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He handed her over to Louisa as though delivering a fragile, dangerous object and turned to poor Mr Lyminge, who was lurking in the hallway, not quite wringing his hands.
‘It seems I must thank you, Lyminge, for rescuing us from the consequences of a serious oversight.’
‘I apologise for my presumption, my lord, but there did not appear to be any alternative.’
‘No, do not apologise. After all, if you had not stepped into the breach Lady Dersington would have had to give herself away.’ Jack’s expression when Lyminge lapsed into confused silence showed that he would not have put that past her, either.
Louisa was tugging at her sleeve. ‘Come upstairs, dear. You will want to change.’
Madelyn followed obediently, but she had no intention of removing her gown, of backing down now. She would take off her wreath, have Harper re-dress her hair and go down dressed just as she was. Let the guests have a good look at her clothes and her jewels.
‘Now, Harper, where is that pale yellow gown we bought from Madame de Grange’s?’ Louisa was flinging open doors in the dressing room without waiting for the maid to reply.
‘I am not changing, Louisa. Harper, please braid my hair into a coronet.’
‘But you cannot—’
‘Harper, please excuse us for five minutes.’
‘My lady.’ Harper bobbed a curtsy and went out.
‘As you just heard, Harper recognises the fact that I am now the Countess of Dersington. I am not going to wear the new gown and, much as I have appreciated your advice and support, Louisa, I am going to make my own decisions from now on.’
‘But you do not seem to understand,’ Lady Fairfield protested.
‘I understand that when I dress as I wish I have the confidence to face those people downstairs and to behave as I should. Please do not try to dissuade me. You have been such a good friend to me and I would hate to part on bad terms with you.’
Louisa sniffed into her handkerchief, then straightened her back. ‘I will tell Harper to come back and then I will go downstairs and see what I can do.’ She put her head to one side and peered at Madelyn through narrowed eyes. ‘Lady Dorothy Carstairs, who is a cousin of Lord Dersington, is one of the guests. She writes pieces for the Repository under the nom de plume “A Lady of Fashion”. Perhaps I can persuade her that you are starting a new trend.’ She peered distractedly into the mirror on the dressing table, took off her bonnet, patted her hair into place and hurried out.
‘Lady Fairfield is going to see if she can bring my style into fashion,’ Madelyn told Harper when the maid came in and began to unpin the wreath of flowers. She tried to focus on that and not on the memory of the nerve jumping in Jack’s cheek as he had stood beside her on the steps of the church, a smile fixed on his lips.
‘I think maybe that might happen when the ladies see the other gowns you’ve had made. They seem to be much more of a compromise between the old style and modern modes and they are very flattering and romantic.’ Harper began to make two plaits of hair from the sides to form into a crown, leaving the mass of Madelyn’s hair to fall down her back. ‘We will have to work on hairstyles, though, my lady—’ She broke off to concentrate on pinning the coronet into place. ‘There now. It’s a pity you’ll not be back in London for some weeks because you could wear your new fashions straight away and let everyone become used to them.’
It did feel like running away now. When Jack had proposed going into Suffolk for several weeks he had intended allowing the talk about the wedding to die down, but now she had caused such a stir, Madelyn wondered if that would work. But now sh
e must go downstairs, greet thirty members of the ton as they arrived and deal with their reactions. At least that would stop her wondering what Jack was going to say to her once they were alone.
* * *
He was waiting for her just inside the door of the drawing room where they would greet their guests. She could hear the sound of subdued voices from the dining room where the staff were putting the finishing touches to the wedding breakfast and there, just within sight in the hall, was Partridge in his best suit of clothes waiting to direct the footmen and announce each arrival.
‘Jack—’ He looked at her, frowning as though she was a cipher he could not read, then there was a sudden breeze and the front door was opened.
‘His Grace the Duke of Ospringe, Her Grace the Duchess of Ospringe, Viscount de la Salle, Lord James Howlett.’
‘As Charlie Truscott would say,’ Jack muttered, ‘we’re off.’
* * *
It was not as bad as it might have been, Madelyn concluded when the front door closed behind the last guest. Everyone had been polite, Jack had acted as though he entirely approved of her gown and only three people—all young men somewhat high flown on champagne—had asked him if he was practising jousting or had taken up falconry or had been measured for a suit of armour yet.
The ladies had been polite and curious and Lady Carstairs—‘Call me Dotty, dear, after all we’re cousins of some sort now’—had been the most friendly. Probably hoping to extract juicy titbits for her column, Madelyn thought warily. But she smiled and chatted and hoped she had managed to convey the impression that she dressed as she did because it suited her and not because she was some eccentric obsessed with the Middle Ages.
Then the Duke had asked Jack where they were going to spend their honeymoon and he had replied, ‘Dersington Mote.’
‘You bought it back as well as this place? Well done, Dersington, I like your attitude,’ the older man said. ‘Damn shame when old family properties are lost like that. Who had it, can I ask? They kept very quiet about it. My man had a look at it a while back, but heard the owners couldn’t get tenants, which made him wary.’ All the guests within earshot were unabashedly listening by then. Jack had expected the rumours about the estates to have spread far and wide, he had told her. Apparently not.
‘It came with my wife,’ Jack replied coolly. ‘That and all the Dersington estates.’
