“Thank you.” She had expected herself to experience discomfort. To look at herself in this outlandish garb and feel as if she were stepping out of her own skin. Instead, a sense of freedom brushed across her consciousness.
She could move without restraint. No harsh stays pinched her ribs or tight neckline suffocated her bosom.
“Your hair was so perfect.” Joanie tiptoed and eased a hair needle back in place. “If we had undone the buttons, we might not have mussed it.”
“It is no matter.” Meg was half tempted to throw her head in a bucket of water and shake everything free anyway. “A maid shall remedy whatever disarray I have made of myself before dinner.”
“Would you like me to hang up these clothes?” Joanie lifted the dress and undergarments. “I shouldn’t wish them to wrinkle.”
“You are kind.”
“It is no trouble.” The girl blushed, eyes falling, everything about her features and manner in contrast to Tom McGwen. He was rash, his face sharp, his hair blazing like the sun come close of the day. Joanie was quiet. Her features were soft and fresh, her ways unassuming, and she had a thoughtfulness about her that made every movement seem deliberate and full of care.
“You look nothing like him.” Meg had not meant to say the words aloud, but Joanie only smiled and smoothed the dress.
“None of us did. Well, except C–Caleb.”
“There are more McGwens?”
“Nine of us now.” Joanie lifted the chemise from the floor. “We don’t share blood. We all come from different places but ended up in the same home. That’s how it was meant to be. Mamm says, anyway.”
“I never visited.” Meg tilted her head. “I never visited with Tom, else I would have met you before, would I not?”
“We were very far away.” Joanie hung all Meg’s garments on little knobby pegs, then pulled open the bedchamber door. She glanced back as if she wished to say more, but then only smiled. “Tom is waiting for you.”
She could not complain when she had asked for this. If it took laboring in trousers and a patched shirt to attain answers, she would. Meg started through the cottage—
“And Miss Foxcroft?”
Meg turned, a little startled by Joanie’s serious eyes. “Yes?”
“He is still my brother.” A pause. “He was a brother to all of us.”
“Yes. Of course.” Meg was not certain why the girl felt the need to defend him, nor why she tripped over the name Caleb, nor why Tom McGwen never once visited home.
She did not ask.
She came for answers about herself.
Not him.
“This was not what I expected when I agreed upon your little venture.” Lord Cunningham waited for her inside the anteroom dressed in immaculate black tailcoat and pantaloons, bright white socks, and buckled slippers. He raised a brow at the smudges of red she’d left behind. “I would hail the doctor and deem it blood did you not appear so collected.”
“Paint.” She had scrubbed as much from her hands and arms as possible but had been too afraid to soil the dress to change. “I have not missed dinner?”
“No.” He lifted his watch fob with an amused smirk. “Though I daresay, I am not at all convinced you have ample time to make amends of yourself. Lady Walpoole prizes first punctuality and second formality, both of which you could not manage.” He placed her arm in his and patted her hand as they walked. “Do not worry. I shall escort you to your chamber, where you may bathe and change. A servant shall send up a tray.”
“Thank you. I’m ravenous.”
“Without doubt. Should I be angry?”
“Angry?”
“That instead of presenting my betrothed a seat and cup of tea, securing a proper chaperone, and answering her questions, he has instead turned her into a boy-clothed hoyden. Did he harness you to his plow once you finished his painting?”
Meg was not certain whether to laugh or be furious herself. “There are no chairs.”
“Pardon?”
