“Yes, a little.”
“The kitchen is still recovering. Would you like your tea as usual, or would you like to try coffee? Many of the young ladies have gone over to coffee. It’s thought very modern.”
“Tea,” she said.
“Without sugar or milk as usual, Your Grace?”
Violet hesitated. “I’d like to try one sugar, one milk, please.”
Sarah poured the tea. “You’ll find ours rather out of the way, Your Grace. There’s not another cup like it in London.” She handed her mistress the cup. “And Mrs Greer says you’re to eatall three biscuits and eggs, Your Grace, and I am to report to her if you haven’t.”
Violet ate the biscuits and eggs. Sarah moved about and chattered away while watching Violet eat. “We have a great deal to do today, Your Grace.”
She disappeared into the dressing room and returned with dresses. She held up the first dress. A dark blue morning gown, simply cut.
“Mrs Greer had two day dresses bought from a shop on Regent Street. They will hold you for the week while Madame Renard prepares a proper wardrobe for Your Grace. These are not what a duchess wears.”
“They are quite sufficient, Sarah.”
“They are quite unreasonable by the standards of your station and this house, Your Grace.”
Violet drank her tea. It was not unpleasant, but there was a flavour she could not quite place. It sat beneath the black tea flavour, almost lost, and a less practised tongue may not have tasted it at all. But she had been raised in a kitchen where her mother dried and steeped and tinctured half of what grew in Hampstead. She had been made to taste all of it, the wholesome and the foul, until she could tell tansy from feverfew blind.
“Your bath is drawn, Your Grace. I shall do your hair after.”
The bath was hot. The dressing room was warm. Sarah washed her hair and dried it with a cloth softer than anything at Thornwick. She sat her at the dressing table and pinned and curled until the face in the glass might belong in a house with copper pans and shortbread biscuits. Sarah brought the blue morning gown, buttoned it up the back, and made an adjustment at the bodice with two pins.
“The fit is acceptable.”
Violet looked at herself. The dress fit her better than anything she had ever worn.
“Now, Your Grace. The plan for the day.” Sarah stood behind her in the glass, hands folded. “This morning you are to go to Gillows with Mrs Greer for furnishings. Your rooms need curtains, carpet, all furniture, and whatever else you wish.”
“Mrs Greer may order whatever she thinks best, Sarah. I should not know where to begin. Will you pass the message to her?”
“Your Grace, the mistress ought to choose to her own taste. The rooms are yours. Mrs Greer will guide you, but the selections should come from you.”
“I shall not be any help, Sarah. I have no preference. I have never had occasion to form one.”
“But—”
“Enough. I am decided.”
Sarah’s shoulders dropped a little. “As you wish, Your Grace. I shall inform Mrs Greer. This afternoon, Madame Renard’s for proper fitting. Walking dresses, evening dresses, and a ball gown.”
“A ball gown?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I have not been to a ball since my presentation.”
“Lady Carstairs’s annual is in three weeks.”
Violet’s hands worried her skirt.
“All eyes will be on you, Your Grace. Every woman in that room will be looking at the new Duchess of Iredell. What you wear, how you carry yourself, whom you speak to, all of it will be observed, and all of it will be discussed the following morning.”
“Sarah, I have not danced in… a decade.”
