Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Missie’s ears strained to hear the sounds of the Duke of Selkirk’s departure through her half-open door.
When they finally reached her, she stood up and closed the door softly, turning its lock.
She had managed to purloin the key from the master keyring in her mother’s dressing room—she doubted it had been missed—and left it in the lock.
The desire to slam the door shut had been fierce, but she was able to restrain herself.
She walked back to her dressing table. Sitting down on the stool in front of it, she stared at her face in the glass.
That face looked wan and drawn, the eyes puffy and red from the tears she had not been able to stop.
She supposed he had proposed: he had been a long while with her father, had proceeded afterward down to the morning room where her mother and Aurora had been waiting.
She herself had been dismissed from the room long before—dismissed!
From her own mother’s company! All to accommodate Aurora!
She was not used to sitting with her own thoughts.
She hated it. Normally, she did everything she could to keep herself from facing them—trying on a new ribbon, a new dress, a new hat; practicing poses in the glass; taking up her embroidery; even going for a turn about the garden if she was desperate.
But this afternoon she had not been able to escape, and the pain was fierce. As was the rage.
She had not understood, when she was small, why so many of the nice things in their home would periodically disappear, leaving a permanent silhouette on the wallpaper, or a gap in a row of paintings, or a group of objets d’art.
So, she had begun to listen and learned her father, of whom she did not see a great deal, was a bit of a rakehell and terrible at cards, or any games of chance, and he was ruining them.
There had come the day when she was, what, eight? Nine? She had been called to her mother’s bedroom for an audience. Her governess had accompanied her, positioned her in the spot in which her mother indicated, before the woman took a step back and became invisible, as was her place.
Missie had stood silently at the side of the bed while her mother coldly surveyed her, taking in every inch.
Her mother’s strawberry-blonde curls were artfully arranged to peep fetchingly out from underneath her cap.
Her pale gray eyes were alert, working through an inner calculus.
Missie almost shivered under that gaze. Almost. She would have been more surprised if her mother had smiled at her and reached out to embrace her.
As that had never happened in her recollection, she willed herself to keep her knees from knocking.
She was going to be found lacking. But for what?
Lady Wentworth had proceeded to sigh and fix her daughter with a direct look that pinned her to the floor.
It felt like an actual pin. Missie could feel the pain of it piercing her, fixing her to the spot. She could not move.
“Millicent, dear, we are ruined. Or very nearly. And so our only hope of a future, your only hope of a future, is to Marry Well.” Her mother’s eyes appraised her again.
“You are fortunate. You are an attractive child, and I daresay may become a Beauty.
This will be absolutely necessary if we are to secure you a fortune.
Women without fortunes cannot find the proper sort of man to wed, a man of the right sort, a man of worth, unless they are beautiful.
“But beauty by itself will not be enough. I will do whatever is within my power to provide you with the necessary skills to augment your natural breeding and looks so you will be successful. That is my duty as a mother. I will see it done.”
Her mother had leaned back against the pillows on her bed. “I am tired.” She gestured vaguely in the direction where the governess was standing. “Take her away now. I shall join you both in the schoolroom tomorrow to begin a program of improvement.”
Missie had not said anything, had not been asked to say anything.
She obediently followed her governess out the door and up to the schoolroom.
Where she let out a scream and stamped her foot.
“But I don’t want to secure a fortune! I don’t want to find a man of worth!
I don’t want, I don’t want, I. Don’t. Want! ”
Her governess simply stood and looked at her, saying nothing until Missie had calmed down and mulishly stuck out her lower lip as she ran out of further words of protest.
“What you want has nothing to do with it,” Miss Greaves stated. “What one wants as a woman never has anything to do with it. It is how we make our way in the world, depending upon our status. And this is yours, Missie.”
Missie’s eyes had filled with tears at that.
Her governess was not necessarily a warm woman, but she had always been a kind one.
The little girl launched herself at her then, wrapping her arms around her governess’ waist, bursting into sobs.
After a moment, Miss Greaves’ arms had come around and held her, offering Missie the one shred of human kindness she had received in her young life, after her nursemaid had handed her over upon leaving the nursery.
Miss Greaves took her by the hand and led her over to the ample chair set in front of the fire and let her crawl onto her lap.
“Sweet girl,” was all she said at first. Then, “Millicent, I know this is hard. But this is a day that was always going to come. This is the path laid out for you. You are a bright and capable girl; I know this to be so. Therefore, I also know you can be successful at this. What we want…we oftentimes need to re-visit what we think we want until we can truly see what it is that we need. And then we must learn to want that.”
Missie had looked confused for a moment. This did not make a lot of sense to her. All she knew was something was changing.
“It will be up to you, my dear, to save your family. Yes, up to you and no one else. Now, be a brave girl. You can do this, Millicent. You can.”
And so, Missie had. Worked, that is. Worked day and night to become what she needed to become so she could save her family.
She had created a carapace, behind which she could hide, even from herself.
She focused on that mask, shaping and refining it so that it gleamed.
A diamond, that is what she would be, a Diamond of the First Water.
And then she met Aurora Hardcastle. Aurora, who was open and forthright, always most decidedly what she appeared to be, who could never seem to shape herself into what Missie and the other girls at Miss F’s were being trained to become.
That part of Missie, which she had locked away all those years ago, had felt seen, had felt befriended.
For the first time ever in her life, she had a friend.
Now that friendship, that weakness, had betrayed her. Because Aurora was clearly not a Diamond of any sort in her dress, manner, elocution, bearing—well, in anything. Yet Aurora had money. Money was what was needed to secure a future. That is, the right kind of future.
Money. Exactly what Missie did not have.
Which she would have to get. Her whole manner of getting that money was at least thanks to Aurora, as her magnificent debut was also the result of the funds Aurora’s father was providing to get his daughter settled.
Rorie’s father—a provincial nobody who was in trade!
To be indebted to him while his daughter was able to get the man, the one man—
She, Millicent Wentworth, daughter of a baronet, was this Season’s Beauty.
As such, she needed the Byronically handsome Duke of Selkirk dancing attendance on her as well, for her triumph to be complete.
She would brook no rivals for his attention.
She was supposed to accept, to secure the interest of a far more eligible man, such as the Duke of Galloway.
She most definitely would accept his attentions, and she had. But that was neither here nor there.
It was bad enough Aurora was going to get him.
But what rubbed salt in the wound was, Missie could see her friend and the Duke were clearly forming a tendresse for one another as well.
Might he and Aurora have actually embraced and kissed one another that afternoon at Hampton Court, if she and Galloway had not interrupted them?
The utter and absolute nerve of Aurora, forever with her nose in a book. That she should have caught more than the mercenary attention of Selkirk? No, that could not be. For his attention, for his genuine interest to be caught by Aurora was insupportable.
Missie ground her teeth, the rage rising in her again.
It was unfair. Horribly, horribly unfair.
It was not her fault her father had gambled everything away!
She had worked so hard to become everything she needed to become to set her future straight.
So hard! And now, in her moment of triumph, Aurora was going to get the Duke of Selkirk, not simply as an arrangement that could safely be ignored but—she could not let herself complete the thought. It was insufferable. It was betrayal!
She stood, crossed to her bed, and sat down.
Pulling up one of the pillows, she buried her face in it and screamed and screamed, stifling the sound.
The person she was, behind the carapace, curled up into a ball and sobbed.
Miss Greaves’ words came back to her, more painful than they had been all those years ago: “What you want has nothing to do with it.”
Oh, Miss Greaves, declared Missie to that memory. But it has everything to do with it.