Chapter 9
Peaches stood in the bathroom and shivered.
It wasn’t that the water hadn’t been warm—well, it hadn’t been but she hadn’t expected anything else.
She’d woken late and probably missed her window for a hot shower.
She wasn’t even troubled by the thought of having missed breakfast, which meant she would be shaking all the way to lunch unless she could find something to eat besides the soggy Kit Kat in her purse. No, it wasn’t any of that.
It was that she was in completely over her head and had no idea how to get herself out of the swamp.
All right, so she’d been at a Regency house party earlier in the month and hobnobbed with all kinds of titled people.
She had also been dressed in a costume so she blended in, she’d had her fury at Stephen de Piaget to keep her feeling warm and feisty, and she’d left half the attendees at that weekend no doubt mistaking her for her sister the countess.
Deference had been the order of the day for that last bit alone.
Here, she was just Peaches Alexander, ill-dressed Yank, with only her charms to recommend her. And those charms were as soggy as her candy bar.
Feeling inferior wasn’t her usual modus operandi.
She frequently made very brutal assessments of her strengths and weaknesses so she could identify areas for improvement.
A certain sort of clarity came with that kind of inventory taking, mostly because since she already knew where she was failing, having someone else pointing out her flaws held less sting than it might have otherwise.
Of course, she was accustomed to dealing with people who either liked her for herself or thought her useless based on her skills as a life coach. She wasn’t at all used to being judged by the situation of her birth or her clothes.
The only thing that made her feel any better was knowing that if David Preston’s friends had seen her parents, they would have gotten a collective and potentially quite fatal case of the vapors.
She pulled the tie of her robe more tightly around her and considered herself in the mirror.
She thought her sister was stunning, though she could see nothing past ordinary in herself.
Maybe if she slicked her hair back and wrestled it into something resembling a chignon, she might have passed for someone fit to be in the current house party.
She rolled her eyes and pulled herself together.
She couldn’t control what others thought of her; she could only control what she thought of herself.
And while she wasn’t a world-famous opera singer or Madame Curie, she was who she was and that was enough.
She would borrow an iron, put her clothes back together as best she could, and go socialize.
Because her happily ever after wouldn’t happen if she sat down in the mud and gave up.
She put her shoulders back and left the bathroom, shivering as she hurried down the stone of the hallway in her bare feet.
It was a bit of a hike, as it happened, but she ignored that as well.
She wasn’t going to think about who had poached her room and how far it was for him from bed to bath.
Maybe he would stub his toe and not get to go hunting that afternoon or trip over the piles of love notes from his feminine admirers and sprain his ankle, leaving him unable to trot onto the dance floor tomorrow.
With those happy thoughts to keep her warm, she walked briskly back to her room and threw open the door.
And came to a skidding halt.
There was a maid there, true, but it wasn’t the girl from the day before. It was Aunt Edna … only slightly younger and more starched.
“Ah,” Peaches began.
“I am Edwina,” the woman announced crisply, rising from the stool she’d been sitting on, “and I am here to dress you.”
Peaches managed to swallow. “Oh—”
“And see that all runs smoothly here in your quarters,” Edwina continued, “which are now under my supervision.”
Peaches nodded, because it seemed like the right thing to do.
“I understand there was trouble last night,” Edwina said with a severe look, sounding extremely disappointed.
“My gown,” Peaches began. “It had a little accident—”
“No matter,” Edwina said dismissively. “We shall pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and soldier on. I’m not keen on excess, but I can see that in this house your old things were entirely unsuitable. A new wardrobe has therefore been provided.”
Peaches followed the long arm and extended bony fingers to the hooks driven into the wall upon which hung exactly what Edwina had described.
A new wardrobe.
Peaches walked—no, she floated across the room to look at what was hanging there.
