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‘We can share it—I expect we are going to need all the luck we can get to pull this off.’
‘You have not changed your mind?’
The half-hidden seductress vanished to be replaced with the governess, her expression severe. ‘I said I would do it—I do not go back on my word.’
‘No.’ Gareth studied her straight back, raised chin, determined expression. ‘I can see that.’
‘My lord. Her Ser…’ There was a muffled exchange from the hall. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst and Lady Dereham are here. I explained that you were at breakfast, my lord, but—’
‘Show them in, Jordan, bring more cups.’ Resigned to yet another turbulent breakfast Gareth pushed back his chair and got to his feet as his cousin Bel and her sister-in-law Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, swept into the room in a flurry of flounces. At the other end of the table Jessica stood too, schooling her knees not to knock together. These two elegant, assured, sophisticated matrons would take one look at her and laugh Gareth’s plan to scorn.
‘Gareth, we came at once, Maude said things have reached a crisis.’
‘Thank you, Bel.’
So that would be his cousin, Lady Dereham. A tall brunette, she kissed him on the cheek, and stood aside to make room for an equally tall, rather more statuesque brunette whose deportment could have been used as a model of perfection. The Grand Duchess.
‘Gareth, you poor man. Lord Pangbourne appears to have become quite irrational, even allowing for Maude’s tendency for the dramatic.’ Her English accent was perfect, her gaze direct. ‘Your message was cryptic, but we will do our very best to help.’
‘Then allow me to introduce Miss Gifford, who has agreed to play the critical role in this scheme.’ Both ladies turned and Jessica sank down into her best court curtsy. She knew how to do it in theory, but she had never had to do it in practice. It was murder on the thigh muscles, she discovered, rising with relief as the Grand Duchess stepped forward and caught her hand in her own kid-encased one.
‘Your Serene Highness…’
‘Lady Sebastian, please. Except for court appearances, I do not use my title outside the Duchy. Miss Gifford…’ she looked at her, a smile lighting up her face, ‘…you poor thing—what theatricals have Maude and Gareth prevailed upon you to join?’
‘Good morning Miss Gifford.’ Lady Dereham came to shake hands, then sank down on a dining chair and peeled off her gloves. ‘Yes, we insist upon knowing all the details at once.’ She lifted the silver pot before her. ‘I fear we will need sustaining with considerably more coffee.’
‘Templeton has become fixed in his intention to carry out the exceedingly mawkish scheme he cooked up with my esteemed parent and marry off Maude and myself.’
‘Not so mawkish if you consider the land holdings,’ Lady Dereham observed, stirring sugar into her cup. ‘Templeton’s no fool—he is dangling an estate almost the size of your own before you.’
‘Quite. How can I refuse? That is the problem. He has decided I am perfect for Maude—but it is obvious that even he would draw the line at marrying her off to a libertine. Or, at least, to one who created a public scandal. He has a strange way of showing it, but he is fond of Maude and would not want her to be hurt by her husband’s public infidelities.’
‘His private ones would, no doubt, be of no account,’ Lady Sebastian remarked wryly. A flicker of memory came back to Jessica—Lady Sebastian’s first husband, the Grand Duke, had been a notorious rake, leaving a trail of highly visible liaisons across Europe.
‘Exactly. I, therefore, must become not just a rake, but a very public philanderer.’ Gareth reapplied himself to his sirloin, then looked up to find three pairs of eyes fixed upon him, sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘Our intention is that Jessica, who is the widow of a gentleman who performed some service for the Duchy…’ he raised an eyebrow at Lady Sebastian, who nodded ‘…has returned to London to re-establish her life. Bel has leased her the Half Moon Street house as a favour to Eva and will introduce her to society at Maude’s charity ball. Jessica, it will soon become apparent, is an adventuress at whose feet any number of gentlemen are about to prostrate themselves.’
Jessica could almost feel the effort it took the two ladies not to turn and look at her in disbelief. ‘I,’ Gareth concluded, ‘will make a complete cake of myself over her, conduct a flaming affaire in the full glare of the Season and Templeton will cast me off.’
‘I see,’ Lady Dereham said with what Jessica regarded as almost supernatural calm. Suddenly she could see the family relationship between them—Lady Belinda was exhibiting the same calm as she had seen in Gareth in the brothel. A sort of watchful stillness. ‘And our role—other than providing an entrée for Miss Gifford—is to be what exactly?’
