.
In pride of place above the mantel hung an enormous oil painting of the duchess, and the expression that the artist had captured on the face of his subject, who met every requirement of classic English beauty, confirmed Amaranthe’s suspicions that the previous lady of the house cared for nothing but her own comfort.
“Could get used to this,” Joseph remarked, sprawling on a settee which did not look sturdy enough to support him. “The fine rooms. The fine food. Someone to tidy up and do for you in everything.”
“You’ve never tidied a thing at home.” Amaranthe spoke freely, since they were alone in the room. “And Inez is there to see to you while I’m here.”
Joseph scowled. “That harpy? She’s rather a punishment than a help. I thought you installed her to badger me, to be truthful.”
“Inez is the sweetest of women. I can’t imagine what you did to make her so cross with you,” Amaranthe answered.
Her head itched beneath the enormous wig, and she now understood why ladies carried a head scratcher about with the rest of their accessories.
It was a requirement when wearing these things.
“You’ll give her the boot when you go home tomorrow, won’t you?” Joseph asked. “After our fête tonight to celebrate Amaranthe rescuing souls and setting all things in order, per the usual.”
“Inez will need to stay on at the house should I decide to visit Favella,” Amaranthe said. She turned away to admire a porcelain vase, not sure she could control her expression.
Joseph had heard a very scrubbed story, long ago, to explain why she and Eyde showed up on his doorstep at Oxford six years before, begging his help to find lodgings for a homeless sister and her pregnant maid.
Once he had seen the benefit of having women to put food on the table and see to his clothes and housekeeping, Joseph adjusted easily to the arrangement, as he had settled readily into London after graduation.
Very often Amaranthe wondered why she, the younger and the female, so often felt in charge of her brother.
“So you’ve decided to run do her bidding, have you? She sends a letter, and you go?”
“This will be her first child, long-awaited,” Amaranthe answered. “She asked quite prettily that I be there with her, though I don’t know why she would want me.”
Perhaps it was a trick of Reuben’s to lure Amaranthe back under his roof.
Did he have something revolting in mind?
While she felt a certain polite fondness for Favella, the only real reason to return to Penwellen would be to find her manuscript.
Demand that Reuben return her Book of Hours, and then never trouble her again.
“A free nursemaid and housekeeper,” Joseph remarked. “Of course she wants you.”
“I don’t intend to stay long, but it seems unkind to leave her all on her own.
After all, this child will be a relation of ours.
We have some duty to look after it and her.
” Amaranthe moved to examine a display of intricate music boxes on a lacquered table.
“Though I have a manuscript to deliver by next week, and I’ll need to secure a new commission if we’re to continue with a roof over our heads. ”
“Won’t miss this roof?” Her brother pointed to the fresco on the ceiling, grinning. The scene of frolicking gods and cupids exposed a great deal of shapely human forms, both male and female.
“In truth? No,” Amaranthe answered. “It’s far too much for the likes of us. Please tell me Miss Pettigrew’s expectations are more modest.”