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“One moment, if you please, ma’am.” She turned to the modiste. “Perhaps you are not aware, madame, that I am the daughter of the late Earl of Shurland. I am also extremely wealthy. Since I require an entirely new wardrobe for the Season, you might reflect on how much my custom could have enriched you.”
She was glad to see the shock gather in the woman’s face, and turned on her heel to march out before she could reply. Not much to her surprise, the modiste ran after her with a mouthful of apologies.
Maidie cut them short. “It makes no matter. Find me some gowns of suitable colours, and we shall say no more about it.”
The modiste made haste to comply. Clapping her hands, she scattered her assistants with a stream of instructions as Maidie turned back to Lady Hester, whose face was alight with laughter.
“Maidie, you are abominable! Don’t you know it is the height of bad taste to parade your rank and wealth?”
“So it may be, but that it is effective, you will scarcely deny.”
“Her great-uncle, you must know,” put in Miss Wormley with diffidence, “was a trifle eccentric. I am afraid he imbued her with some very improper notions.”
“Humdudgeon! Great-uncle may have been as eccentric as you please, but I must be ever grateful for his teachings. He could not abide shams, and nor can I.”
“Well, let us not fall into a dispute over him,” said Lady Hester pacifically. “Instead, we must bend our minds to the problem of gowning you appropriately.”
In the event, despite the new enthusiasm of Cerisette, it was Maidie and Lady Hester between them who selected the gowns to be made up which were most suited to her colouring. Maidie opted for a muslin of leaf-green, and a silk of dark blue. But her clever mentor bespoke a crepe gown of pale russet which picked up highlights in her extraordinary hair, and muslins both of peach and apricot which enhanced the brightness above.
But when Lady Hester and the modiste seized upon a pale lemon gown all over silver spangles, Maidie balked again. “Nothing would induce me to wear such a thing!”
“But you must have something suitable for a ball.”
“That is as may be, ma’am, but I refuse to parade around in a garment better employed upon the stage. It looks fit for a fairy—and I am certainly not that.”
To everyone’s astonishment, including her own, she fell in love instead with a creamy muslin gown covered in huge sprigs of lacy black. Despite the protestations of her elders that the decolletage was positively unseemly, she insisted on trying the sample, which the modiste’s chief assistant pinned to fit her form.
“I am obliged to admit it looks magnificent,” conceded Lady Hester, watching Maidie twirl before the mirror.
“It does take attention away from your hair,” offered Miss Wormley in a doubtful tone.
“It is hardly the garb of a debutante, but I dare say Maidie will not care for that.”
Lady Hester was right, Maidie did not care. If something could indeed be done about her hair, she began to think she might not fare so very ill, after all.
“I never thought I could look so well.” Drawing a breath, she turned confidingly to her sponsor. “I do begin to have a real hope of finding a man willing to marry me.”
“My dear Maidie,” came the dry response, “there was never the least doubt of that. With your fortune, there will be no shortage of suitors, even had we made no change at all in the matter of your dress.”
“Then why are we doing all this?”
Lady Hester burst into laughter. “How can you ask me? For the purpose of bringing Laurie to heel. We cannot do without him, and he can have no objection to be seen with you looking like this.”
“Which is as much as to say,” said Maidie, with a glint in her eye that boded no good to the absent Viscount, “he would not be seen dead with me otherwise.”
Chapter Four
Not until the early evening did Delagarde put in an appearance. He strode into the downstairs drawing-room where the ladies had gathered, as was the custom of the house before dinner, and stopped short, staring. Maidie, unable to help herself, had jumped up on his entrance, and now stood rooted to the spot, her heart unaccountably in her mouth.
She was arrayed in the dark blue silk which had been made up with rapidity, at Lady Hester’s request, by Cerisette’s sewing women and delivered that very afternoon, along with one of the selected day gowns. The evening gown had long, tight sleeves, and its folds fell simply from the high waist, but Maidie became acutely aware that its cut across the bosom was slightly lower than was quite seemly. Though this was as nothing to the anxiety which gripped her as she recalled her exposed locks. Until this moment, she had believed the cleverly wielded scissors in the hands of a master had worked wonders.
The thatch of ginger had been considerably thinned, a deal of it combed forward to fall in curling tendrils about her face. The rest, behind a bandeau of blue velvet from which two dark feathers poked into the air, fell lightly upon her shoulders, with some few ordered ringlets straying down her back.
In vain did Maidie remind herself she cared nothing for his lordship’s opinion. In vain did she recall the budding resentment she had experienced upon Lady Hester’s ill-considered scheme of bringing the Viscount to heel. The stunned expression in his face robbed her of all power over her emotions, until she realised he was staring, not at her deplorable hair, but at her costume.
Delagarde found his tongue. “What the devil is that?”
“Laurie!”
