Chapter Seven #2
Richard chuckled. “Good bloody luck to you,” he said. “You’ve got all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I don’t know how she hasn’t figured you out long before now.”
Because he was her blind spot, owing to their long acquaintance.
His character—all his flaws and faults and rare good qualities—had been etched in stone years and years ago.
“She never thinks me serious,” he said dispiritedly.
“I had hoped that a bit of time and distance from home might…persuade her to see me in a different light.”
A servant approached, offering Richard a little bow. “Beg pardon, Lord Crewe,” the man said as he proffered a folded piece of paper. “This was delivered for you.”
Elliot straightened in his seat, his heart jouncing about in his chest as Richard opened the paper and scanned the words. “Well?”
“They’ve survived their ordeal,” Richard announced. “Ordeal, apparently, was Kate’s description of their appointment with Madame Dubois.”
“Oh, Lord.” Elliot sank once again in his chair. “That’s done it, then. Everything is ruined. They hate each other, and Kate will never forgive me.”
“Oh, no,” Richard said lightly. “Kate and Rebecca got on famously, by Rebecca’s accounting.
But Kate found the exercise of attending the modiste tedious in the extreme.
Apparently,” he added with a little snort of laughter, “Kate has not got the temperament for standing still for more than a few minutes at a stretch and found herself chastised by Madame Dubois several times for fidgeting. They have been gone so long only because Rebecca informed Kate that she would need accessories beyond gowns, and Kate resigned herself to soldiering through several more shops only to get it all done in one fell swoop.” He leveled a look at Elliot over the page.
“You’ll have a great many bills to review with your man of business, so it appears. ”
“That’s all?” Elliot recovered from his slouch, his heart settling into a less fractious rhythm. “I mean to say—that’s it? Nothing more dire than a few extra bills?”
“Nothing,” Richard said, “except that Rebecca writes that she managed to coerce Madame Dubois out of a few ready-made things—made originally for some other lady, but near enough to Kate’s size to suit—and now she has taken Kate and her mother back to our townhouse to prepare in advance of tonight’s dinner party.
We are requested to join them at our earliest convenience. ”
Thank God. That was one worry conquered: Kate had made a friend.
Or Rebecca had, at any rate. Regardless, Kate had an ally in London; a popular young viscountess who would be an asset to her social standing.
Elliot slid out of his seat, beckoning for Richard to follow. “Let’s be off then, shall we?”
“You look like you’re about to cast up your accounts,” Richard remarked blandly as he rose to his feet. “What happened to subtlety?”
Elliot took a breath and held it deep in his lungs as he straightened his shoulders. Richard was right. Subtle, he reminded himself. And serious, besides.
He could do this.
∞∞∞
Kate had never been so itchy in her damned life.
From the scratchy lace at the sleeves of her gown to the new lacy underthings beneath it—which had been purchased at Rebecca’s insistence from one of the half-dozen shops they had visited today—she doubted there was an inch of skin that wasn’t abraded by senselessly uncomfortable fabric.
Her hair had been wrangled with ruthless efficiency into proper curls by Rebecca’s supremely capable and no-nonsense lady’s maid, Janet, who had then pinned them into place with a precision that had bordered on the militaristic.
Except for the few carefully-selected tendrils which had been exempted from the woman’s commands, the whole style held itself in perfect regimented order like a helmet, as if no single curl dared to disobey the strict general who had put it in its place.
Had Janet been placed in charge of her own troops some decades ago, Kate suspected Napoleon would have been routed years earlier.
The single curl that had been left to dangle artfully over her brow bobbed before her eyes, and with a growing agitation, she puffed it away.
“Oh, you mustn’t do that,” Rebecca chided as she swept into the dressing room, holding a selection of folding fans. “Your curl will grow fuzzy.”