‘I am very much afraid that Lord Standon expects you to transform me into a dashing adventuress,’ Jessica said, bracing herself for the polite laughter that must surely follow. ‘A glamorous siren,’ she added, heaping on the improbabilities.
Both ladies did turn at that, fine dark eyes under arched brows and amused grey ones regarded her. Neither woman laughed. They must feel it was past a joke to achieve such a task.
‘Oh, yes,’ Lady Dereham said. ‘Hair first, don’t you agree, Eva? And then see what suggests itself once we know what colour we are working with?’
‘MonsieurAntoine.’ Lady Sebastian nodded. ‘Gareth, would you be so good as to ring for Jordan, I must send a note immediately.’
‘You think it is not impossible?’ Jessica shook her head. Not only did she have to appear stylish enough to be seen with leaders of the ton such as these, but in addition she must seem alluring and dangerous.
‘I think Gareth is showing remarkable insight,’ his cousin said with a mocking smile in his direction. ‘Lord Fellingham was saying to me just the other day that Gareth seemed jaded; one can only be relieved that he is not so bored that he missed this opportunity.’
‘Fellingham is an ass,’ Gareth retorted, pushing his plate away and reaching for the toast. ‘Bored? I have estates to run, a speech to write for the House, that damned orphans’ charity Maude nagged me into chairing…’
‘You enjoy it, you know you do. If you did not, why did you invite them all down to Hetherington in the summer and teach the boys to play cricket?’
Gareth grimaced. ‘Smashed half the glass in the succession houses, young hellions.’
‘So did you when you and Sebastian were boys,’ Lady Dereham retorted. ‘You don’t fool me, Gareth Morant—you are working hard for those orphans, and you enjoy it. But being busy does not preclude becoming jaded; this will do you a power of good.’
‘We are doing this to rescue Maude from an impossible situation, not me from the ennui of my duties. Ah, Jordan, Lady Sebastian wishes to have a message delivered.’ The butler bowed his way out with instructions to deliver the hairdresser on Lady Sebastian’s doorstep in an hour equipped with sufficient tools of his trade to create a transformation. What if he is not free? Jessica wondered, then smiled at her naïvety. Not free for a Grand Duchess, the sister-in-law of a duke?
Jessica sat, eating her breakfast in the unobtrusively quiet manner life as a paid dependent in numerous households had taught her, and watched with the focus she would have applied to learning a new instrument.
She watched the unselfconscious grace and command of the two women, she listened to the freedom with which they conversed and the lightness with which they teased Gareth. And she allowed her eyes to feast on their clothes, on carriage dresses in the very latest stare, crafted from fabrics of quiet luxury, trimmed with exquisite detail. She looked longingly at the smart gloves, tossed carelessly to one side, the thickness of the grosgrain bonnet ribbons, the pretty clasps on the reticules. How could she even learn to treat such luxury with nonchalance, let alone seduce men to her side while she did it?
‘What name will you be using?’ Lady Dereham asked, cutting across her increasingly alarming thoughts.
‘Name?’ On top of everything else she had to lose her identity as well, it seemed. Her mind went blank.
‘Francesca Carleton,’ Gareth said. Three women looked at him in enquiry. He shrugged. ‘It just came to me.’
‘Well…’ Lady Sebastian got to her feet, gathering up her possessions ‘…in that case it is time for Mrs Carleton to come with us.’ She paused on the threshold, waiting while Gareth came round the table to open the door for her. ‘Be prepared for a surprise, Gareth.’ As she looked at Jessica her eyes twinkled in a smile of pure naughtiness. ‘We are going to have so much fun.’
Chapter Seven
Jessica sat in the closed carriage and tried not to look anxious under the combined scrutiny of the ladies opposite.
‘How on earth did you become entangled in this madcap scheme?’ Lady Dereham enquired, in much the same tone as she might have used to enquire whether Jessica had enjoyed a concert.
‘Lord Standon rescued me from a brothel.’ Lady Sebastian opened her mouth, then closed it again without speaking. It seemed there was something that would shake their sang froid after all. ‘I am a governess.’
‘I rather thought you might be.’ Lady Dereham nodded.
‘I was kidnapped when I arrived on the stage and taken to the brothel.’ She shivered—repeating the story did not make it any less horrible. ‘Gareth—Lord Standon—rescued me. Before anything too awful happened,’ she added hastily. She did not feel up to explaining that she had careered down the corridor stark naked, observed two orgies and had escaped slung over Gareth’s shoulder while wearing Lord Fellingham’s pantaloons.
