“Do they still exist? The ones my father found?”
She shrugged, turning back to him, her eyes lively once more. “Yes, back to the present, please. I never saw them, so I can’t say they still do or don’t exist. But as I said, Guy well might. He only returned to town a few days ago after taking the waters in Bath, or some such hopeful nonsense.”
“You can’t make him suspicious.”
“I know what I’m about, pet. Lord knows I’ve been doing it long enough. We’ll speak of past times, reminisce about ancient glories and conquests, friends still aboveground and those now looking at the grass from the wrong side, as it were. I’ll tease and pet and pat him as if my memories of those days are fond, as he mostly likely needs to believe. I’ll flatter the toothless old roué, pretend he is still capable of rising to what he most patently is not. If he doesn’t fall asleep in his pudding, I’ll have some information for you tomorrow.”
“And you’ll be careful?” Gideon knew he couldn’t dissuade her from what she planned.
Trixie tipped her head and smiled. “Really, pet, there’s no need for concern. What could possibly go wrong?”
CHAPTER TEN
JESSICA DRESSED FOR DINNER in one of her new gowns, with both Mildred and Doreen fussing over her the entire time, admiring her undergarments, squealing in delight when she at last chose the dusky-rose over the sky-blue, saying one couldn’t possibly be better than the other but wasn’t it a marvel how the rose went so well with Jessica’s red locks. “And who would have thought any such thing?”
Gideon would, Jessica answered silently as she sat in front of the dressing table while Mildred, who was proving a marvel (although not in the sense Adam would have meant), handled the curling stick with flair, and not once did Jessica have to remind her that pins were to be put into hair and not her scalp.
Her mind traveled back in time for a moment, recalling Alice, her maid and friend of a lifetime ago. Jessica knew she had been a petted and pampered child, lacking in nothing, at least in a material way. She’d had a lovely roof over her head, had never known what it was like to worry about where her next meal or bed would come from. She had missed her mother, loathed her stepmother, enjoyed spoiling her half brother, could say she barely knew her father…but she had been content. Indeed, she’d been looking forward to her first Season, sure she’d be at least a moderate success. Fear had no place in her life.
That she’d been through what she’d been forced to endure these past five years and survived it all might be considered something of a miracle, and to once again be sitting in the lap of luxury very nearly erased those sad memories from her mind. Truly, it was amazing how adaptable a person could be. Although it was much easier, she knew, to accustom oneself to luxury than to the catch-as-catch-can existence of those five long years between her girlhood and the woman she had been forced to become.
As Mildred fussed with the trio of curls she was arranging to fall just so on Jessica’s left shoulder, Doreen gathered up mountains of tissue and paper and string now that all of the new clothing had been carefully put away in drawers and cupboards and armoires. Jessica’s own wardrobe, from shifts to shoes to shawls, had been playfully argued over, with the shoes going to Mildred, who said she could stuff tissue in the toes while Doreen couldn’t stuff her toes into the toes. Doreen laid claim to the night rails, Mildred the bonnets, and nobody begged to please be given the black gowns Jessica had worn in the gaming room.
“His lordship asked to be informed as to your choice for the evening, ma’am,” Doreen told her when she’d returned to the bedchamber after disposing of the wrappings. “I was just running down that footman with the Adam’s apple big as a lemon, to get him to help me carry everything down to the kitchen fire, when one of that pair of blasted mongrels started jumping up at me, trying to get a bit of trailing string, And I said to stop, and it wouldn’t, and the lemon boy—”
“His name is Vernon,” Mildred interrupted. “And wouldn’t a person with a hulking great Adam’s apple have one the size of an apple, not a lemon?”
“Don’t interrupt her, Mildred,” Jessica warned, smiling. “She might decide to start again at the beginning.”
Fortunately, the Irishwoman did not. “All right, then, Vernon. My goodness, Mildred, but you’re a stickler. At any rate, as Mr. Borders says I should keep things from getting so long they grow whiskers, I scolded that dog something terrible, but it still would persist, and did so until his lordship himself called it to heel. That’s when he saw me and asked what it was that you were thinking of wearing tonight, and I told him you were going back and forth with the rose and the blue for the longest time, but in the end decided on the rose, and he said to follow him, so I did. I followed him all the way to the back of the house without once taking a turn or a back stair, and then he put out his hand so graciouslike and had me precede him into his study. That’s what he said. He said, ‘Doreen, please precede me into the study whilst I fetch something.’”
“Now that’s a lie. Lordships don’t say fetch,” Mildred protested as she stood behind her mistress, so that Jessica gave her a sharp elbow in the thigh as the last curls were set in place.
Doreen sighed in exasperation. “They shouldn’t say precede, either, to my mind, because I didn’t know what it meant for the life of me, but once he told me I did, so I preceded him into the study and then cooled me heels, not touching a thing, I swear it, and not even so much as looking at anything too hard, all those lovely things, until he came back with this.”
At last, finally, and not a moment too soon for the consideration of Mildred’s and Jessica’s nerves, the maid produced a blue velvet-covered oblong box from her apron pocket, all but tapping Jessica on the nose with it. “I didn’t look. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I just curtsied, twice over, and ran hotfoot back up here. Using the back stairs, as I knows my place, even if his lordship don’t. Lemon boy, that is, Vernon, he’d already taken away the wrappings. And the dog. His name is Brutus, which isn’t a very kindly name for a dog, is it? Call a thing a brute, and it will be, just to make you happy. You mark my words on that one!”
Jessica had stopped listening. She took the box from Doreen and eyed it for some moments before daring to press on the round button clasp. The lid sprang open to reveal a choker made up of four strands of perfectly matched pearls, their ivory luster faintly shaded with pink. In the center of those pearls was a circlet of much smaller pearls surrounding—
“Well, now, would you look at that,” Mildred said, leaning in close. “It’s a lady’s face.”
“It’s a cameo, Mildred. Carved out of some sort of shell, I believe, so that the lady’s profile is much lighter than the background. Many of them are made in Italy. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is that. She looks like an angel, even if we can only see half her face. But seeing as it looks like it cost the earth and more, you’d think they’d carve the whole face.”
“She’s in profile, and I’m convinced that was done on purpose,” Jessica said, handing the necklace to Mildred. Thank goodness the two women were here; Jessica couldn’t dare to cry, or else they’d both fuss and wonder.
He’d chosen the perfect piece of jewelry to match a perfect gown, one of nearly two dozen perfect gowns and riding habits and capes and shawls and—Was there anything the man couldn’t do?
Mildred carefully aligned the necklace against the exact center of Jessica’s throat and then squinted over the small clasp. “There! Now let’s go see what all we’ve done.”
Jessica dutifully stood up, needlessly smoothing down the folds of her gown, because it didn’t bunch when creased, as her black had done, but simply flowed,