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“From the skin out,” Jemima crowed as she set a smaller case on one of the chairs that ranged around the vanity. “Now, Mary, may I ask you to do Miss Templeton’s hair? Very good.” Felicity took the seat in front of the vanity table, and Mary brushed out her drying tresses.
“What is this about a bathing room?” Jemima asked while she reviewed the settling of the clothes in the cupboards and presses and moved boxes about.
“An innovation of His Grace’s,” said O’Mara. “Lowell Hall will soon contain one in every wing, if not every suite.”
“It is a room in which hot water pipes through the wall and into a large receptacle, rather like a horse trough.” Felicity smiled at the analogy, and Mary giggled. “It is an invention the duke discovered whilst on his travels these past five years. I am astonished that the dukedom could spare him.”
“Lucky old duke,” Jemima said. “I understand that you have made a tour of the estate.”
“I rode about on my own, and today His Grace took me ’round to see as much as we could see. Miss O’Mara, I believe Juventus and Jupiter are off their feed. Both were not at their best today, they were all but asleep.”
“You wouldna want ’em otherwise, Your Grace,” said Mary, who winced before anyone could shout her name.
“Such fine Roman names,” Jemima said and then winced as well.
Felicity slapped a hand on the vanity. “Have you heard of such a thing as Lupercalia, Lady Coleman? Would it be observed up in Northumberland?”
“How quaint that sounds. Oh!” Jemima threw her hands in the air rather dramatically. “I must not neglect to gift you with an innovation of my own.” Jemima presented Felicity with a piece of graphite, around which had been fashioned a sleeve made of tin.
“Oh! This is clever.” Felicity inspected Jemima’s offering; even in something as small as this, it had a certain flair, the metal embossed with imagery that looked like—like pawprints? “Have you pockets in that skirt? Everything should have pockets. Even ball gowns.”
“I will take that under advisement.” Jemima turned to the little maid. “Oh, Mary, that is a lovely chignon, so full and flattering. And how fortunate that you did not need the hot tongs, as Miss Templeton’s hair has a natural curl all its own. I have brought a hair ornament…” She went off muttering and chattering and unearthed from a bandbox a ribbon studded with sparkling crystals. “This is a perfect match to what I have in mind.” She handed the ribbon to Mary, who took it without demur.
The little maid dressed Felicity’s hair so its natural wave showed to the utmost advantage and carefully wove the spangled ribbon around her crown. Felicity turned her head to and fro. “It looks like stars have been caught in my hair.”
“Just the impression I wished it to give. But before we carry on…” Jemima opened the small case beside her and withdrew several books, holding them to her chest. “I know you struggled to make time for reading in the past, but I have brought several new novels. I so wish you would read them. I have no one to discuss them with!”
“Oh, Jem—Lady Coleman.” Felicity scowled at the titles and read them aloud. “The Castle of Lupenbach…The Beastly Baron Bardolph…andThe Mysteries of Woldolpho. Oh dear.”
“Ooh!” Mary said. “I like the sound of that. If only I had me letters.”
Felicity frowned. “I can lend any and all to the servants’ hall, if there is someone to read aloud. I would also be happy to organize a tutor.”
“We used to have a tutor,” Mary piped up, “but he’s long gone.”
“Not gone the way of the vicar, I hope?”
Mrs. Birks cleared her throat and cast a glance at O’Mara. “His Grace had ideas about education and suchlike for the lower orders, and that old tutor didn’t agree and took himself off.”
“I thought the children in the village might be in school. It would have explained their absence.”
Mary tucked in the end of the ribbon and secured it with a pin. “Oh, we’ve no need for no school, as there ain’t no—”
“Mary!” Mrs. Birks, O’Mara,andJemima hushed the maid.
“If I may be left to help Miss Templeton dress?” Jemima asked. “Mary, you’ve done so well with Her Grace’s hair.” Mary pulled a few more curls to dangle around Felicity’s neck. “Mrs. Birks, if you would ask Mr. Coburn to send up a footman on the half of the hour?” She turned to the chamberlain and simply said, “O’Mara.” Jemima led them to the door of the dressing room. Mary rushed ahead, Mrs. Birks dropped her chin to her shoulder, and O’Mara turned in the hallway.
“How did you get those books past me?” Felicity heard the chamberlain hiss.
“I am skilled at hiding what needs concealment,” Jemima replied and closed the door in O’Mara’s face.
“What news from Town?” Felicity asked. “Have the gossip rags bequeathed me with a sobriquet?”
Jemima joined Felicity and fussed with a few curls upon taking a stool at her side. “I have not been sociable these last few days, nor taken the papers. This is nothing but a nine days’ wonder, as the phrase goes, although of course only four have passed—”
“Jem. Do not cozen me.”
“You are known as Fallen Felicity,” Jemima said, “and Lowell as the Dastardly Duke. Or the Duped Duke, if they are of the view that you worked nefarious wiles to entice him to carry you away. And you have fled to the Arctic Circle or, worse, America. Where you are even now preparing to present him with a love child.”
