Closing her eyes for a long moment, Rose let her shoulders drop. “I have been...that...for only two weeks. And I brushed my sisters’ hair for years because I enjoyed it.” She opened her eyes. “To be frank, this is the most fun I have had in weeks.”
Clara hesitated, doubting those last words. Rose’s husband, Thomas, was one of the three Kennet sons, widely rumored to be outrageously handsome, their height as well as their dark hair and skin drawing the eye of every lady in their vicinity.I should have recognized Michael Ashton.
But it had been so long since she had seen any of them. In her memory, Michael existed as a gangly boy who preferred horses to pretend swordfights, and galloping wildly across the fields to the sedate classrooms of their studies. He had been scrawny and wild, laughing as he rode, hanging back only when surrounded by a passel of other children at house parties. That long-legged boy bore little resemblance to the intense man who had helped her out of the mud, who had known the solution immediately, whose deep brown eyes took in every detail all at once. And he was definitely no longer gangly.
“He is handsome, is he not?”
Startled, Clara jerked from her reverie. “My lady?”
Rose’s grin broadened. “Michael.”
Clara felt her cheeks heat. “I should have recognized him.”
“Nonsense. He has not been in Society for more than four years. He has changed.”
Changed for the better.The heat spread down Clara’s neck and chest. She cleared her throat and eased down on the stool, facing the mirror on the dressing table as Rose reached for a brush. “Why did you say that you owe me?”
Rose’s smile remained gentle as she closed one hand around a clump of mud-drenched hair and began working the brush through the curls at the end of it. “Two reasons. One is that I appreciate how kind you were to my sister Cecily this season. Although she has found a good position with Lord Philby, it has been a tumultuous year for all of us, including her. I know you stood by her after the incidents at the Blackmore Ball.”
Clara flinched, but not from the brushing. Rose had been attacked at the Blackmore Ball, and Cecily had been left behind with Lord Philby—soon to be her betrothed—as the rest of the family had departed. “It was nothing.”
“It was not nothing. You were kind when others only thought of being tainted by scandal.”
Clara shrugged. “I have obviously felt that sting myself.”
Rose paused in the brushing and looked at Clara in the mirror. “About that... I have some information. From my network.”
Meeting Rose’s eyes with her own, Clara stilled, an odd feeling of worry settling on her, as if the humiliation her mother had worked so hard to overcome was about make a second appearance in their lives. Over the decade of her spinsterhood, Lady Rose Timmons had put together an extensive web of informants who had helped her protect young ladies vulnerable to the machinations of degenerate rakes and scoundrels. She had prevented any number of debutantes from ruination as a result. “What is there to be known about me tripping over my own feet and landing face first in a bowl of lemonade? Everyone knows how clumsy I am.”
“True. Which is why no one suspected it was notyourfeet that were your undoing. It was someone else’s.”
Clara blinked. “What?”
Rose continued brushing Clara’s hair. “Lord Richard Hadleyton. You turned him down for a dance earlier in the evening.”
“Of course. He is one of the most inappropriate men I have ever met. And I knew about his debts”—Clara paused—“through you.”
“He took his revenge for what he saw as your humiliation of him. Do you remember him standing near the table?”
“Yes. There was a group of young—” Clara stopped, heat filling her face again, for an entirely different reason. “He—”
Changing positions, Rose attended to a different section of Clara’s hair. “Do not worry, my dear. I have put the word out to a few close friends. Lord Richard is presently courting a young lady whose father is beyond reproach. I suspect he will not take kindly to the information. I only wish I had known sooner.”
Clara looked down at her hands. She tried to feel some sense of satisfaction about what Rose had said but could not. “Are you sure it is worth the effort after all this time?”
Still brushing, Rose did not look up. “Sometimes, Lady Clara, you are too kind for your own good.”
“You should tell my mother. She thinks I’m an undisciplined hellion bent on destruction.”
“A prerogative of the mother of a marriageable daughter. Why do you not wear your hair up?”
Clara snorted a laugh. “No one believes me. I begin every day with my hair filled with pins and combs in a coif as tight as a banker’s fist. By noon, it looks like this, even if I spend the hours at needlepoint or the pianoforte. Or reading in a corner, still except for a cup of tea. All I have to do is move an inch, and it begins to fly apart.”
Rose bounced the long curls in her hands, then ran her fingers through the strands. “I will put it in one braid today, but I have a suggestion that a new lady’s maid may not have considered. Separate it into three strands. Tie each close to your head with a ribbon, with a long tail of ribbon hanging down.” Rose demonstrated what she meant, then began to braid Clara’s hair, tying the thick plait at the end. “Then divide the strands in two and plait using the ribbon as the third in the braid. Tie each on the end, then braid the three plaits together. Curl the braid around your head and secure with combs and pins. It’s a bit of extra work but could tame it a bit. And will reduce your urge to cut it all off.”
Twisting on the stool, Clara stared at her. “How did you know?”
“I have yet to meet the woman who did not want to do that at one time or another.”
