“She does look pretty, and she’ll get new clothes soon,” Nash assured her. “Maddy’s dresses are coming from London.”
“London? But how will they know to make them the right size?” Jane asked.
Nash smiled. “I sent one of Maddy’s old dresses to London so they could get the measurements. And her old slippers, so the shoemaker could do the same.”
Maddy, who had half a dozen pins held between her lips, nearly spat them out. “You sent them one of my dresses? Without telling me? How? And which one?” She didn’t seem very pleased by his ingenuity.
“From that bundle of old clothes you left on the door. Remember, you were sorting out what to pack?”
Her eyes widened. “You sent a fancy London mantua maker my oldest rag of a dress?”
He frowned. “You didn’t want it, did you?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “No, of course I didn’t want it, it’s a rag!” She groaned. “Oh, how could you, Nash?”
How could he? He explained, “It’s actually rather a coup to have got her to take you on at all, especially at this time of the year, before the season. She’s the most fashionable mantua maker in London.” Aunt Maude would kill him when she learned that Nash had used her name in his armory to convince Giselle.
Maddy groaned. “So you sent the most fashionable dressmaker in London the tattiest old rag I owned and told her it was mine.”
Her attitude confused him. Perhaps she didn’t understand the full genius of his plan. “But it was the perfect solution. Giselle can copy all the measurements from the old dress and whip up a new one for you in no time. Well, in time for the wedding, actually. Only a week to go.”
“Yes, but now she will know that I wore old rags.”
“What does that matter?”
“She’ll think I’m the veriest pauper, some kind of desperate fortune hunter.”
Nash stared at her. “What do you care what she thinks? She’s only a dressmaker. And you’re buying a lot of new dresses and they won’t be cheap, so she’d better keep her tongue between her teeth if she wants any more of your custom.”
“Cinderella wore old rags,” Lucy said into the silence that followed.
Maddy laughed and hugged the little girl. “Yes, she did, darling, and her fairy godmother gave her a new dress. And I’m sorry I was cross with Mr. Renfrew for doing the same, no matter what his methods were, his intentions were the best.”
Lucy frowned. “He’s not the fairy godmother, he’s the prince.”
The talk of Cinderella reminded Nash why he’d sought Maddy in the first place. “Can you dance?” he asked her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Can you dance?” Nash repeated. “You know, country dances, cotillions, waltzes, quadrilles, that sort of thing. You can, can’t you?”
She bit her lip. “I know some country dances, and I’ve learned the steps of the cotillion, and a quadrille is a variation on that, is it not?” He nodded. “So I can probably manage that, but I’ve never learned to waltz, never even seen it danced.”
“Never seen it danced?” he repeated. “You must have attended some very dowdy balls then.”
“I’ve never attended any sort of ball at all.”
Nash was shocked. He knew she hadn’t made her come out, but . . . “Not even a local assembly?”
“Not one.”
“An impromptu dance at a party?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never been to a party, and never actually danced with anyone, except for a couple of country dances at the village fair last year. Strip the Willow, and the Scotch Reel, that sort of thing. Oh, and we danced around a maypole, didn’t we girls?”
Nash did his best to mask his shock, but his heart sank. She’d never even been to a party? Her sole experience of dancing in public was at a village fete with some drunken rural clodhopper? And dancing around a maypole, for pity’s sake! It was worse than he thought.
He thought of the hundreds of glittering balls he’d attended in palaces and ballrooms all over Europe, where men and women flirted, plotted, and made scintillating conversation as they danced, each step and complicated sequence as familiar as walking. And she’d never even been to a party.
