Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (14 page)

“I wore the yellow last month,” I said dismissively, and stripped my gloves off with impatient fingers. “Fanny, why are all my gowns out?”

“You’re right, of course.” She tapped her finger along her chin thoughtfully. “The green is too festive for the occasion.”

“What occasion?”

“Your bath is near, miss,” Mrs. Booth said as I heard the creak of the pulleys designed to haul hot water up from the furnace in the basement. “Quickly, undress.”

“Not until I know what is going on,” I said stubbornly. Both women exchanged a glance. It was one I knew well; each, a mother to me in her own way, telegraphed the same message.

I wasn’t going to like this.

“All right, but hurry, we’ve limited time,” Fanny allowed. She waved me into the bath as Mrs. Booth and Zylphia filled it, and I tolerated the hasty scrubbing I received at both sets of hands.

“Gracious,” Mrs. Booth whispered as she swabbed gently around my bruised shoulder. I managed a wan smile.

For her part, Fanny continued to deliberate on choice of gowns. “An invite’s come ’round.”

“A ball, or else I wouldn’t be here,” I observed. “Whose?”

“Not just any ball, my dear.”

I stiffened, flipping my wet hair from my eyes and inducing a stifled gasp from Mrs. Booth, who received the brunt of spray. “If this has come from the earl—”

“Who like as not will be suffering from your deliberate disregard of his early invite,” Fanny cut in sharply, “so mind your manners and be grateful for this opportunity.”

I gritted my teeth, said nothing as Zylphia pulled me from the tub and dried me quickly. She fetched the finest of my corsets and underthings.

Fanny tossed aside the yellow gown. “This is an invite to the last fashionable ball of the season, after all.”

“Whose?” I asked again.

“The Marquess and Marchioness Northampton.”

I opened my mouth, strangled on an exhale as Zylphia jammed her knee into my back and jerked on my corset laces. The word I managed didn’t make it past the first vowel. “Wha-
oomph!
”

“Hold on to your bedpost,” Zylphia warned.

I obeyed, my astonished gaze on Fanny as she withdrew the only other ball gown worth wearing. I’d never worn the pale lavender, one of those I’d purchased at Madame Troussard’s some months ago. “Why in God’s name would you have me attend Marchioness Northampton?” I gasped, whooshing out a breath as my stays clamped tightly. “A last-minute invite is practically a cordial request to fail.”

“Because,” Fanny said as she tucked the cerulean ball gown under one arm and turned to face me with a beatific smile, “this invite came personally delivered by Earl Compton himself. Who, might I add, is looking quite the thing. You and I shall be—
Cherry St. Croix!
”

I winced, rotating the shoulder she gaped at now. “Small accident,” I offered meekly enough. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“It looks
ghastly
.” My chaperone—her dismay reserved for the appearance of the injury, rather than the pain of it, I understood—held up her chosen gown in both hands and studied the fabric that would not drape on the shoulders so much as around them, low on my arms. “Impossible. Mrs. Booth, the lavender.”

I had little choice in the rest of the proceedings. Like a field marshal summoning her troops to battle, Fanny directed Mrs. Booth and Zylphia around me, strict efficiency.

In less time than I would have ever imagined possible, I was clad in yards of lilac fabric, draped beautifully at the bustle, narrow at the waist and knees. The embroidered bodice was fitted with a fashionably low décolletage, and the sleeves at each shoulder were comprised of a gauzy tulle draped artfully over the curve of each shoulder. It would hide the bruise, disguised somewhat by careful application of powders.

The same tulle gave added flounce and a certain softness to the bustle, while white gloves reached over each elbow. My slippers were in a dark violet fabric, thin enough that I knew they wouldn’t last the evening.

As Mrs. Booth tended to my hair, Zylphia vanished with Fanny. By the time my hair was pulled up into a lavish array of ringlets accented with white feathers—too short notice to collect flowers, thank goodness, for Fanny favored lilies and the fragrance made me sneeze—Zylphia finished with my chaperone.

Lovely and serene in a deeply burgundy gown, her hair more demure than mine yet no less elegant for it, Fanny was the perfect matriarchal complement to my apparent maiden demeanor. I barely kept from rolling my eyes at the farce.

“You look wonderful,” Fanny told me, adjusting the dark purple ribbon and pinned ivory cameo at my throat.

