“And so you should, Miss George—catch your death one day, out like a savage in this weather, you mark my words! Now, get along upstairs. I’ll fetch the hot water to you at once.”
“And when you’ve had your bath,” Cal said as the girl turned to go, “you will change into one of the two new dresses you’ll find in your bedchamber.”
“Dresses! I’m not wearing any dresses!”
“Suit yourself, but no dress, no dinner,” Cal said indifferently. “I’ll see you before dinner in the sitting room.”
She gave him a mulish look. From the kitchen wafted the scent of roasting beef and Yorkshire pudding. Apple pie and clotted cream to follow. He’d wager she was ravenous. From the look of her she’d been living rough, sleeping in some old shed or haystack. There was straw in her hair. He wanted to throttle the stubborn little wretch for her foolishness.
The thought occurred to him, not for the first time, that she would have made a superb soldier. He squashed it.
She’d learn.
Georgiana entered the sitting room half an hour later, wearing one of the dresses. Her skin looked fresh and clean; her short, dark hair, still damp, curled attractively around her face. A little attention to grooming and deportment and she’d be a beauty.
“I hope you’re satisfied. I look ridiculous!” she snapped as soon as she saw him.
Cal stood as she entered. He shook his head. “You don’t, you know. You look very pretty. You look better as a girl than as a boy.” It was true. As a boy she looked skinny and lanky, but somehow the dress transformed that into a slender, deceptively delicate femininity.
She scowled horribly at him and flung herself into one of the overstuffed chairs in front of the fireplace. She wentto cross her legs, as she usually did in her breeches, and discovered that dresses didn’t allow for such freedom of movement. She swore.
Cal was hard put not to laugh out loud. He controlled the impulse. Treating her with the dignity of a grown-up lady was the only way to reconcile her to her new state.
“Would you care for a sherry?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, so he poured her one anyway. When he turned to give it to her he found her standing behind him, still scowling. She took it, tossed it down in one gulp, then coughed.
“It’s meant to be sipped,” Cal told her, and refilled the little glass.
“It’s horrid,” she said. “I notice you’re not drinking it.”
“No, but ladies don’t drink cognac. You wouldn’t like it, either.”
She gave him a filthy look, drank her sherry down—again in one gulp—coughed, put the glass down and prowled around the room. She noticed that the documents on the window table had been rearranged and whirled around. “Snooping again, were you?”
“Familiarizing myself with my ward’s situation, yes,” he said. “And writing letters.”
She picked up the ink pot. “Oops!” She didn’t sound the least bit upset. Quite the reverse. “Oh, dear. What a calamity. And my new dress too.”
He looked up. She’d spilled an entire pot of black ink down the front of her new gown. It was ruined. He gritted his teeth.
“You mustn’t have stoppered the ink pot properly,” she said, innocent as a kitten. “I’ll just go up and change, shall I?”
“No, wear this shawl over it,” he told her. “It will cover the stain.” He tossed her an old woolen shawl that had been draped across one of the chairs. He had no doubt that if he allowed her to change, the second dress would go the way of the first.
“That’s Martha’s shawl.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure she won’t mind. Now, shall wego in to dinner, or is there something else you need to destroy first?” He offered her his arm.
They ate Martha’s magnificent dinner in silence.
“I’ll see you in the other dress for breakfast,” he told Georgiana at the end of the meal. From the look of her, she’d sleep like a log all night. “And if anything untoward happens to the other dress, you will get no breakfast.”
She gave an indifferent shrug, but he could tell by her expression that the fate of the second dress would now be delayed until after breakfast. Which exactly suited his plans.
Chapter Eight
What are young women made of?
