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Chapter One
Germain’s Hotel
Mayfair, London
March 15, 1815
Miss Cleopatra Lewis looked at her reflection with satisfaction. Her hair was pulled into a dowdy knot, and the jet beads encircling the high neck of her gown made her skin look sallow rather than interestingly pale.
On the other hand, the black fabric made her hair turn from auburn to fire red.
“I need a turban,” she told her dresser, who was scowling as if Cleo’s appearance gave her indigestion.
“You must be jesting!” Gussie cried with all the horror of Lady Macbeth confronting her cowardly husband. “You’re trying to provoke me.”
Cleo allowed a chill to creep into her voice. Years of managing her own fortune—including Lewis Commodes, the wildly successful, if indelicate, business she had inherited from her father—meant that she had long practice in squashing rebellion. Though Gussie, who had dressed her mother before her, had all the boldness of a member of the family.
“I am resolved, Gussie. A turban, if you please.”
“You’ll look a proper quiz!” Gussie retorted. “Not that you don’t already, with that high neck.”
“That’s the idea,” Cleo said, mustering patience. “I plan to be a wallflower while living in London, and it’s important to dress for the role.” She gave her maid an apologetic smile. “My appearance won’t reflect your abilities.”
“You look like a crow as got his head stuck into a red paint pot.”
“I am in mourning,” Cleo pointed out.
“Your mother—heaven rest her—has been gone almost these ten months, so half mourning at the most. Your mourning gowns were respectable but never frumpish.” Gussie sucked in a dramatic breath. “It’s more than I can bear.”
“You must bear it, just as I must bear the tiresome series of events that makes up the London Season,” Cleo said. “I promised my mother I would debut. But that doesn’t mean I have to collect a train of followers who will waste my time. The obvious solution is to become a wallflower.”
“Barbarous,” Gussie moaned. But she began poking through a trunk to the side of the dressing table. “The only turban we have is a Mameluke cap, out of date these three years!”
“Think of it as a new role. I couldn’t have a better maid, given your background in the theater,” Cleo said encouragingly.
“You as a wallflower is a casting choice that I would never make. You was never meant to be a wallflower.” Gussie straightened, holding a limp length of gray fabric. “I didn’t care for this cap even when your mother dressed it up with feathers.”
“Costumes make the role,” Cleo reminded her. “Just think of how many plump Henry VIIIs turn out to be lean and hungry without their padding.”
“What of your grandfather?” Gussie demanded, shaking out the layers of gray muslin that made up the turban. “The viscount will probably be mortified to find you looking like a quiz. You know how your mother regretted being estranged from him. Mrs. Lewis would want you to make the old gentleman happy, especially since you still haven’t managed to meet him.”
Gussie’s right, her mother announced, deep in the recesses of Cleo’s mind. Cleo had been somewhat dismayed to find that in the months after Julia’s death, some errant part of her memory persistently offered up her mother’s commentary.
It was because Cleo missed her so much, of course. Julia had dazzled: clever, witty, beautiful. Erratic, but always entertaining.
“I’ll wear an ordinary gown to meet him tonight,” Cleo promised. “He and I have exchanged several letters. I warned the viscount that I have no wish to marry, and that I plan to be a wallflower when I join him at society events. He indicated that he will happily sit with me at the side of the room.”
From what Cleo had gleaned through their correspondence, her grandfather, Viscount Falconer, was lonely and desperately sad about Julia’s death. Unfortunately, his daughter hadn’t bothered to stay in touch with her family after she married—and then it was suddenly too late. Julia had died without even knowing that her mother had passed away a few years ago.
One of Julia’s last wishes had been that her parents would launch their granddaughter into society, a prospect that Cleo did not find exciting. She would prefer to spend her time expanding Lewis Commodes into one of the most powerful business concerns in Europe, as well as learning French, improving her vocabulary, and visiting Paris once Napoleon was evicted.
The prospect of joining the viscount for the Season didn’t make her nervous. Julia might have been a free spirit, but she periodically recalled that she was the daughter of a viscount. Cleo had mastered ladylike comportment by the age of ten.
Yet even at that age, Cleo had preferred to shadow her father in his office rather than practice quadrilles with a dance master imported from London to Manchester at huge expense. A yawning feeling of boredom loomed at the very thought of accompanying her grandfather to one ball, let alone night after night of them.
Gussie was entertaining no such foibles. “You can try to be a wallflower.” She started to fit the cap over the hair coiled at Cleo’s neck. “It’ll never work. It’ll be like when I played the flower seller in My Fairest Lady! You’ll walk into a ballroom. There across the room you’ll see a tall man with piercing eyes—”
“I’ll promptly look the other way,” Cleo interrupted. “Don’t forget that Reggie Bottleneck played the hero, Gussie, and he got two women with child, though the production only had a four-month run.”
