‘My poor child!’ said that lady gently. ‘It is not nearly as bad as you think.’
‘It is p-perfectly h-horrid,’ Maidie uttered unsteadily. ‘I look just like a marmalade cat! And when L-Lord Delagarde sees it, he will undoubtedly show me the d-door.’
Lady Hester’s eyes danced, but she refrained from laughing. ‘He will do no such thing, I promise you. Besides, we will have you looking altogether respectable before he has an opportunity to see it.’
A faint surge of hope lit Maidie’s breast. ‘Can—can anything be done about it?’
‘Assuredly.’
‘There now, you see, my love,’ said Miss Wormley comfortingly. But it was she who whisked her handkerchief from her sleeve, and fiercely blew her nose.
‘A good cut will make all the difference,’ Lady Hester said bracingly. ‘How fortunate that you have kept the length! We will have my own old coiffeur to you this very day.’
‘You don’t feel that I should do better to keep it the way I have been doing,’ Maidie suggested, with unusual diffidence. ‘Not that I care what anyone thinks of my appearance,’ she added hastily, and with scant regard for the truth, for in this aspect she was as sensitive as any young female, ‘but we must not forget that my object is to attract.’
‘No, we must not forget that,’ agreed Lady Hester, with an amused look.
‘Should we not keep it hidden?’ Maidie asked, too anxious to notice the hint of laughter. ‘It is far less noticeable when it is tightly banded to my head.’
‘Ah, but I have always found it to be an excellent thing to make a virtue of necessity. You will not, I know, wish to dupe any likely candidates for your hand into thinking that you are other than yourself.’
‘Oh. Er—no, of course not,’ agreed Maidie, with less than her usual assurance.
‘Since we must needs expose it, then,’ pursued Lady Hester, with only the faintest tremor in her voice, ‘let us by all means make the very best use of it that we can. I know that you will feel very much more confident once you see that it can be made to look quite pretty.’
Maidie was doubtful, but she bowed to Lady Hester’s superior knowledge. Besides, she found the whole matter of her hair so distressing that she knew her judgement on the subject to be unsound.
‘It is all the fault of my great-uncle Reginald,’ she said candidly, reviving a little of her usual spirit. ‘I know he could not help bequeathing me his hair, but as he was the only one of his family to catch it from my great-grandfather, it does come through him. I dare say he did not intend it, and it is the only thing he gave me for which I have any regret.’
‘His lordship was very fond of dear Maidie,’ confirmed the Worm helpfully. ‘But he saw nothing amiss with the colour of her hair, did he, my love?’
‘Yes, but he was a man. It made no difference to him.’
‘It need not be a problem to you, Maidie,’ Lady Hester assured her.
But Cerisette did not agree. When the customers turned to her once again, she broke into voluble protestation. Had she known in the beginning that mademoiselle was possessed of this so strong a head, assuredly she would not have shown her the pastels. Mademoiselle had shown good sense to refuse them. She could not risk her reputation upon mademoiselle appearing in anything but white. Fortunately, for the debutante, white was comme il faut.
‘Well, it is not comme il faut for me,’ declared Maidie stubbornly. ‘I cannot possibly wear white.’
In that case, returned Cerisette, drawing herself up, she could not possibly assist mademoiselle.
‘Dear me,’ said Lady Hester haughtily. ‘Then we shall take our custom elsewhere.’ Turning to Maidie, she smiled warmly upon her, murmuring reassuringly, ‘Come, child. I will not have you offended by this creature’s whim. Do not allow her to upset you. These French modistes are prone to take pets for the least little thing.’
But Maidie had turned mulish. She might be self-conscious about her hair, but she was not going to be driven ignominiously from Cerisette’s door. She resisted Lady Hester’s attempt to sweep her away.
‘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 enrich 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 that it is the height of bad taste to parade your rank and wealth?’
‘So it may be,’ said Maidie, unrepentant, ‘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!’ said Maidie. ‘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 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 crêpe gown of pale russet that picked up highlights in her extraordinary hair, and muslins both of peach and apricot that 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,’ protested Lady Hester.
‘That is as may be, but I refuse to parade around in a garment that would be 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 décolletage was positively unseemly, she insisted on trying it.
‘I am obliged to admit that 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.’
She was right, Maidie did not care. If something could indeed be done about her hair, she began to think that she might not fare so very ill, after all.
‘I never thought I could look so well,’ she marvelled. Drawing a breath, she turned confidingly to Lady Hester. ‘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.’
Maidie fixed her with that wide-eyed