“Find me a pair of shears,” Kate suggested, “and my curl will be gone.” She swatted at the curl in a futile attempt to position it away from the eye it wanted to dangle before. “How do you bear all of this? I feel as though I’ve got lace coming out of my ears. And these dratted curls—”
“Are exceedingly becoming and very fashionable besides, and I’m sorry to tell you that they will have to stay,” Rebecca said as she selected a pretty little ivory fan, with which she delivered a swat to Kate’s hand before she could brush at another curl, which draped down the back of her neck.
“Janet will be cross if she must heat the tongs again only to reform curls you’ve ruined with your fussing. ”
“Fussing!” Kate protested. “If I am fussing, it is only because I never imagined I would be so itchy. And is this neckline meant to be quite so low? I feel as though I’m about to pop out of it.”
“Yes,” Rebecca said primly, with a supercilious lift of her dainty nose, though the corners of her lips twitched with amusement. “I’d advise you not to breathe too deeply.”
“I’m meant to suffocate myself in the name of fashion?” Kate asked, horror dripping from every syllable.
“If necessary,” Rebecca said, without so much as a whisper of sympathy for Kate’s lamentable plight. “Now, choose.” She splayed the small collection of fans out before her. “Accessories are what turn an ordinary outfit into an extraordinary one. Elliot is known to be quite fashionable, you know.”
“He is?” Kate asked as she peered down at the half-dozen fans presented to her.
“Of course he is. Didn’t you know?”
“No,” Kate said, and the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach had nothing at all to do with the succession of carriage rides which had today been inflicted upon her. “Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him anything more formal than the occasional wool coat.”
“Not even so much as evening wear?” Rebecca asked, her blond brows pinching into a frown as Kate shook her head, setting that wretched curl to bobbing once more before her eyes.
“No; there isn’t much call for such things out in the countryside.
And his brother, the duke, isn’t really given to entertaining.
” Even if he had been, she doubted very much that she was the sort of guest who would have made good company for a house party, and she hadn’t anything formal of her own to wear, besides.
“What a pity,” Rebecca said. “Elliot cuts quite the figure. There is a reason he is so much pursued, beyond only his family and his means.” She gave a little flutter of the fans in her hands.
“Quickly, now. We’ve half an hour on the outside before our guests will begin to arrive, and we’re expected down in the drawing room presently.
Your mother has gone ahead; I’m told Elliot and Richard are there already. ”
What would Mama think when she appeared in a scandalously low-cut gown?
Kate couldn’t remember the last time she had worn something that hadn’t buttoned up nearly to her throat.
A mist of nervous sweat broke out upon her brow, and she hastily selected a fan at random; a lovely little blue one that nearly matched the shade of her gown.
“A fine choice,” Rebecca said approvingly, as she gathered up the rest and set them aside.
Was it? Kate slipped the ribbon attached to the handle of the fan over her wrist and hoped desperately that Rebecca’s expert knowledge of fashion and exquisite taste might rub off on her, at least a little.
At least enough to make the simple act of choosing a fan for the evening not quite so nerve-wracking.
“Don’t worry,” Rebecca said lightly as she slid her arm through Kate’s, as if she could sense the anxiety surging beneath the placid surface which Kate strove to affect, “No one will badger you this evening. I simply will not allow it.”
It was difficult to imagine that this dainty woman, who appeared as delicate as dandelion fluff and about as intimidating, could affect such a thing.
But she had offered the assurance with such conviction that Kate was tempted to believe her anyway.
“Thank you,” she said, with all sincerity, as she shifted her shoulders in an attempt to relieve the itch of the lacy new chemise beneath her gown.
The effort it took not to puff away the curl that bobbed once again before her eyes was monumental.
“Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without your assistance.
Probably,” she admitted softly, “with how ill-versed I am on the subject of fashion, I would have embarrassed myself and Elliot both.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rebecca said airily as she patted Kate’s hand. “I promise you, you could have arrived in sackcloth and ashes, and Elliot wouldn’t have minded a whit.”