‘What was Gareth doing in such a place?’ Lady Sebastian enquired, interested. ‘No, do not tell me, I can imagine.’
‘Nothing, actually.’ Jessica felt bound to defend him. ‘He was accompanying Lord Fellingham and Lord Rotherham, but he was rather cross and bored by it, I think.’
‘But how did you go from your rescue—for which we must be profoundly grateful—to this?’ Lady Dereham was looking understandably puzzled. You did not know Gareth before, did you?’
‘Like all the men of your family, Bel dear, Gareth is nothing if not ingenious.’ Lady Sebastian’s smile was one of pleasurable reminiscence. Jessica remembered the circumstances of the Grand Duchess’s unconventional romance. ‘I presume Miss Gifford is unknown in London, is presently unemployed and, being a young lady of intelligence and integrity, is a much safer partner in this deception than one of her frailer sisters.’
Jessica nodded. ‘You are quite right, Lady Sebastian. Gareth, er…Lord—’
‘Call him Gareth,’ Lady Dereham interjected. ‘And I am Bel and this is Eva. We are all going to become very good friends before this is out, I should imagine.’
Jessica cast a dubious glance at the Grand Duchess, who smiled her wicked smile again. ‘Eva,’ she confirmed. ‘Now, you were saying, Jessica?’
‘Gareth is concerned that Lady Maude is not implicated in this, in case it goes wrong, and he was also anxious not to involve anyone who might be less than discreet.’
‘And what is to become of you when this is all over?’ Bel enquired. ‘I imagine that reverting to being a governess again—unless in the Scottish Highlands—might be somewhat dangerous.’
‘I receive a cottage and a pension.’ Jessica braced herself for some critical comment about such largesse, but none came.
‘Very reasonable,’ was all Bel said. ‘You will enjoy that better than being at the beck and call of some demanding employer and their obnoxious brats, I dare say.’
‘Not all brats are obnoxious,’ Eva remarked. ‘My son, naturally, is an angel.’ Somehow, if he took after his mother, Jessica doubted it. ‘As will yours be, I am sure,’ she added with a sly sideways and downwards glance at Lady Dereham’s waistline.
‘Eva! How did you know?’ Bel laid one hand protectively over her flat stomach.
‘When I saw Reynard last night he was looking stunned—I recognise the symptoms of a man coming to terms with incipient fatherhood—and you are looking a trifle pale.’ Eva smiled, ‘However, I suspect mine will be born first.’
‘You, too? Eva, how wonderful!’ The two embraced while Jessica sat in tactful silence through a confusing exchange about what Freddie would make of it, how insufferably smug Jack was, dates and something about sea air that made Bel blush.
‘Jessica, I am sorry.’ Eva turned to her, her cheeks flushed, her expression apologetic. ‘We are neglecting you.’
‘Not at all. May I offer my congratulations to you both?’
‘Thank you. Oh, look, we’re here. Borrow this and use the veil.’ Eva whipped off her bonnet and placed it on Jessica’s head.
The door was opened, the steps let down and Jessica found herself in a wide hallway, confronting a man whom she supposed from his clothing must be the butler. With his brawny frame and broken nose he appeared to have been recruited from the prize-fighting ring. Perhaps the Grand Duchess employed him as a bodyguard as well.
‘Grimstone, is his lordship at home?’
‘No, my lady. I understand Lord Sebastian is at his club.’
‘Excellent. This is Miss Gifford, Grimstone. You have not set eyes on her, nor have you ever heard of her.’
The butler gazed at a point somewhere over Jessica’s head without a flicker of expression. ‘Monsieur Antoine is in your dressing room, my lady.’
Jessica regarded the room and its occupants with some trepidation. A large dressing table draped in net supported a wide mirror and an elaborate silver-mounted vanity set. Next to it was a wash stand with ewer and basin and, standing waiting before it, was a slender, intense-looking man in a black suit, a languid-looking youth and a woman she guessed was Lady Sebastian’s dresser.
She tried not to stare about her at the array of gowns draped over chairs or hanging from the blue brocade screen in the corner. Hat boxes teetered in a pile and gloves spilled out of their packaging. Bel was not so reticent.
‘Eva, you must have bought out every shop in town!’ She picked up a gauze scarf and ran it through her fingers.
