He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again. “Right,” he said. “Right. I’ll have Humphrey ready a carriage for us.”
She let out a little squeak of protest. “Peter! I can’t be seen getting out of your carriage in the middle of the night!”
He bounded to his feet and approached her, took the tapes of her cloak in his hands and tied it for her. Then he pulled the hood up over her head, hiding her hair and shadowing her face, and grinned at her. “You won’t be.”
Chapter 15
Not the pink. Definitely not the pink. The scarlet, I think. The one that looks like blood. (Before you ask—yes, this is for the duke’s twelve-year-old sister. And no, he will not mind.)
—from Lady Selina Ravenscroft to Mrs. Maria Pierpoint, modiste, in response to fabric samples sent to Rowland house for her perusal in preparation for her wedding
Two days later, Selina stood on a small platform in a back room at her favorite dressmaker’s shop, wearing nothing but her undergarments and a feather on her head.
“No,” said Lydia decisively. She reached up to pluck at the feather, but between the platform and Selina’s six inches of height on her, her fingers caught nothing but air. “Not that one. Bend down. I should’ve had my mother come with us. You know she’s brilliant with millinery.”
“I agree,” said Daphne. “Not that one. She looks like a peacock.”
Selina’s sister-in-law sat on an upholstered armchair in thecorner, smiling so smugly that Selina was put in mind of a house cat with a feather dangling from its mouth.
Everyone, in fact, looked a trifle smug. Thomasin appeared delighted as she sorted through lace night rails and embroidered chemises more lurid than anything even Selina’s jaded eye had before encountered. Aunt Judith wore a distracted half smile as she busied herself with the dress that had just been removed from Selina’s person by the dressmaker. Even Mrs. Pierpoint, the modiste, had looked rather pleased with herself. From the hasty conversation Selina had overheard at her first fitting the day before, she understood that her wedding dress was to be made in one-tenth the time such a dress would typically require and cost thirty times as much.
Lydia, for her part, was grinning while she examined the options they’d acquired at the milliner for atop Selina’s head. A feather. A little cap made of fur. A bandeau of pale-blue forget-me-nots.
For Selina to wear at herwedding. Good Lord.
Selina was not quite sure how any of this had transpired, and if she focused very hard on all the details—on what slippers would adorn her feet and what they would serve for the wedding breakfast and who would collect the children—she could almost distract herself from the anxiety that swamped her at the thought of the potential consequences of this union.
“How about this?” Lydia held up a cake-like confection made of white satin roses and lace. “I think it’s a bonnet. I know you favor these enormous hats. Bend down.”
“Absolutely not.”
Lydia’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “You mean youdon’tfavor enormous hats? You could’ve fooled me. My goodness, Selina, so many secrets—first a coverttendrefor my former suitor and now an unrevealed preference for small headpieces—”
Daphne coughed a smothered laugh into her glove.
“I don’t—”
Oh God, what could she say? She certainly could not deny having harbored all sorts of illicit feelings for Peter Kent while shoving him in the direction of her closest friend. Not now, when she’d been caught with her shoe off and her arse in his hands in her brother’s music room.
Not now, when they were about to bemarried.
“I’m—” she tried again. “I’m so—”
Lydia laughed then, a real laugh, and dropped the cake hat on the ground to pull Selina down into an embrace. “I’m teasing! Don’t fret.”
“You don’t—mind?”
“Of course not, you ninny. I never wanted him. He talksfartoo much. My, you are absolutely crimson about the face!” Lydia pulled back and turned gleefully toward Selina’s relatives. “Crimson! Have you ever seen it?”
“Vermilion,” offered Daphne cheerfully. “She is the color of beetroot.”
“She is the color ofguilt.” This last was Aunt Judith, but Selina could hear the thread of amusement that laced her voice.
Thomasin set down her pile of shocking nightwear and tugged Selina down from the platform, lacing one arm about Selina’s waist. “My darling, ignore these three for a moment. What I want to know is—are you happy?”
Selina opened her mouth to reply, but no words emerged.
Was she happy? She had scarcely allowed herself to be. She thought perhaps she was: happy and afraid of that happiness. Afraid of how easily she could lose it all.
