Chapter 5 #2
One particular ball gown stopped her, as if the dress itself demanded she look.
It seemed precisely her size, made from fine satin in a deep blue green almost the color of her eyes.
The bodice was delicately ruched with a seed pearl neckline and puffed sleeves of silk gauze; the skirt flowed in graceful folds with an overlay of gossamer tulle.
Annabel glanced around as if to ask permission of the house.
Would it be so awful to try the dress on for a brief taste of what wearing it would feel like?
Annabel slipped off her clothes and undid the five shell buttons at the bodice back.
Wiggling it carefully off the mannequin and over her own head, she contorted her arms and shoulders to fasten it as best she could, then stepped into the matching silk slippers, well fitted to her slender feet.
She walked to an antique gilt-framed mirror leaning against the wall and, seeing herself, sharply exhaled.
Annabel had never been apologetic about the way she dressed, didn’t care about being teased by Cassie, never tried to fit in or impress her peers (the fit-and-flare cocktail dress being the one painful exception).
Her taste was her own, and she stood by it. But this was something else altogether.
She reached out to touch her reflection in the smoky glass, silvered and foxed at the edges.
Her hair was up already; dark tendrils fell around her face.
But the dress flaunted her porcelain skin, her eyes, her lips.
Even her small breasts seemed to peek over the narrow bodice like two rising moons, illuminating her décolletage.
She looked at ease in the gown, as if it had been made just for her.
Annabel curtsied like she was born to it.
“My party and I have taken Kidlington House for the remainder of the season,” she said, feeling the words roll off her tongue.
She had a fleeting regret that she hadn’t said yes to Bunty’s invitation.
Here she was, alone on a Friday night, all dressed up and ripe with possibility.
What if she’d missed her one chance at a Regency Society ball?
But rather than dwell on it, Annabel made the most of her small private moment.
She found a head strap with a satin floret, a pair of kid gloves, and slipped a diaphanous shawl about her shoulders, a perfect complement to the gown.
Choosing a reticule, her outfit was complete.
Would it be so awful to take it for a spin around the house?
“My dear madam,” she said aloud to no one, hand gliding down the banister .
. . “I received your kind invitation with pleasure,” she said to the longcase clock .
. . “And though only just arrived from America,” she said as her fingers flitted over the delicate back of the Hepplewhite settee .
. . “am disposed most gratefully to accept!”
In the library, if only to amuse herself, she retrieved the invitation, read it again to be sure of the details, and took out paper and a working pen to write the words still fresh in her mind.
She paused and pressed the pen to her lips, looking out at the garden, its imperfections blurred in the summer dusk, and then wrote her sign-off with a flair:
Your obliged and humble servant, A. Blake, Kidlington House
Annabel left her note on the desk, stood, and sighed, thinking it time to slip out of the dress and return it to its rightful place in the attic, before there was a mishap that might be hard to explain. This would have to be Friday night enough.
When she passed through the foyer again, ready to round the banister up the stairs, the quiet of the early evening was disrupted by the low sound of wheels on gravel, faint at first, then louder.
Curious as to who it could possibly be, Annabel stepped to the sticky door and pulled hard until it opened.
There, coming up the gravel drive, was a four-wheeled carriage—it was a brougham, she knew from the novels—drawn by a single horse with an actual coachman sitting on top!
She blinked to make sure she was seeing it right, when the carriage stopped not ten feet from where she stood with her hands on her hips, befuddled.
The coachman stepped down and stood before her in period breeches, waistcoat, and hat.
He looked a tad like Gerald the cab driver—the same sweet, pushed-in face—but she didn’t remember him having a gap in his smile where a tooth should have been, and with the costume, she couldn’t quite tell if it was Gerald or not.
“Miss Blake?” He took off his cap and crushed it to his chest.
“Yes?” said Annabel, more a question than an answer.
“Name’s James.”
“O-kay,” she said.
“I’m to take you to the assembly room ball.” His cockney accent was impressive, if put on a bit thick.
Annabel let out a brief, involuntary giggle, but James wasn’t laughing at all.
“I assume Bunty sent you? Mrs. Taylor?”
He shook his head. “I take my instructions from Lady Gidding-Wedmore.”
“Right, of course. It’s her name on the invitation. But it is the Regency Society event, right?”
James looked unsure. “I s’pose . . .”
“The assembly room ball?”
He scratched his head. “Well, some might call it that. Others might call it nothin’ but a ha’penny country dance.”
Annabel laughed again. “I must say, you do your part so well.”
He flattened his hair with his hand and puffed his chest. “We all does our part.”
Annabel hesitated in the threshold as he walked to the carriage and waited, ready to hand her inside.
It had happened so fast, the attic, the dress, now James.
She’d missed the chance to tell Bunty she wouldn’t go to the ball, but here was an offering that was hard to refuse—an actual coachman and carriage.
She looked up at the moon rising in the lavender sky.
The evening was lovely and full of promise.
“Then I suppose we should be on our way,” she said, closing the door to Kidlington House behind her, taking his hand and stepping into the carriage.