Winsome would very much like to throw something at Valor, despite the fact that she was not wrong. It did look like a pile of curtains had fallen on her.
“Now,” Mrs. Right said soothingly, “it is not an attractive dress, there is no getting round it. However, it’s only to be worn once. It’s my understanding that Lady Marchfield will take you in, you will curtsy, spend a few minutes at a reception, and then come home and take the thing off, never to be put on again.”
“That’s the other thing,” Winsome said. “Our aunt. We have not seen her yet. We don’t know if she will send a butler yet. Her silence is a bit nerve-wracking. She’s not forgotten about us, as she sent for the court invitation and secured my voucher and tickets to Almack’s, but what is she thinking?”
Winsome well understood that because the queen was involved and Lady Marchfield had been informed that Winsome must make her curtsy, her aunt had written to the Lord Chamberlain and received theinvitation. A lady must take her into the queen, though Winsome dearly wished it could have been her father. She had not been so sure her aunt would arrange Almack’s, but she had. The voucher had been delivered this morning.
It was not as if her father could not arrange things with Almack’s, he just never got around to it. He said it would put him in a bad frame of mind to ask those patronesses for anything, considering how little they bothered to give him at their famously lackluster suppers.
“Mrs. Right, Thomas says there was someone in the house when we got here,” Valor said. “And they never found him. He thinks they might still be here! Our aunt might have sent a murderer into the house, she was that mad at Papa.”
“Aye, don’t I know the boys keep talking about somebody being in the house every time you kick me awake at night,” Mrs. Right said. “I’ve told them, it’s all nonsense.”
Valor had refused to sleep alone in her room and Mrs. Right had all but moved into it on account of the idea that someone, a stranger, might have been in the house.
“I have to be safe!” Valor pointed out, hugging Sir Galahad.
“I really do not see why Sir Galahad has to be in the bed with us, though,” Mrs. Right said. “He snores something terrible.”
Valor shrugged, as was her usual response to either her or her pug causing anybody trouble.
“All right now, love,” Mrs. Right said to Winsome, “let’s get you down the stairs. I think you’ll need some help, I should not like you to take a tumble.”
As Winsome prepared herself for the embarrassing hours to come, Valor fell back into hysterical laughter. “But if you fall, Winsome, you won’t even get hurt because you’re so wrapped up!”
Again, Valor was right, but that did not stop Winsome wishing to pick up a scent bottle and fling it at her sister’s head. The dress could not be called anything but a monstrosity and Winsome really did notunderstand why the queen preferred the silhouette. The fabric was a white satin and there was so, so, much of it. The bodice was form-fitting, but then it sprung out in all directions. It was decorated with lace and bits and bobs in an awful fashion that their dressmaker had insisted was the style de rigueur. The hoops and the number of crinolines required to hold up the volume of the skirt was both astonishing and appalling. When Madame LaFray had begun fitting the skirt on her, one layer after the next, Winsome had at first thought she was joking.
She had also thought the madame was joking when she explained that only pearls and diamonds should be worn. There was no explanation as to why.
And then, of course, there was the final humiliation—the three ostrich feathers atop her head that waved when she moved. As far as she was concerned, the feathers made her appear a rooster strutting around a barnyard.
Winsome’s only consolation was that she would not be alone in being preposterously outfitted. Every other lady making her curtsy would be in the same condition.
As Mrs. Right helped her down the stairs, the housekeeper said quietly, “If you can do it, try to find out what Lady Marchfield is thinking on the butler front. I did not like to say within Valor’s hearing, as the footmen have still got her frightened that somebody is in the house.”
“Issomebody in the house?” Winsome asked.
“Oh, I cannot think so. At least, it does not seem likely.”
Winsome was surprised that Mrs. Right did not sound as certain of it as she’d thought. She had, of course, heard of the idea on the day they’d arrived to Grosvenor Square. However, the house had been searched all the way up to the attics. Nobody was found and she’d thought the consensus was that Cook had got nervous staying in the house alone.
The duke awaited them in the great hall. “Papa,” Winsome said, “do not tease me or I will fall into a heap.”
“No intention of it,” the duke said. “Though I believe you can now comprehend why I tried to keep all you girls as far away from this absurdity as possible.”
Charlie and Thomas were keeping watch out the windows. Charlie shot toward the doors and said, “She is here.”
As they all understood the “she” to be Lady Marchfield, the duke said, “Let us go out to meet the carriage. No point in drawing out this particular day.”
Winsome nodded. “The sooner it’s over, the better.”
It was no small feat to get Winsome into the carriage once she got there. After pushing hoops this way and that, she was finally crammed into it while the duke climbed in after her.
“Well Lady Misery, here we are again. I see you’ve given up the butler gambit—I’m disappointed, it was a very good game,” the duke said.
Rather than at all acknowledge the duke, Lady Marchfield patted Winsome’s hand. “You look lovely, my dear. At least as lovely as one can do in a court dress.”
“Youhavegiven it up, is that right?” the duke asked, his tone faintly tinged with concern.
