Chapter Seven
In the ensuing days, Diantha could not help but give thanks for the comtesse’s plans. They kept her occupied enough to avoid brooding over Kieran’s frequent absences. Although he treated her with punctilious courtesy, he spent much of his time away from the town house near Avenue Montaigne.
Having heard back from several school friends, she arranged to meet them for shopping or luncheon or walks in the city’s famous parks, but that left many hours open to take umbrage at his defections.
On one particularly bad afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens, she witnessed the galling sight of her own husband strolling along in company with a beautiful woman of noble ancestry and rather less elevated morals.
Fortunately Diantha was accompanied by the comtesse and her granddaughter.
Both set out to assuage her feelings. The older woman pointed out that Lord Rossburn was one of several men attending the creature in question, while Sabine tried to divert her with an anecdote about the journey to Paris from her husband’s estate.
Dejected, Diantha begged to be taken home.
The comtesse sighed. “Ma fille, you will look like a goose if you flee the field. He is with the Marquise de Tourelle, one meets her everywhere. We cannot have her preening herself for routing you. Come along, one more time around the boat pond.”
For Diantha, the sunlight shining down on the green grass and the gravel promenade dimmed. Even the lively shouts of children trying to prod their toy vessels across the shallow basin failed to cheer her.
Upon taking leave of her in the town house’s drawing room, the comtesse reminded her of a fitting she had the next morning.
Charles Worth had not only welcomed Diantha to his establishment on the rue de la Paix, he oversaw the creation of her new wardrobe himself.
Thanks to her money, her family name, and the sheer number of seamstresses the couturier employed, the first of her carefully selected gowns arrived within a week.
By the night of the de Pontrevault ball, her new ensembles hung in her wardrobe. The comtesse had strictly forbidden her to wear any of them before this evening, despite her heated protests.
“You must strike him like a bolt from the blue.” Gravel spurted as the ever present walking stick had pounded into it several days earlier.
The comtesse had invited her for luncheon and they took a promenade afterward in the garden of her Paris house.
Just at that moment, she scolded Diantha for wearing a new carriage dress in a shade of cornflower that turned her eyes to sapphire. “You’re stealing your own thunder!”
“I did not put it on until his lordship left the house.” Her meek reply earned only a disapproving sniff. Regretfully, after returning home and avoiding Kieran’s eyes, she had complied with her friend’s dictate. She hoped it would work.
After the hairdresser finished the tedious process of curling her hair and pinning it to her head, Diantha rose to her feet and stretched her back. Across the room, the maid sighed in disapproval as she finished laying out the ball gown. “Madame la comtesse would tell you to hurry and get dressed.”
“I am quite ready to continue, now that the blood is once again flowing in my lower half.” She thanked the hairdresser, a slender man with pointed black mustachios, and turned to her servant as soon as he took his leave.
As Florette helped her into the voluminous underskirt, Diantha asked anxiously if she had been wise to allow him to cut her hair into the fashionable but daring bangs.
“Alors, milady, they are most becoming. One notices your eyes more.” She buttoned up the bodice and turned to pick up the overskirt from the bed. Diantha held out her arms to allow the other woman to fasten it over the bodice and skirt.
She recalled her disappointment the first time Monsieur Worth had presented the gown to her.
A mannequin had worn a dress of creamy satin unadorned with any contrasting color, ornamented only with three poufs down the back and a deeply flounced hem which fanned out into a train.
Then he had snapped his fingers and an assistant had fastened the overskirt into place.
In minutes the plain gown disappeared under a web of crimson lace which fitted the line of the bodice exactly before flaring to cover the skirt to the tops of its flounces.
It had been cut to fall on either side of the bustle, held together below each pouf of satin by crimson velvet tabs sparkling with diamante buttons.
More diamante glittered here and there on the overskirt, giving an impression of both severity and opulence.
And it was red. She smirked as she imagined her mother’s expression of horror at the idea.