“This is absurd,” I said, not for the first time. Like all the rest, my protest went ignored, and I found myself wrapped in a white cloak as fashion demanded, tucked into the box of the St. Croix gondola, and well on the way to another evening spent dancing in hell.

“Mrs. Booth performed a miracle,” Fanny said happily, snug as you please beside me. False flowers decorated her gray hair alongside her chignon. The lovely amber and blue petals brought out her eyes.

It also drew my attention to the wider streaks of white growing in her hair.

I closed my lips around the words I’d intended to say, looked away.

My chaperone was climbing in age. I could protest all I liked; I knew it was selfish. These balls, these functions, were Fanny’s last years among Society. If my intent, as I’d so often made clear, was to inherit and then take a sojourn around the world, where would that leave her?

Without a charge to shepherd through Society’s pitfalls, certainly. Without the opportunity to visit with the other married women and widows that were her social set.

I bit back a sigh.

I had no real hopes for this night—and my stomach clenched in nervous anticipation when I thought of coming face-to-face with the scorned earl once more—but for Fanny, for her lovely, hopeful smile, I would try.

Even if I must graciously eat the coals of the marchioness’s disdain to do it.

Chapter Ten

T
here were days in the off-season when I missed Teddy fiercely. This was one.

Even in early October, the veranda windows in the lavish Northampton home were opened wide to allow the brisk chill to combat the ballroom’s sweltering heat. Already a crush, despite the Season being over, the vista before me was little more than an endless swirl of color and chaos; a nonstop din of music delivered by a not unpolished orchestra and the cacophony of conversation, laughter, gossip.

At events such as this, Teddy had been my rock and the one soul from whom I could simply take ease for a time.

With him at his family’s estate, I was on my own. I clung instead to a wall away from the homely and tragically shy, for I knew the master of the house would keep a wary eye on them to ensure they danced. I kept one eye out for the man, eager to dodge his Society-dictated meddling.

Fanny, under the guise of fetching refreshment, had vanished amid her gathering of matrons, and I did not begrudge her the opportunity. She would return soon enough, and insist once more that I make myself more readily available.

I did not wish to. I wished to keep ahold of this wall and do my very best to ensure it remained upright and solid.

It was not a wish I’d see granted.

Fanny threaded her way through a crowd fraught with pale ivory and stunning gold. Blondes were the very height of fashion, and as a rule tended to wear softer, demure colors in the ballroom. Brunettes could wear more bold colors to make up the lack, but my own coloring was neither fashionable nor particularly admired outside of opera and actresses.

Fanny’s bold, dark red gown was truly a masterpiece, and I couldn’t help my smile as she arrived at my side. Though it wilted a fraction when I noted her lack of refreshment. “Is it a crush around the beverages?” I asked.

“No time,” she told me, and laced my hand into the crook of her arm. “Come, my dove, Lady Rutledge is arrived, and I know you’ll want to at least greet her.”

She was right, on one count, but couldn’t the lady come to me?

I didn’t dare dig my heels in. I wasn’t so infamous as to warrant a single stare from an entire crowd, but I’d noticed a sidelong glance here and there. A whisper hidden behind a gloved hand, a titter of laughter. This followed me as Fanny guided us smoothly through the throng, around the dancers swirling in a spritely gambol taken from the rustic country.

If my cheeks were red, I assured myself, it came solely from the heat.

Lady Rutledge was an impossible creature to miss. Her laugh boomed like a trumpet, and her gown all but glowed like a sapphire jewel amid the sea of frothy pastels and occasional dip of bolder palette. Her hair had been upswept into a crown about her head, into which winked blue jewels I suspected had come from her late husband. She was perhaps the largest woman present, not just of girth but of structure, standing a full head taller than even Fanny.

Her fan waved, a dove gray flutter, as she spoke with the bevy of gentlemen and ladies who surrounded her.

Lady Rutledge, unlike me, navigated the waters of this Society with grace and ease. It surprised me some to think she’d been invited; surprised me further to know she’d accepted. The marchioness and the lady were not friends.

We were nearly across the floor when a giggle from my left drew my attention. “There she is.”

A whisper, or almost such. There is a certain truth to the saying that a whispered confidence in a crowded room will garner attention quicker than a normally spoken tone. It was a fact I’d long since learned to take advantage of.