The Grand Duchess laughed, shedding her furs and gloves into the hands of her silent dresser. ‘Thank you, Veronique. But of course I have been shopping—I haven’t been to Paris yet this year. One must dress, my dear! Ah, Monsieur Antoine.’
‘Your Serene Highness.’ Eva did not correct him and from the elaborate flourish of his bow Jessica guessed he would have been mortified if he been unable to extract every drop of enjoyment from his contact with royalty. ‘In what way may I serve you?’
‘This lady, who as you see has naturally a most modest and elegant style…’ Elegant? ‘…has, for reasons which I cannot reveal, to appear in society in quite another guise. Naturally, this matter requires the utmost discretion. I trust I may rely upon you?’
‘A matter of state!’ Eva did not disabuse the coiffeur of this useful notion. ‘Our lips are sealed, your Serene Highness. May I enquire in what way madame should be transformed?’
‘Into a lady of some…experience. A lady who will be invited to the very best parties, naturally, but one who will be popular with the gentlemen, shall we say?’
‘I comprehend entirely, ma’am. Dashing, a little dangerous, perhaps? A lady of powerful attraction.’
‘Precisely,’ Bel said, perching on a stool and untying her bonnet. ‘Dangerous.’
The hairdresser advanced upon Jessica with finicking small steps, his head on first one side, then the other. She tried to look experienced, dashing and dangerous and knew she was failing comprehensively to look anything but a governess out of her depth. It was an effort of will not to shift from one foot to the other under the intensity of his stare.
‘If madame will kindly shed her pelisse and bonnet and sit here.’ He gestured to a stool set before the dressing table. The dresser darted forward, removing the items and taking Jessica’s gloves. Feeling as though she was going to the dentist, Jessica sat.
‘Remove the pins!’ The acolyte darted forward and began to deconstruct the tight, careful coiffure pin by pin, then combed out the braids. Her hair, blonde, waving and long enough to reach to her elbows, fell about her shoulders. ‘Hmm.’ Monsieur Antoine picked up a strand, rubbed it between his fingers, peered closely at it, then dropped it dismissively. ‘A natural, most English blonde.’ That did not appear to be a recommendation. Jessica seemed to recall hearing somewhere that blondes were out of fashion.
‘It is a very pretty colour,’ Bel said supportively.
‘But not dangerous,’ Monsieur Antoine pointed out incontrovertibly, beginning to prowl again. ‘Not dashing.’ He came close and stared into Jessica’s eyes as she blinked back. ‘Gold, that is what is needed, with just a hint of red.’
‘Won’t that be a touch brassy?’ Anxious, Jessica frowned into the mirror at her pale skin and long—but blonde—lashes. What would she look like with brassy hair?
‘Brassy? Brassy? Madame, remember, I am an artiste! We speak here of guineas, of glow, of subtle excitement. Of élan, panache!’ He scowled, perhaps daunted by the reality in front of him, then made a recover. ‘And curls. This demands curls. The scissors, Albert.’
‘You are not going to cut it?’ Jessica grabbed handfuls defensively.
‘But of course; as it is it is impossible—the hair of a governess.’ He stood poised, the scissors in hand, having delivered what was apparently the ultimate insult. ‘I assume madame has come from the Continent…’
‘I have?’
‘She has,’ Eva confirmed. ‘The very latest French style, if you please, monsieur. It will grow again,’ she pointed out to Jessica.
‘Oh, very well.’ Jessica released her grip and clasped her hands in her lap. Curls and gold it was. In for a penny, in for a…guinea. At least it should soon be over.
Two hours of snipping, washing, soaking in strange substances, more washing, combing, the application of a thick red paste, rinsing, drying and curling later, Jessica stared dumbfounded into the mirror again.
A mass of shiny guinea-gold curls framed her face in an outrageously flattering manner. The curls were short enough to cluster naturally, except at the back where they were half-teased down into flirty ringlets on her shoulder and half-pinned up to give some mass to the coiffure. The wide-eyed woman looking back must be her—after all, the eyes were green, although they looked darker and more intense than she remembered, the mouth was the same, although now it was parted in a gasp of surprise and the plain blue gown was certainly the one she had arrived in.
‘Oh,’ said Jessica. ‘That is me?’
‘It most certainly is,’ Eva said with satisfaction. ‘A most excellent result, Monsieur Antoine, exactly what I had hoped for. You will call upon madame daily once she is established and you will maintain this look, with appropriate variations depending on her social diary.’
