Chapter Twenty-One The Heiress and the Dress #2
“Her Ladyship’s London clothes, Miss. They were left behind when she departed twenty years ago. She never sent for them.”
Anne exchanged a look with Mrs Annesley. Lady Catherine de Bourgh abandoning possessions was a concept that defied logic. The woman was known to inventory the teaspoons in the servants’ hall on a bi-weekly basis.
Intrigued, Anne strode into the adjoining dressing room. It was a long, cedar-lined space with huge wardrobes. Mrs Frobisher unlocked the largest one, the hinges groaning in protest, and pulled the doors wide.
The scent of dried lavender, camphor, and time rushed out to greet them.
“Good heavens,” Mrs Annesley murmured, stepping up beside Anne.
The wardrobe was a veritable museum of late eighteenth-century excess. Before the sleek, high-waisted, column-like muslins of modern days had taken hold, fashion had been a matter of architectural engineering.
Georgiana gasped, reaching out to touch a sleeve. “Oh, the fabric! There is enough silk here to rig a moderately sized naval vessel.”
Anne reached into the depths of the wardrobe, ignoring a confection of striped taffeta, and her fingers caught on something soft and heavy. With a grunt of effort—for the garment weighed more than a small dog—she hauled it out into the light.
A collective intake of breath echoed in the dressing room.
It was a robe à l’anglaise, an exquisite relic from 1791.
The silk was the colour of midnight striking a ruby—a deep, iridescent claret that seemed to glow from within.
The bodice was pointed and structured with whalebone.
The skirts were cut to accommodate subtle hip-pads, meant to fall in voluminous, majestic folds, and the elbow-length sleeves were finished with cascading tiers of frothy, yellowed Alen?on lace.
“It is magnificent,” Georgiana whispered, her blue eyes wide. “But how did one sit down? Or breathe?”
“One did not breathe, Georgiana,” Anne said, holding the wooden hanger up to her shoulders and turning to the tall cheval glass in the corner. “Breathing was considered a vulgar activity for the lower classes. One simply existed in a state of glamorous suffocation.”
Anne stared at her reflection. Even draped awkwardly over the front of her modern, slim-fitting dress, the wine-coloured silk transformed her. The rich colour brought out a startling flush in her cheeks and made her eyes seem intense and dangerous.
“It suits you, Miss de Bourgh,” Mrs Annesley observed, her head tilted in critical appreciation. “Though I suspect if you wore it in Hyde Park today, people would assume you were either attending a masquerade or staging a rebellion against the Prince Regent.”
“I might just wear it to dinner at Darcy House tonight,” Anne mused, turning side to side to watch the silk catch the light. “Just to see if Robert chokes on his soup. I bet I could hide a roasted chicken in these skirts and no one would be the wiser.”
Georgiana giggled. “You are like a queen, Anne.”
“I am like a fire hazard,” Anne countered, though she could not stop smiling. “Seriously, Mrs Frobisher, look at the boning in this bodice. If I were stabbed in the chest while wearing this, the blade would snap in two. It is not a gown, it is armour.”
“ANNE DE BOURGH!”
The voice shattered the quiet of the bedchamber behind them.
Georgiana shrieked, leaping backward and nearly knocking over a washstand. Mrs Frobisher dropped her keys. Even Mrs Annesley flinched.
Anne froze, her eyes meeting the reflection in the glass.
Standing in the doorway of the dressing room was Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She was a vision of righteous fury, gripping her cane against the floorboards as if she intended to drive it straight through to the foundations.
But she was not alone. Standing just behind her was Eleanor Fitzwilliam, the Countess of Matlock.
If Lady Catherine was the unyielding embodiment of black bombazine, her sister-in-law was the epitome of flowing silk.
Lady Matlock had the kind of effortless elegance that made people instinctively apologise for breathing her air.
“Mother,” Anne said calmly, not dropping the gown. She turned slowly to face her. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
“I came to instruct the housekeeper on the proper airing of the carpets, since you insist on taking up residence!” Lady Catherine roared, advancing a step into the dressing room, recovering quickly from her initial shock to pivot straight into outrage.