My gaze swept over a knot of women of middling age. The youngest, Lady Sarah Elizabeth Persimmon, had only just come out this Season, and rumor suggested the dark-haired beauty’s father had only to choose from three excellent suitors to make a match.

The eldest was not Lady Northampton, but the marchioness clearly ruled this roost. Before I could warn Fanny, the gaggle of seven women flowed around us in a net of silk, perfume and tulle.

My nose itched.

“Miss St. Croix.”

I dropped immediately into a curtsy, because that is what Society demanded of a lady faced by a marchioness. Fanny did the same. “My lady,” I murmured as I rose.

Lady Northampton, Almira Louise Compton was, as ever, a statuesque beauty. Once upon a time, her hair had been fair and her skin unmarred by age; rumor suggested she and my mother had been considered the great beauties of the Season.

She was among the fortunate. Time only lent her a stately air, dignified and no less striking for the appearance of fine lines and the faded tones to her upswept chignon. She wore a gown of ice green, a color that matched the steely glint in her eye as she looked down her aristocratic nose at me.

She wore no jewelry but for the band at her wedding finger, and needed none to declare her reign over this ballroom.

I was, in a word, outmatched.

“I am surprised to find you here,” she said, her ivory lace fan churning the air in lazy sweeps near her face. A gasp to my left did not come from the ladies who surrounded me. I flushed.

It was as close as declaration of unwelcome as one could tender without delivering a cut direct.

Fanny stiffened beside me.

I forced a smile, even as my heart pounded in my ears. I had done this dance before, and come out the stronger for it.

Of course, Teddy had been at my arm to see me through it, and it had taken the lady’s eldest son to undo the harm, but such a debacle would not be repeated. “I was delighted to receive an invite from the Northampton family,” I said sweetly, and watched the barb land square between her eyes. They narrowed a fraction.

So she hadn’t known her son had sent the invite. Brilliant. Now I stood in the middle of a family affair.

It seemed to me as if conversation ebbed around us. The Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior clustered tightly, a veritable wall between me and freedom.

Wolves in lambs’ clothing, the lot of them.

I did not look around. Such a display of fear would only reveal weakness.

“Miss St. Croix,” piped up Lady Sarah Elizabeth Persimmon, her husky voice similar to Zylphia’s but polished to perfection. My gaze turned to her, a nod of acknowledgment. “Your gown is very lovely.”

I blinked. “Thank you—”

“Of course, such a color belongs to one of Lady Northampton’s stature and coloring,” she continued, her gaze sliding over my hair, my dress, “but you are very brave for daring it.”

Fanny’s grip tightened on my arm.

I almost winced. “Thank you,” was all I repeated, contrary to the acid building in my throat. The heat battered at me, made all the worse by the leering gargoyles of the marchioness’s sycophantic salon. “May I say that your hair is particularly fetching tonight?”

Her smile, cool as glass, suggested she had no need of compliments from the likes of me. Her father, an earl in his own right, had seen to that.

“Oh, Lady Sarah Elizabeth’s handmaid is quite skilled,” chirped Mrs. Douglas, one of the marchioness’s elder following. She wore widow’s colors still, despite her husband being dead these seven years past. In deference to the Queen’s own depth of mourning, perhaps.

Or because no other colors than dour grays and somber blacks suited her heavy-jowled demeanor. I had my suspicions. If she were truly in as deep a mourning as her black silk and organza suggested, she would not be at this event.

“You really ought to consider sending your maid to learn from hers,” added Mrs. Douglas with a vicious smile. “I’m sure the lady’s maid shan’t be
too
busy for the likes of yours.”

That was two insults on the back of a subtle first.

My smile was beginning to hurt.

Lady Northampton remained, in the thick of it all, as elegant and cool as a statue, untouched by all but the most gracious of charm. Cold and lovely as the Snow Queen of fairy tale.

My knees were beginning to ache. I deliberately softened them as I fanned my face with my own beribboned lace fan. “If you’ll excuse us, my ladies, I was just—”

“Come, Miss St. Croix,” laughed Lady Sarah Elizabeth. “Certainly, you’ve nothing of import to do
here
. I daresay your usual sort of people aren’t in attendance.”

I froze, my eyes pinned on the elegantly shaped black eyebrows raised ever so knowingly above laughing blue eyes.

What did she mean by that? My sorts of people?

What did she know?