The hairdresser and his assistant bowed themselves out, leaving two satisfied ladies and one stunned one behind them.
‘Now,’ said Bel with resolution. ‘Now we shop.’
‘After luncheon,’ Eva said firmly, walking Jessica to the door. ‘When we have made lists.’
‘But who is going to pay for all this?’ Jessica protested, waving a hand in a gesture that encompassed the pile of parcels and hat boxes that surrounded the three of them and the even larger list of items that would arrive from the workshops of the modistes and milliners they had spent the afternoon visiting. It might well be vulgar to mention money, but someone had to—Bel and Eva appeared oblivious to the amount that was slipping through their prettily gloved fingers.
‘Gareth is,’ Bel said. ‘Now don’t frown, Jessica—sorry, Francesca. We really must become used to calling you that or we will make slips later. He can well afford it and, if this is to be done, it must be done properly or no one will believe it. And these things are not so very extravagant, just suitable to your supposed background. Here we are, your new home.’
Jessica peered out and her wavering spirits rose at the sight of the neat narrow house with its black brick and shining door knocker and the pair of clipped bay trees by the green front door. Her own house, even if it were only for a few weeks. Somewhere that was all hers, not a plain room in someone else’s house where she was regarded as barely above a servant and entered a reception room on sufferance. However difficult this task she had accepted was going to be, at least there would be a safe haven to retreat to at the end of each day.
‘I have left it fully furnished,’ Bel was saying as they climbed the steps and the door swung open. ‘And I will leave Mr and Mrs Hedges and the rest of the staff to look after you. Good afternoon, Hedges, this is Mrs Carleton. I hope you received my note this morning and everything is ready for her?’
‘Yes, my lady.’ This butler was cut from a very different cloth than Lady Sebastian’s ex-pugilist, but his expression as he regarded the incongruous figure before him with the dashing hairstyle and the governess’s clothes was a masterpiece of tact. ‘Mrs Carleton, ma’am. Mrs Hedges has prepared your room.’
‘Thank you, Hedges.’ Jessica had long since learned not to show that she was intimidated by superior butlers, but now she hesitated. If this really was her house now… She glanced at Bel, who gave a slight nod of encouragement. ‘Could you bring tea to the drawing room, please?’
‘At once, ma’am.’ He moved to throw open a door and Jessica smiled, inclined her head and swept through it. Goodness, she thought faintly, that worked.
‘I have left all my staff in place here except for my dresser, and that is going to be an important position under the circumstances.’ Bel sank into a chair and put her feet up on a beadwork footstool. ‘Ooh, why is shopping so tiring?’ She did not wait for an answer, her brow clearing as an idea seemed to strike her. ‘I wonder if Lady Catchpole’s dresser has found a new employer.’
‘Lady Catchpole?’ Eva frowned. ‘I do not know her.’
‘She was Rosa Delagarde, one of the leading lights of the stage for the past three years, but she caught herself a baron and they married last week. Now, knowing George Catchpole, he might have married an actress, but he is going to want a command performance as a lady from her in future. I would not be at all surprised if he will insist on a starched-up dresser of the highest respectability.’ She got up and went to the French writing desk at the side of the room and drew out some paper. ‘I will write at once. La Delagarde was always turned out in the most dashing style—just what we need.’
‘But would she be discreet?’ Jessica wondered.
‘There was never any gossip about the Catchpole romance before the announcement, and that would have made her dresser some good money if it had been leaked to the scandal sheets.’ Bel folded the note, stuck on a wafer and addressed it as Hedges brought in the tea tray. ‘Hedges, please see this is delivered as soon as possible.’
They sipped tea in companionable silence for a while. Jessica had no idea what was passing through the minds of her two companions, but her own thoughts were a muddle of impressions, worries and, lurking under everything else, excitement.
I am taking tea with a countess and a Grand Duchess, I have been shopping in the most exclusive shops in London and I am about to embark upon a Season of scandal with a man who has a completely reprehensible effect on my pulse rate.
‘Can you dance?’ Bel asked, cutting across Jessica’s ruminations on just how Gareth Morant made her feel and how shocking it was that he should have such an effect.
‘Yes. In theory,’ she added with scrupulous honesty. ‘I have taught all the country dances and so forth, but I have never waltzed, nor have I danced a cotillion.’