“Only to discover the brazen, ungrateful insolence of a daughter who thinks she can march in here and commandeer my—”
Lady Catherine stopped.
Anne watched, her brow furrowing, as her mother’s eyes locked onto the gown she was clutching in her hands. The colour in Lady Catherine’s cheeks drained away, leaving her startlingly pale and old, the cane in her hand trembling.
“Mother?” Anne asked, the retort dying on her tongue.
Lady Catherine took an unsteady step forward. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She reached out a hand towards the cascading lace of the sleeve, stopping an inch before touching it.
“The Carlton House ball.” Lady Matlock’s voice broke the silence. It was soft, melodic, and laced with a profound, aching nostalgia.
Anne glanced at her aunt. The countess was stepping into the room, her observant eyes moving from the dress to Lady Catherine’s stricken face.
“You remember it, do you not, Catherine?” Lady Matlock asked gently, placing a steadying hand on her sister-in-law’s arm. “April 1791. The Prince of Wales had ordered excessive floral arrangements. The entire ballroom smelled like a hothouse.”
Lady Catherine swallowed audibly. “I remember,” she whispered, a sound devoid of its usual volume.
“She wore this gown,” Lady Matlock continued, turning her gaze to Anne.
“Your mother was always a handsome woman, Anne, but that night, she was a revelation. When she descended the stairs to the foyer where we were waiting, Sir Lewis was adjusting his cravat. He looked up, saw her, and took a step forward to offer his arm.”
A wobbly, watery sound escaped Lady Catherine’s lips. It took Anne a moment to realise her mother was attempting to laugh.
“He tripped,” Lady Catherine murmured, a tear spilling over her lashes and cutting a path through the powder on her cheek. “He tripped over his own feet and nearly collided with a potted fern.”
“He did.” Lady Matlock smiled fondly. “He told my husband—your uncle—that he had forgotten how to work his legs. He could not take his eyes off her.”
Anne lowered the hanger, the silk pooling around her feet.
“We did not leave the ball until three in the morning,” Lady Matlock said, her voice dropping to an intimate register that made the dressing room feel isolated from the rest of the world.
“The four of us. The Earl, myself, your father, and your mother. We returned to this very house. We sat in the drawing room downstairs and we drank a bottle of champagne while Sir Lewis played the pianoforte.”
“He was terrible at the pianoforte,” Lady Catherine whispered, clutching her cane with both hands. “He only knew one song, and he played it too fast.”
“It was one of the best nights of our lives,” the countess finished softly.
Anne knew what happened next in her family history. June 1791.
“Two months later, the fever took him,” Lady Catherine said, her voice cracking, shattering the illusion of the iron-willed matriarch.
She surveyed the dressing room, her chest heaving.
“He died in the master’s chamber, next door.
You were four years old, Anne. You were so small, and you had his eyes. The house... I could not stay here.”
Lady Catherine closed her eyes, a second tear falling.
“I locked the wardrobes, I shut the blinds, I ordered the carriages, and I took you to Rosings Park. I promised him... I promised him on his deathbed that I would protect his legacy. That I would protect his estate. But mostly, I promised I would protect you. I could not lose you too.”
Lady Catherine had lost the love of her life in the blink of an eye, and she had spent the next two decades trying to wrap in wool the only piece of him she had left.
“Mother,” Anne whispered, the gown slipping from her grasp to collapse onto the floor in a heap of silk.
She stepped over it and closed the distance between them. For the first time in perhaps fifteen years, Anne did not bristle at her mother’s proximity. She reached out and wrapped her arms around the stiff shoulders of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Lady Catherine went rigid for a second, unaccustomed to spontaneous affection, before she crumbled.
She dropped her cane, which clattered loudly on the floor, but no one moved to pick it up.
She threw her arms around Anne, burying her face in her daughter’s shoulder, weeping with the grief she had locked away twenty years ago.