Beside me, Fanny took a step forward, her mouth set into a grim slant. “Now you see here, young lady,” she began.

“Look! Is that Mad St. Croix’s daughter?”

The whisper, once more as out of place as a discordant note in a symphony, jarred a surge of anxiety down my spine. “It’s all right, Fanny,” I murmured, my cheeks blood-red now. With anger or heat, I couldn’t be sure.

“It’s not,” Fanny said worriedly, but she was clearly torn. Righteous indignation was no shield against the vicious undercurrent of a salon already out for my blood.

Snap.
The marchioness’s fan closed with a distinctive sound that I swore echoed across the full ballroom. But it wasn’t anger in her eyes as they levied first on Fanny, then on me.

It was satisfaction.

“Oh, my,” Lady Sarah Elizabeth drawled, raising her fan, half unfurled to hide her shock. “It seems the columns are quite right about you. Is
all
your house so unruly?”

My fist clenched against my skirt. My vision trembled with a sudden surge of rage; unlocked as if it had only slumbered beneath the thinnest of veils. “How dare—”

“Miss St. Croix, there you are!” Lady Rutledge’s delight filled the void beyond the biting question, and I watched the marchioness’s gaze flit from smug satisfaction to sheer venom.

Blue filled one end of my sight. I curtsied as proper, Fanny echoing the gesture, and managed, “Lady Rutledge.”

The woman smiled at me, the fleshy pads of her cheeks raised high and pure mischief sparking in her gaze, now painted bluer by the shade of her gown. That impishness, so out of expectation for a woman of her stature and girth, turned to the marchioness. “Almira, always a delight. I should have known I’d find you cornering our Miss St. Croix for yourself. A treasure, is she not?”

Five sets of eyes pinned on me in mute surprise. One, pale green jade, hardened. “Euphemia,” the marchioness murmured in chilly acknowledgment.

Lady Sarah Elizabeth covered her lips as she tittered a lyrical note of dismissive humor. “Surely, you jest, my lady. Why, she is barely cognizant of what patience these tolerant souls must invoke in her presence.”

My teeth clenched. Yet before I could spit the sharp rejoinder fully formed on my tongue, Lady Rutledge laced her arm through my one free elbow and looked down at Lady Sarah Elizabeth from her much taller stature. “I am very well acquainted with your mother, Peashoot. I suggest you keep a civil tongue in your head before she decides you’re a year too soon for marriage.”

The lady paled.

“Oh, dear me!” Lady Rutledge raised her fan to her mouth, in direct mimicry of the lady before her, and laughed in abashed apology. “Did I let slip your pet name? Forgive me, my dear, it is rather darling, isn’t it?”

“Peashoot?” repeated a man’s voice from somewhere in the
certainly not eavesdropping
crowd beyond us.

The milk-white glow of the lady’s cheeks filled with sudden color.

“Now,” Lady Rutledge continued jovially, “please forgive my terrible manners, for I simply must claim Miss St. Croix and her chaperone. Ta!”

With little chance for thought or farewell, I found myself tugged through the throng of idle speculation, Fanny at my side both red-faced and gasping.

I did not realize until we stopped that she held back laughter, not anger. “Did you see her expression?”

Lady Rutledge smiled upon my dear friend with graciously mirrored amusement. “Mrs. Fortescue, you are an admirable champion, but I know you must be eager to visit with your friends.”

“Now, wait just a moment,” I interjected, but to no avail.

Lady Rutledge spoke over me as if I did not exist. “Would you proffer to leave your charge in my care? I shall take excellent care of her.”

Fanny pressed my hand between hers, her eyes bright, and nodded to the lady. “Thank you, my lady.”

Lady Rutledge watched my chaperone move to the cluster of more somberly gowned matrons at the far end of the ballroom before turning her smile upon me. “That was bracing. Stand up straight, girl, you look like you’ve lost a battle.”

“I did not come here for warfare,” I pointed out irritably.

Her laughter earned curious eyes. “Then you have come to the wrong soiree. All such matters are a battle, Miss St. Croix, the question is what weapons are you willing to bring to bear?”

“I’ve no weapons at my disposal,” I said, “only uncertain allies.”

“Good. You learn quickly.” She patted her unnaturally dark hair into place, one gloved finger easing a sapphire into a more tenable hold. She scanned the crowd as she did. “I have championed you tonight. That will mean something.”