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‘Do not be pert, Isobel. It ill becomes a young woman of your age.’
‘Yes, Mama. There is no illicit romance for you to worry about.’ Not now.
‘We are at Madame le Clare’s. Now kindly do not make an exhibition of yourself complaining about fittings.’
‘No, Mama. I will co-operate and I will enter into this Season, fully. But this is the last time. After this summer, if I am not betrothed, I will not undertake another.’
‘Oh!’ Lady Bythorn threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Ungrateful girl! Do you expect me to wait for grandchildren until Frederick is finally old enough to marry?’
The guilt clutched like a hand around her heart. Mama would be a perfect grandmother, she loved small children. She would adore Annabelle and Annabelle would love her. ‘I am afraid so, Mama. Thank you, Travis,’ she added to the groom who was putting the steps down and remaining impassive in the face of his mistress’s indiscreet complaints.
Isobel followed her mother into the dress shop, sat down and proceeded to show every interest in the fashion plates laid out in front of her, the swatches fanned out on the table and the lists of essential gowns her mother had drawn up.
‘You have lost weight, my lady,’ Madame declared with the licence of someone who had been measuring the Jarvis ladies for almost ten years.
‘Then make everything with ample seams and I will do my best to eat my fill at all the dinner parties,’ Isobel said lightly. ‘Do you think three is a sufficient number of ballgowns, Mama?’
‘I thought you were not—that is, order more if you like, my dear.’ Her mother blinked at her, obviously confused by this sudden change of heart.
One way or another it would be her last Season—either a miracle would occur and she would be courted by a man who proved to be outstandingly tolerant, deeply understanding and eligible enough to please her parents or she would be lying in a stock of gowns she could adapt for the years of spinsterhood to come.
‘Aha! All is explained! Lady Isobel is in love,’ the Frenchwoman cried, delighted with this deduction.
Isobel simply said, ‘And two riding habits.’ She felt empty of emotion. That had to be a good thing. It meant she could lead a hollow life and indulge in all its superficial pleasures for a few months: clothes, entertainment, flirtation. It would satisfy Mama, at least for a while, and it would be
something to do, something to fill the void that opened in front of her.
‘I am not certain I quite approve of Lady Leamington,’ Lady Bythorn remarked two weeks later as the queue of carriages inched a few feet closer to the red carpet on the pavement outside the large mansion in Cavendish Square. ‘She strikes me as being altogether too lax in the people she invites to her balls, but, on the other hand, there is no doubt it will be a squeeze and all the most fashionable gentlemen will be there.’
Isobel contented herself with smoothing the silver net that draped her pale blue silk skirts. A shocking squeeze would mean plenty of partners to dance with, many fleeting opportunities for superficial, meaningless flirtation to give the illusion of obedience to her mother. In large, crowded events she felt safe, hidden in the multitude like one minnow in a school of fish.
Following the scandal of Lord Andrew’s arrest and subsequent disappearance to his country estates, she found herself of interest to virtually everyone she met. Men she had snubbed before seemed eager to try their luck with her again, young ladies gasped and fluttered and wanted to know all about how ghastly it had been. The matrons nodded wisely over the sins of modern young men and how well dear Lady Isobel was bearing up.
‘I do not care any more, so I have suddenly become attractive,’ she said wryly to Pamela Monsom who stopped for a gossip when they met in the ladies’ retiring room. Pamela had been one of the few friends who had stood by her in the aftermath of the scandal, writing fiercely to say that she did not believe a word of it and that men were beasts.
‘It is not just that,’ Pamela said as she studied her, head on one side. ‘Although you are thinner you also look more…I don’t know. More grown up. Sophisticated.’
‘Older,’ Isobel countered.
‘Oh, look.’ Pamela dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘See who has just come in!’
‘Who?’ Isobel pretended to check her hem so she could turn a little and observe the doorway. ‘Who is that?’
The lady who had just entered was exceedingly beautiful in a manner that Isobel could only describe as well preserved. She might have been any age above thirty-five at that distance—tall, magnificently proportioned, with a mass of golden-brown hair caught up with diamond pins to match the necklace that lay on her creamy bosom.
She swept round, catching up the skirts of her black gown, and surveyed the room. The colour was funereal, but Isobel had never seen anything less like mourning. The satin was figured with a subtle pattern and shimmered like the night sky with the diamonds its stars.
‘That, my dear, is the Scarlet Widow,’ Miss Monsom hissed. ‘I have never been this close before—Mama always rushes off in the opposite direction whenever she is sighted. I think she must have had a fling with Papa at some point.’ She narrowed her eyes speculatively. ‘One can quite see what he saw in her.’
For the first time in days Isobel felt something: recognition, apprehension and a flutter very like fear. The wide green eyes found her and she knew Pamela was right: this was the Dowager Marchioness of Faversham, Giles’s mother.
The lush crimson lips set into a hard line and the Widow stalked into the room.
‘She is coming over here!’ Pamela squeaked. ‘Mama will have kittens!’
Isobel found she was on her feet. Her own mother would be the one needing the smelling bottle when she heard about this. ‘Lady Faversham.’ She dropped a curtsy suitable for the widow’s rank.
‘Are you Lady Isobel Jarvis?’ The older woman kept her voice low. It throbbed with emotion and Isobel felt every eye in the retiring room turn in their direction as ladies strained to hear.
