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“She’ll know I’m not you.”
“How? We’re twins. It’s not as if she knows either of us. She’s seen to that.”
Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, Ellie teetered between the life she’d been dreaming of and remaining in the Duke’s beautiful home, possibly practicing the pianoforte if it didn’t disturb Lizzy May.
“I should stay here and care for you. I could play for you, or read you a book.”
“I’m perfectly able to read. It’s not my eyes that are unwell.” Lizzy May grimaced, as if her words reminded her of her ailment. She clutched an arm about her middle. “Ug.”
“Are you going to be sick again?”
Looking decidedly green, Lizzy May clamped her mouth closed and shook her head.
“Are you certain?”
“I don’t see how,” she gritted out. “There can’t be anything more to come up.”
Ellie worried her lower lip, watching her sister in concern.
Lizzy May sucked in deep breaths through her nose. Finally, she dropped her arm, no longer clutching her middle as if to hold her insides where they were.
“Ellie, please do this for me. I’ll call my maid and you can wear my dress and the Dowager need never know.” Lizzy May looked up, grey eyes seeming huge in her wan face. “Please?”
“Oh, very well. I wanted to go out, anyhow.”
“Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me. Help me up. I’ll call my maid.”
Lizzy May made to struggle to her feet.
Ellie stood, heat shooting through her calves at being freed from her crouch, and reached down to help her sister. She pulled Lizzy May up.
“Oh,” Lizzy May added, pulling free to fumble with her fingers. “You’ll have to wear my ring.”
Ellie accepted the heavy, almost grotesquely ornate ring with a fresh surge of doubt.
“I know,” Lizzy May said. “It’s hideous, but apparently the Duchess of Aspen has worn it for centuries. Matthew practically dragged it from his mother’s finger, so I have to wear it.”
“Must it have quite so many gems in so many colours?”
“I suppose, with so many colours, it at least goes with everything.” Lizzy May swayed.
Ellie shoved the ring on her finger so she could wrap an arm about her sister.
“Let’s get you back to bed.”
“Thank you.”
As she helped her sister across the room, Ellie reflected that if the garish ring went with everything, at least it would complement her look of, ‘Miss nobody impersonating a Duchess’. And hopefully well enough that her deception would never be discovered.
Chapter Two
Samuel Carmichael alighted from the carriage, pushed his spectacles up on his nose, and trotted up the steps of his family’s London home. He tried to calm his worry over his mother’s summons. He hadn’t breakfasted with her that morning, but he’d dined with her the evening before, and escorted her to a recital the night before that.
Few things could have happened between the previous evening and that afternoon to necessitate urgency. The last time she’d felt the need to summon him directly from an afternoon of reading at The Temple of the Muses, he’d returned home to find his father’s battle with illness had reached a tragic, yet predictable, end.
The note he’d received bid him hurry in his mother’s hand, so she must be well. His older brother, however, led the life of a rakehell. Gambling, racing, betting, brawling, bedding the sort of women who carried sicknesses, such as the one that had laid their father low.
Therefore, Samuel’s worry as he flung open the front door was for Richard.
