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Ellie added more force to her words, repeating, “She didn’t choose. She’s unwell.”
The Dowager looked Ellie up and down.
“You appear perfectly well. You are twins. If you’re well, she’s well.”
Ellie flung up her hands.
“You’re unreasonable.”
“That is the right of a Duchess.”
Ellie shrugged and reached for the door, disgruntled that their ruse hadn’t worked and annoyed with the Dowager Duchess.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Ellie froze, hand on the latch.
“Back inside?”
“Certainly not. Not until I make up my mind.”
Ellie turned back.
“Make up your mind?”
The horrible woman couldn’t mean to turn her in for impersonating a member of the peerage, could she?
“If you’ll be of use to me.”
Ellie shook her head, confusion overtaking her earlier irritation.
“I cannot imagine what you mean.”
The Dowager’s cobalt eyes narrowed.
“Your sister tasked you with deceiving me?”
Ellie grimaced, but there seemed no reason to issue a denial.
Nodding, the Dowager continued, “Then she wishes you to succeed. She prefers that you spend time with me, rather than she.” Ellie shrugged, unwilling to affirm the Dowager’s accusations. “Well, then, so long as Elizabeth May feels that I am sufficiently duped, she will be pleased with you. Am I correct?”
“I suppose,” Ellie muttered.
“I’m willing to assist you in ensuring your sister’s good graces.”
Lizzy May wouldn’t rescind her good graces, as the Dowager put it, over Ellie’s failure. She would be sad, though, to be found out. Ellie worried her lower lip with her teeth.
“First, you will desist in that practice. Duchesses do not bite their lips.”
Ellie pulled her lip from her teeth, many similar, if less lofty, reprimands by her mother ringing through her mind. Young ladies did not bite at their lips, or their nails, or toy with their hair. If they wished to impress gentlemen, it was best if they hardly moved at all outside of dancing.
“First?” Ellie ventured.
The Dowager nodded, amplifying the creases in her neck.
“I require a properly companionable Duchess of Aspen to parade before my associates, to prove that all is well in our family. I assume you are capable of an appropriate level of amiability?”
Though unsure what the Dowager might consider appropriate in a level of amiability, Ellie nodded. “And?”