There was a hook sporting riding gear with boots tucked discreetly against the wall underneath the breeches, another hook sporting something Audrey Hepburn would have relaxed in if she’d been at an English country house party, then a lovely dress that …
Peaches looked at Edwina. “Is that for the ball?”
Edwina drew herself up. “No, miss,” she said, sounding appalled. “That is for supper tonight. It is hardly the sort of thing one wears to a formal ball.”
“Oh,” Peaches said quietly. “I thought—”
“Tomorrow will take care of itself, miss.”
Peaches felt her way down onto the bed. That wasn’t difficult because she’d been leaning against the wall and the bed was approximately three feet from any wall. “Of course.”
“One can’t expect miracles, Miss Alexander.”
“Of course not.” Peaches looked up at her maid. “Who did this?”
Edwina looked as if Peaches had asked her to hike up her skirts and do the cancan. “I have been sworn to secrecy, miss, and to secrecy I will remain sworn.”
“Not even a hint?”
“Not even a hint.”
Peaches imagined she would have more success liberating a few bars of bullion from Fort Knox than getting the details out of Edwina. Besides, did it really matter who had taken pity on her and sent along a few things for Peaches to borrow for the weekend?
Or so she thought until she caught sight of the pile of tags in the wastebasket. She started to lean over to examine them more closely, but found herself thwarted by means of Edwina’s foot placed strategically over the rim. Edwina clucked her tongue and frowned.
“Secrecy must be maintained.”
Peaches gave up with a sigh.
Edwina rubbed her hands together purposefully. “I’ve sent for light refreshment for you, which should be arriving at any moment. You will want to dress for the hunt.”
“I will?” Peaches squeaked. Her excuse for getting out of riding was racing off into the distance—which would be exactly what her horse would be doing in approximately half an hour.
The truth was, her experience with horses was limited to trying not to shriek in terror when the nosey ones nosed her for carrots or apples or whatever it was they thought she might be carrying in her pockets.
Actually climbing up on the back of one and trusting him not to scrape her off against the nearest immovable object wasn’t anything she thought she could do anytime soon.
But before she knew it, she was dressed in breeches, a discreet shirt, and a hunting jacket.
The boots fit, a miracle in and of itself.
She couldn’t bring herself to speculate on their cost and a casual look in Edwina’s direction resulted in a slight shake of the head.
No, no hints from that direction. Edwina was, as she had proclaimed earlier, an absolute vault when it came to secrecy.
Peaches was left to admire her anonymous sartorial provider in silence.
Whoever he or she was, he or she had excellent taste.
She wondered if it might have been Raphaela, David’s elegant mother, or perhaps Andrea, David’s cousin.
But the thought that made her feel a bit weak in the knees was that it might have been David himself.
She refused to feel embarrassed that he, if it had been he, had felt the need to buy her anything. She would just be grateful and let the rest go.
She had breakfast and wondered if Stephen’s butler had been hounding the chef again, for it was rather good. She then submitted to a thorough study by Edwina, found herself pronounced absolutely adequate, and was shown the door.
And she was on her own.
She left the servants’ quarters, then walked along marble hallways, wondering when the house had been built and how many hunting and shooting parties had been held in it over the years.
She could hear talking and laughter coming from a room to her right, so she started to open the door.
It was pulled open for her by household staff, and she was left with no choice but to go right in.
All she could say was that at least she fit in. Everyone was wearing breeches and jackets and most were carrying heavier short coats. The men looked dashing and the women capable.
Why, then, did her gaze go immediately to Stephen de Piaget instead of lingering on David Preston as it should have?
She was going to have a stern talk with herself—maybe Edwina could help out with that later—but for the moment, she was going to casually ogle.
It could be said that the man had been born to wear tweed, but that would have completely ignored the absolute perfection that was the Viscount Haulton in riding breeches and a hunting jacket.
She had admittedly been something of a Mr. Darcy groupie from the first time she’d met him between the pages of a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice, but she could safely say that he had just been officially relegated to runner-up status.