A crimson velvet choker came along with the gown, but Florette placed a leather-covered box on the dressing table. “From milord.” Diantha opened it.
“How lovely!” A necklace of rubies and diamonds in the shape of graduated bows nestled against the velvet interior along with a matching pair of earrings and an aigrette. She lifted each piece out to admire its painstaking workmanship.
A quarter of an hour later, Diantha placed her gloved hand on the polished banister of the stairway and descended to the foyer.
A sharp sense of disappointment overcame her when she discovered that instead of awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs, Kieran had prosaically disappeared into the library.
Glaring at the closed door to that room, she sent for her opera cloak. Only after she wrapped its encompassing folds around her did she enter the library. Kieran sat reading a newspaper, a half empty snifter of brandy at his elbow.
In his black and white formal evening attire, he looked downright stunning, an effect that only increased when he lifted his aqua eyes to smile at her.
“You’re not even late. I was expecting to have another twenty minutes to read at least.” He finished off his brandy and stood to retrieve his black evening cloak from where it lay tossed over a chair.
“Papa could never abide tardiness.” She watched him swirl the black cloak around his shoulders in one fluid motion. “Thank you for the jewels. They are lovely.”
“I don’t suppose they’re very impressive next to some of those I saw your mother wearing.” He held out an arm to escort her through the foyer. “It’s an eighteenth-century set that came up for sale unexpectedly, and the comtesse informed me at dinner last week that I should look for rubies for you.”
He spoke diffidently as they stepped outside into the dusk. A footman snapped to attention and opened the carriage door. “Presumably they go with your rig this evening?”
Thinking of the elegant gown under her cloak, Diantha smiled at last. “Very nicely.”
“I hope you don’t mind the lack of a tiara. There is a diamond one left among the family jewels, but it’s in Scotland.”
The play of shadows and light from the vehicle’s lamp obscured the expression on his face, but she fancied he sounded almost shy about his offering.
“Nonsense. The aigrette is perfect for my hair this evening.” She twisted her head to show him the glittering spray of diamonds holding a deep red rose in place next to the knot of hair at her crown.
Long ringlets fell artfully from its back.
“The earrings flatter you as well.” The timbre of his voice deepened as he lifted one of the baubles for closer inspection. “Delicate and unique.”
She shivered as his fingertips stroked the delicate lobe. If she turned her head, she could plant a kiss on his palm. “We should go.” Barely able to whisper the words, she stepped toward the carriage. Kieran assisted her inside and waited while she arranged her flowing skirts before climbing in.
During the short drive to the H?tel Pontrevault, she had to resist caressing her ear where it still tingled from his touch.
He had made no other attempts to wheedle his way into her bed, but she suddenly wondered if he intended the ruby set as a bribe.
No, she thought, it would appear odd if he had not given her something out of the sizable dowry she brought him.
As they approached their hostess’ home, the carriage slowed and joined a line of others waiting to pass under the gray stone arch into the courtyard. Her husband asked if she had visited the great house during her school days.
“Yes, Sabine is dreadfully spoiled.” She chuckled. “Her family would come and fetch her to visit periodically, and she always begged them to let me come too.”
“You were very close?”
“Are.” She paused. “My parents would not allow me to correspond with her after she married, but on seeing her again, it was as if we had only been separated for a month. I suppose that sounds foolish, but it is so.”
“Not at all. I was an only child.” His voice came out of the shadows wistfully. “I have a number of friends I feel the same way about.”
Kieran looked out of the window at the slow-moving line ahead of them. “Whatever is taking them so long?”
“It’s hard to maneuver several carriages in the courtyard.
” Opposite from him, she peered out too.
“The house was built in the seventeenth century on an odd-shaped piece of property, so it’s not an exact square.
I don’t know why the designer didn’t put the garden on this side of the house and the courtyard on the other.
I gather at the time this street was more prestigious than the one bordering the garden, but it would have been a more practical arrangement.
” Catching herself, she subsided and changed the subject to a more conventional one.