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“Please say you’ll allow me to paint you,” said Lucy. “I’m having lessons from Master Rossetti and I’m becoming quite proficient with portraiture.” She turned glowing eyes to an oil portrait of her mother that hung on the wall. “That’s one of mine.”
“Modesty, Lucy,” said her mother.
“But it’s beautiful!” her daughter replied.
“It is indeed,” said Raven. “Both the subject and the painting.”
Lady Sterling smiled. “Flatterer.”
“Will you sit for me?” Lucy pressed Indy.
“We’ll see,” replied Indy noncommittally.
“Before you retire you must visit the music room to meet my friends.”
“I—”
“No excuses. Only for a moment. There’s something I want to show you.”
Indy exchanged a helpless glance with Raven as she was borne from the room by a tide of chattering femininity.
Lucy clutched her hand as if she were afraid Indy was a mythical unicorn and might bolt if the maiden relinquished her golden tether.
Her friends were arrayed in the music salon like spring flowers, in gowns of yellow, pink, and pale blue: a wash of pastels like a rainbow glowing with shimmering life, all chattering at once, their coiled, braided, and beribboned coiffures bobbing atop their youthful faces, all big eyes and rosy cheeks and dewy lips.
Only three of them—four with Lucy—but Indy felt surrounded by an army of girlish charms.
“Here she is,” announced Lucy, presenting Indy to the young ladies. “Lady India Rochester, she who hath brought the Rogue Duke up to scratch.”
Sighs and giggles met her dramatic pronouncement.
“Miss Lydia Wright, Lady Susan Granville, and Miss Francoise Pelletier.” The young ladies performed graceful curtsies as Lucy introduced them.
India bowed to them, she wasn’t much for curtsying, and her masculine greeting was met with more giggles and the tinkling chimes of eardrops and arm bangles against graceful necks and arms.
Indy had been young and carefree once, but she’d never been one for adornments or giggling.
Miss Francoise possessed the innate elegance and self-possession Indy had observed in many Frenchwomen, and her dark brown eyes assessed Indy with interest, and a hint of condescension. She’d obviously decided Indy, in her travel-worn cotton gown with messy curls piled atop her head, was no threat to her beauty.
Indy had never understood the constant rivalry certain females engaged in—always measuring their attractiveness and charms against their sisters.It isn’t a war, ladies, she wanted to say.We’re all in this together.
Miss Lydia, whose eyes were as blue and wide as a field of cornflowers, drew closer. “We’ve been speaking of nothing else since we heard the news.”
“We have wedding fever!” cried Lucy, gripping Indy’s hand fervently.
“However did you manage to keep the circumstance of your engagement secret for so long?” asked Miss Francoise.
“And how did you induce him to set a date at last?”
“It was simple,” said Indy with a shrug. “I told him that if he didn’t wed me soon, I’d perforate him with my dagger.”
“You didn’t,” exclaimed Lucy with a shocked expression.
“You have a dagger?” asked Miss Lydia, her eyes widening even further.
Indy drew her blade from under the fitted coat she wore.
The young ladies gasped and drew closer, the enormous puffed sleeves of their gowns fluttering like butterfly wings.
