Heiress Without a Cause (32 page)

Madeleine knew the answer before Ellie finished, but was so surprised by her talented sketching that she didn’t stop her. When Ellie finally looked up, Madeleine smiled. “Persephone.”

“Yes, the Queen of the Underworld, come back from the dead. And Ferguson can dress as Hades. It is perfect, don’t you think?”

“Ferguson won’t submit to wearing only a sheet around his torso,” Madeleine warned.

“I would find that amusing,” Ellie said with a laugh. “But he can wear a coat and trousers with a sinister cloak over it. A crown instead of a hat should be enough.”

“The ton will think we’re laughing at them.”

“You are.” The smile on Ellie’s face was almost evil. “But they will love you all the more for your audacity. If you were not so acclaimed, it might be foolish. If you knew, though, how every man in my circle has clamored to meet you and how they’ve all cursed Ferguson for keeping you hidden away, you would not be so nervous about this appearance. They will be falling at your feet — especially in that dress.”

“Did you draw the dress as well?”

Ellie nodded, slipping her pencil back into her bag. “I cannot sew it, but my modiste works miracles. She can make over my Athena costume for you this afternoon. You can trust her to do the final fitting — she owes me a great debt and won’t betray you.”

Madeleine wondered how Ellie had so many people in her service whose loyalty was so assured, but it was not her business to ask. She said, “Your talent with drawing is astounding. Do you draw often?”

“I prefer painting, but I haven’t painted in an age. Too many parties, don’t you know.”

Her light tone sounded forced. “If you care to join us, Amelia, Miss Prudence Etchingham and I meet weekly to discuss our artistic and academic pursuits. Perhaps you would find time to paint if you were to become part of our little circle?”

Madeleine spoke impulsively, believing the invitation would be well received, but her voice faltered at the end. Ellie had the same frozen, frigid look that Madeleine had seen the night Ferguson had taken her to Ellie’s house — like she had been confronted with something she wanted desperately to forget. “I am sorry,” Madeleine said quickly. “I didn’t mean to presume.”

The ice in Ellie’s eyes melted slightly. “No apology is necessary. I don’t have the heart to paint at present. Drawing this costume was an interesting exercise, but I do not think I would be a productive addition to your society.”

Ellie folded the drawing into neat fourths and tucked it into her reticule. The crisp way she folded the paper had a sound of finality to it — like a door closing in a blizzard, with Madeleine shut outside. The thought made her stubborn. Ellie had done so much for her, and she wanted to return the favor. “Do think about it, please. Even if you do not wish to paint for us, you might enjoy our discussions. We meet here every Friday at two o’clock.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Madeleine had missed every meeting since Amelia’s betrayal. But if Ellie would attend, Madeleine would go despite her cousin.

“I will consider it,” Ellie said. Then she stood, smoothing out her skirts before gathering up her reticule with a gloved hand. As usual, Madeleine felt utterly plain beside her; the dress she had changed into after Ferguson left, a pale yellow muslin, could not withstand the intensity of Ellie’s ensemble.

Still, there was a brittle quality to the woman’s beauty that bothered Madeleine. With her flame-colored hair and creamy skin, she looked warm and fiery — but like a fire about to sputter out into ashes, rather than one that could be sustained.

“Thank you for everything you have done,” Madeleine said, rising to kiss Ellie’s cheek. She owed Ellie more than she could repay, and would do what she could to help cure whatever mysterious unhappiness lingered beneath her supposedly carefree demeanor. “I would have been lost without you. I cannot say enough how very much I appreciate your assistance.”

“You saved yourself. But I could hardly ignore you — you did not seem eager to live the life of a ruined lady. Not everyone is suited for such a lifestyle.”

“Do you think you are suited for it?” Madeleine asked. “Surely you are not ruined.”

“No, not entirely. I doubt I would receive a voucher to Almack’s, but as I’ve no desire to ever attend again, it doesn’t signify. My level of disreputability was just enough for my father to disown me, as he did Ferguson, which was what I wanted. Still, I’m glad for you that your ruse worked. It is possible to live a happy life without the full approbation of the ton, but it’s not a course I would recommend.”

