“Yes, I heard, but chose to pretend I didn’t. Your blushes were more than enough. At least one of them should probably be chained up in Bedlam, or else gelded. Why didn’t I notice this when you were in town last week?”
“The second volume of my supposed exploits only surfaced once I was gone back to the country. When Prinny first honored me I was treated rather well, pointed to, yes, spoken to—more than a few wishing to shake my hand, clap me on the back, introduce their daughters to me. The added attention brought to me by the appearance of Volume One came as a jolt, especially when it somehow fostered a nearly unnatural interest from the ladies. It’s Volume Two, though—all this business about my supposed heroics since returning to England—which has seemed to raise quite another emotion besides simple gratitude. It was bad enough when I first returned. Crowds did tend to gather. But this is the first time I’ve actually had to run from them. Things can’t continue this way, Darby, they just can’t.”
“True. Only imagine what it would be like if your blackmailer makes good on his threat—the one I don’t quite understand and apparently am not allowed to know, even as I am applied to for assistance. You’d have to emigrate. The admiration of the mob has always been known to turn into hatred at the drop of a pin.”
“The thought has crossed my mind, yes. But in the meantime, let’s go find us both a bootblack.”
“And after that, a bird and a bottle,” Darby agreed. “But I’m not a demanding sort. I’m willing to make do without the bird.”
DANIELLA FOSTER, VARIOUSLY known to her family as Dany, the Baby or, not all that infrequently, the Bane of Mama’s Existence, eyed the purple silk turban perched on a wooden stand in the corner of the fitting room. It felt as if she’d been there for a small eternity, and she’d already inspected most every inch of the crowded room at the back of the dress shop.
She wasn’t bored, because Dany was never bored. She was interested in everything around her, curious about the world in general, which had led her, in her youth, to getting down on the muddy ground to be nose to nose with an earthworm, all the way up to the present, which just happened to include wondering how it would feel to wear a turban. Would it itch? Probably, but how could she know for certain if she didn’t try?
“I still say it’s pretty,” she announced, “and would fit me perfectly.”
Her sister, Marietta, Countess of Cockermouth, just now being pinned into the last new gown she’d commissioned, did not agree. “I’ve told you, Dany, purple is reserved for dowagers, as are turbans. No, don’t touch it.”
“Why not?” Dany plucked the turban from its stand. “That doesn’t seem fair, you know,” she said, demonstrating her version of fairness as she lowered the thing onto her newly cropped tumble of red-gold hair. “Do you see that? The color very nearly matches my eyes.”
“Your eyes are blue.”
“Not in this turban, they’re not. Look.”
Dany stepped directly in front of her sister, who was a good eight inches taller than her at the moment, as she was standing on a round platform for the fittings.
Marietta frowned. “Some would say you’re a witch, you know. That thing should clash with your hair, what you left of it when you had that mad fit and took a scissors to it. Your skin is too pale, your eyes are ridiculously large and your hair is... I’m surprised Mama didn’t have an apoplexy. Yet you...yes, Dany, you look wonderful. Petite, and fragile, and innocent as any cherub. You always look wonderful. You don’t know how to appear as anything less than winsome and adorable. It’s one of the things I like least about you.”
Dany went up on tiptoe and kissed her sister’s cheek. “Thank you, Mari. But you know I don’t hold a candle to your serene beauty. Why, it took only a single look at you across the floor at Almacks for Oliver to fall madly and hopelessly and eternally in love with— Oh, Mari, don’t cry.”
Turning to the seamstress, who was looking at both of them curiously, and Marietta’s maid, who was already hunting a handkerchief in her mistress’s reticule, Dany quickly asked the women to please leave them alone for a bit.
“Increasing, is the countess, and good for her,” the seamstress said, nodding her gray head toward the maid. “They gets like that, you know, all weepy and such for no reason at all. I’ll be certain to leave plenty of fabric for lettin’ out the seams.”
“I’m not—”
“Crying,” Dany interjected quickly, squeezing Marietta’s hands so tightly her sister winced. “No, darling, of course you’re not crying. We neither of us think any such thing.” Then she winked at the seamstress, who reluctantly let the drape fall shut over the doorway, she and the maid on the other side of it. Let the woman think Mari was increasing. Anything was better than the real reason her sister had turned into a watering pot. “You were going to blurt out the truth, weren’t you?” she asked—perhaps accused—as she helped her sister down from the hemming platform.
“I most certainly was not. I’m still wondering what on earth prompted me to say anything to you. I must have suffered a temporary aberration of the mind.”
“No,” Dany said flatly as she watched her sister gingerly lower herself onto a chair, making sure she didn’t encounter any pins on the way down. “You did that when you wrote those silly letters to your secret admirer. And Mama says you’re the sensible one, and I’m to imitate you in all you do. But you know what, Mari? I would have at least asked my admirer’s name. Oh, here, take this, and blow your nose,” she ended, fishing an embroidered hankie from her own reticule and all but shoving it in her sister’s face.
“Lower your voice, Dany.” Marietta looked left to right and back again, as if making certain no one was hiding in the cluttered room, possibly taking notes, and then whispered, “And it wasn’t my fault. All the married ladies of the ton have secret admirers. It’s just silly fun. Especially when our husbands desert us to go off to hunting lodges and gambling parties and whatever it is gentlemen who wish to avoid their wives call amusement.”
Dany replaced the turban on its stand. It had been interesting to see how she looked in the thing, but it definitely was beginning to itch. When she became a dowager she would make sure all her turbans were lined with soft cotton.
“Is that so? And is it all still silly fun for you now that your admirer is demanding five hundred pounds for his silence, his promise to return your notes to you? Is that just another part of the game?”
Marietta blew her nose none too delicately. “You know it isn’t. I don’t have five hundred pounds, Dany, and Oliver will be home in a fortnight. Oh, this is all his fault. If he’d only paid me more attention. It used to be I couldn’t budge him out of my bed, but—no, don’t listen to me, Dany. You’re an unmarried woman.”
“True, but I’m not still in the nursery. Oliver is sadly lacking in romance, isn’t that it?”
Her sister’s shoulders slumped. “He...he forgot my birthday. He went traipsing off to Scotland with his ramshackle friends, and totally forgot my birthday. Our first year together he bought me diamond eardrops, the second a ruby bracelet and the third a three-strand pearl necklace. Now? Now nothing.” She looked up at Dany, her blue eyes awash in tears. “I don’t want to be a wife, Dany. He’s clearly bored, having a wife. I want to be his love.”
Dany motioned for her sister to stand up, and began helping her out of the gown. “I remember when you nearly called off the wedding.”
“That was all Dexter’s fault,” Marietta pointed out as she bent her knees, her arms straight up over her head, and allowed Dany to remove the gown. “And we don’t talk about that.”