“Then you would choose differently if you were able to live again?”

“Widowhood has its uses,” Ellie said, smiling mirthlessly. “Although if I had defied my father from the start and married the man I wished to, I would have become the marchioness of Folkestone as soon as the man my father forced me to marry died. Ironic, no?”

Ironic was not the word Madeleine would have chosen; heartbreaking, or cruel, but ironic wasn’t strong enough. Ellie changed the subject, though, saying, “What’s done is done, and there is no going back. I must be off to instruct my modiste. I will send your Lizzie back to the house on Dover Street tomorrow with all the necessary accoutrements for the masquerade, and the modiste will do the last bit of fitting when you go to the house to be dressed.”

She strode to the door before Madeleine could say goodbye again, but she paused with her hand on the handle. “Do enjoy yourself tomorrow night, Madeleine. I have other plans with Norbury, but I cannot wait to hear how you take the ton by storm.”

Ellie left then, seeming eager to go, as though she felt she had shared too much. Madeleine looked at the timepiece on the mantel. It was only two o’clock. Ellie had come unfashionably early to settle the costume design in time for the modiste, and it would be hours yet before she had to dress for dinner. Aunt Augusta was not receiving callers today, since they would all be sniffing about Madeleine to validate the rumors about Ferguson’s madness. She couldn’t risk going to the shops, either, for fear that the gossip mongers would accost her there. She could write letters, she supposed, or she could embroider, or read a novel — any of the proper pursuits for a not-so-young lady of leisure.

None of it appealed. Afternoons like these, which stretched out in front of her toward a dreary old age, had driven her to the theatre in the first place. Perhaps it would be different if she had a house of her own to manage. As a duchess, she wouldn’t lack for staff to oversee, or callers to entertain — or more pleasurable activities to pursue with her husband.

She smiled. Daydreaming about her marriage was preferable to embroidering, and so she indulged for a few minutes, thinking of all they could do together if their reputations survived this scandal. She had been so opposed to marriage before — but she thought she might not mind sitting quietly and reading a book if Ferguson was nearby, if she thought that at any moment he might interrupt her and steal a kiss.

She was so deep in the dream that when the door opened, she thought Ferguson had indeed come for her. She looked up, the smile on her lips ready for him to devour it.

It was Amelia. Her dream collapsed. She wouldn’t just embroider or write letters to escape Amelia — she would willingly submit to a toothpulling, or accompany Lady Harcastle on a tour of the Peninsula battlefields and cemeteries, if it meant she could delay this confrontation.

But Amelia shut the door, standing with her back pressed against it. “Maddie, please...” she said, her voice trembling on the words before she took a deep breath and started again. “It’s been weeks since that night, and we haven’t spoken in private a single time since then. Won’t you give me a chance to apologize?”

Amelia looked like she hadn’t slept since her betrayal. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her normally bright hair was lank and limp in its chignon. Madeleine had found it easy to avoid her — Amelia had taken most meals in her room, and only sat for dinner with the family or attended events at Augusta’s express order. The fingers of her right hand were stained black with inky patterns; Amelia often got too caught up in the throes of writing to notice if a leaky pen was wreaking havoc on her skin.

Madeleine felt a twinge of sympathy. She willed herself to ignore it. “Does it matter whether you apologize?”

“It matters to me. I think it matters to you, too, even if you don’t wish to admit it.”

“That is precisely why it doesn’t matter,” Madeleine said, the heat of her earlier daydream turning effortlessly into anger. “That statement is just like you have always been — believing you are right above all others. It’s why you betrayed my secret to Alex, is it not? Because you told me to stop and I didn’t listen to your wisdom?”

Amelia flinched under the withering sarcasm in Madeleine’s voice. But she was too entrenched to retreat. “That isn’t why, Maddie. I didn’t want to be right — I was trying to protect you!”

“As it turns out, I did not need your protection. The play is over. No one found me out. In fact, if you had not told Alex and Aunt Augusta, even they wouldn’t have known.”

“It wasn’t merely the theatre I was trying to protect you from — I supported you when you went to Madame Legrand. But I had no reason to believe Ferguson’s intentions toward you were honest.”

“Because he did not attempt to court you like every other man in the ton?”

Amelia abandoned her post by the door to take the chair Ellie had recently vacated. “I don’t give a farthing for my admirers. I would consign them all to the devil if it meant you could go to a ball without being jealous of me. If Ferguson removes your bitterness, I would thank him.”

The knife struck home. “Bitter? Why would you think I am bitter?”

“How often have you teased me about my suitors?” Amelia countered. “You know I do not want their attentions, and yet you fling them in my face as though I have something to be ashamed of because of them. If that isn’t bitterness...”

She shut her mouth abruptly. Madeleine gasped, the words slicing deep into one of her most sensitive, still-healing wounds. “Do you think I am jealous of you?”

Amelia sighed. “I do not understand why you would be. But I cannot help thinking that you are.”

For all that Madeleine watched enviously whenever Amelia stood up to dance her fifth set in a row, and for all that she wished she had a mother and father instead of living a shadowed life with her cousins, it was never something they discussed. How could she have ever told Amelia that she sometimes wished their positions were reversed?

That she wished Amelia was the orphan, not her?

“Do you really not understand what it has been to grow up with you?” Madeleine asked, guilt and jealousy combining to wrap around the ball of acid in her stomach. “With your perfect English beauty, and your family who loves you, and your brothers who would die for you, when my parents were more concerned about their estate than me? Even your talent was easier for you — you can write every day, but the only hobby that brings me joy is something I cannot ever do again. So yes, I am jealous. But what would you have me do? Be grateful to sit in your shadow?”

She started crying as she spoke, scarcely noticing the tears until they started to drip onto her bosom. Amelia’s face drained of color as she listened, her blue eyes large and stark, the dark circles under them even more pronounced. Madeleine opened a drawer in the table beside her and retrieved a handkerchief, avoiding eye contact, dabbing at the tears on her skin even though they had not yet stopped flowing.

Amelia opened and closed her mouth several times before speaking. Finally, she said, “I think of you as my sister, not my cousin. It would hurt me just as much to lose you as it would to lose Alex or Sebastian — more, even, since I’ve not spent more than a week without you since you arrived from France. Perhaps that’s why I was so concerned about Ferguson — it was all so sudden. One week, I thought we would be spinsters together forever, and the next...”

She paused, taking a deep breath. “You’re going to be a duchess, and I cannot imagine what it will be like here without you. But if you have never been happy in this house, then it is for the best, and I can only wish that you’ll find all the happiness in your marriage that was missing for you here.”

It wasn’t the kind of speech Madeleine had ever heard from her before — a surrender rather than a rebuttal. Madeleine took another handkerchief from her table and handed it to her; Amelia’s eyes were just as full of tears as Madeleine’s. “It’s not that I was unhappy here,” Madeleine said slowly, uncomfortable saying the words after keeping them buried for so long, but knowing she needed to be honest — with both of them — if there was any hope of salvaging what they had. “It’s that my life in France... it became a dream, something I could imagine as I sat alone on the side of a ballroom, something I could focus on when the desire to run away from an at-home and join a theatre troupe was too strong. Even the theatre was a dream. I just had to believe there was more for me than shopping and needlework.”

Amelia quirked a smile at that even through her tears. Both she and Prudence had described that feeling before. But for Madeleine, it wasn’t just the tedium of everyday life. “I had to believe that if my parents had lived, I would have had a more exciting life. This circle isn’t for me, any more than it is for you. But at least I could tell myself there was a different life that was stolen from me, rather than thinking this is the way I would always have been.”

“Well, you will have a different life as Ferguson’s duchess,” Amelia said. “I just never imagined you were still dreaming of France. I still miss Father, of course, but then it’s not the same — losing him didn’t cost me an entire way of life as your parents’ loss did for you.”

Madeleine stared at the tear-stained cloth in her hands. “I don’t even want to go back to France now. There is nothing for me there. As much as I may wish it otherwise, my family is here now, and my parents are not coming back.”

Then she looked up, meeting Amelia’s eyes fully for the first time since she had entered the room. “And I consider you my sister, even if I did not behave like it these past few weeks.”