The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (14 page)

“That is very generous of you,” said Annabelle with a twinkle in her eye. “To make you feel better, I hope you will consent to be my bridesmaid.”

“Oh, yes!” said Caroline, brightening at once. “I will need a new dress, new shoes …”

“Yes, you will need all those things, and have them, too. And then, perhaps, you will invite me to be the matron of honour at your own wedding to Able, which must surely soon follow mine.”

Caroline looked at her in astonishment. “My dear Aunt, what can you be talking about? I am not going to marry Able. Whatever gave you such an idea?”

“I rather thought you were in love with him.”

“How absurd! Of course not. A slight infatuation, perhaps, contracted when I was only sixteen. But I am older and a great deal wiser now. I am going to marry James!”

“You expect my daughter to wear that gown?” Lady Fitzsimon’s acid tones carried to every corner of the elegant dress shop on Bond Street.

“My Lady, it is exactly the gown you ordered,” Madame Delaflote replied. Used as she was to the fits and fleeting fancies of London ladies, she took Lady Fitzsimon’s protests in her stride.

Either the lady was doing this to get her bill lowered — which would never happen, for Madame Delaflote never gave up a shilling that could possibly be wrung from a client — or she was just being aristocratic merely because she could.

In that case, Madame Delaflote had naught to do but wait her out.

From behind the curtain that separated the showroom from the workroom, Miss Ella Cynders flinched with each protest as if she were being flogged. For the dress was her creation, her finest — if she was inclined to boast — but she knew that it had been a risk making it for Lady Fitzsimon’s daughter.

“The Ashe Ball is tonight, Madame!” Lady Fitzsimon was saying. Ella glanced out and found the matron waving her invitation about for all to see. Invitations to the Ashe Ball were so coveted, so limited, that most who held one kept it carefully guarded. For without that printed invitation, one could not enter. Proof of this being demonstrated at the moment by her ladyship, who was keeping hers on her person, never far from sight, and, better yet, close at hand to flaunt over those who hadn’t been invited. “My daughter cannot go in that!”

Ella watched the lady point at the dress her daughter was modelling as if it were made of rags — when nothing could be further from the truth. The fair green silk, embroidered with silver thread and adorned with thousands of seed pearls, was an artistic triumph. Ella and the two other assistants, Martha and Hazel, had all but worn their fingers to the bone to get the gown ready in time.

It was a fairy-tale dress destined for an unforgettable night.

“My good lady,” Madame Delaflote said, “your daughter shines like the rarest jewel in that gown. Lord Ashe won’t be able to take his eyes off her.”

“Of course he won’t — she looks naked in it,” the lady declared.

Not exactly naked, Ella would have told her, but the illusion was there. As if she were a woodland nymph stepping from her hidden grove. Sleeveless and cut low in the front, the dress clung to the wearer as if it were a second skin.

“That gown is ruinous! Why, she looks—” Lady Fitzsimon’s hands fluttered about as she searched for the right words.

From behind the curtain, the three assistants finished her sentence for her.

“Gorgeous,” Martha whispered.

“Breathtaking,” Hazel added.

“Unforgettable,” Ella said.

“Common!” Lady Fitzsimon declared. “As if she’s just stepped from the stage of a revue. I want Lord Ashe to fall in love with my daughter.
Marry her
. Don’t you realize he must choose his bride tonight? Tonight, Madame! The gown Roseanne wears must be perfect!”

“Stupid cow,” Martha muttered, her less than refined origins coming out. “That gel fair on sparkles in it.”

“Aye, she does,” Hazel agreed. “Like a princess.”

Ella agreed, for she and Roseanne were of similar colouring and build, and she had tried the dress on herself to make sure the blush green silk — like the first verdant whisper of spring — would bring out the girl’s fair features.

“If you think I am paying for this, you are sadly mistaken,” Lady Fitzsimon said, sounding more like a shrewd fishwife than a baroness.

Madame Delaflote took a furtive glance at the curtain, where she knew her assistants were most likely eavesdropping. Her brows rose in two dark arches, the sort of look each of them knew was a dangerous harbinger.

If Lady Fitzsimon refused this dress, someone would pay for it.

“And whatever are those things sticking out from her back?” the lady continued.

“Wings, My Lady,” Madame Delaflote told her. “You asked for a fairy costume, and those are her wings.”

“They are a nuisance. However is she to dance? They’ll get crushed in the crowd before the first set — and then what? She’ll be in the retiring room for a good part of the night having them clipped off.” Lady Fitzsimon shook her head. “No, no, no, this will never do. And I blame you, Madame Delaflote. Everyone says your gowns are the finest, but I hardly see what you were thinking to dress my daughter like a Cyprian.” She turned to Roseanne. “Take it off at once, before someone sees you in it and thinks we actually ordered such a shameful piece.”

Ella cringed. For the gown had been her idea, her creation. And if Lady Fitzsimon wouldn’t pay for it, refused it, well, she knew very well who would be paying for it — her.

“She’s not taking it?” Hazel whispered, as Roseanne slipped into the changing room and Martha hurried after her to help her out of the gown.

Meanwhile, Madame Delaflote and Lady Fitzsimon continued their heated exchange.

“My Lady, that gown is exactly what you ordered.” If there was one thing that could be said about Madame Delaflote, she was a determined soul.

“I ordered a gown that would set my daughter apart — not have her appear like some Covent Garden high-flyer.”

Madame Delaflote sucked in a deep breath to be so insulted, for her gowns were sought after, fawned over, ordered months in advance (as this one had been) and no one called them tawdry.

And certainly no one had ever refused one.

Yet here was Lady Fitzsimon in high dudgeon, having gathered up her daughter, by now properly dressed in a blue sprig muslin day gown, and leaving.

Ella closed her eyes and wished herself well away from this disaster. But a loud
whoomph
, and Hazel’s muffled giggle brought her back to the present.

The other two had parted the curtain and there in the front of the shop lay Lady Fitzsimon on the floor.

In her rush to depart the shop, she’d run right into a footman who was delivering a missive. His notes and messages had fluttered up in the air as he had tried to catch the lady from falling, but her girth had defied even his strength and the two of them had ended up in a tangle at the doorway.

Madame rushed forwards to help the baroness, as did Roseanne, but the matron was too furious to have any assistance. She righted herself, caught her daughter by the arm and marched from the store, her nose tipped haughtily in the air.

An embarrassed silence filled the shop, but only for a moment. Madame snapped her fingers, as if that was enough to dismiss the situation, then got back to business, calling for her assistants, and greeting the waiting clients with her usual French airs.

The footman gathered up his notes, with Hazel’s help — for the girl had a romantic nature and flirted shamelessly with all the handsome footmen who came and went from the shop. They all knew Hazel and she knew them.

The cheeky fellow handed over a pair of missives and winked at the girl before he turned to leave.

Madame, however, was in no mood for such behaviour and snatched the mail from Hazel’s hands. She sent the girl a scathing glance that sent her scurrying to the back room.

“Take these and see to them,” Madame told Ella. “We will discuss that gown later.”

Ella bowed politely, took the notes and also fled to the back room.

She didn’t know whether to continue her work on the gown for Lady Shore or begin the task of packing her bags. It had only been lucky happenstance that she’d gotten this job when she’d returned to London six months ago.

Luck, and her skill with a needle. Another job might not be so easily gotten.

For to be dismissed yet again and always without references — Ella shuddered at such a prospect.

“She’ll not sack you,” Hazel said, as if reading her friend’s bleak expression. “She’s made too much money from your designs.”

Ella absently sorted through the notes in her hands. “That gown cost a fortune, and if Lady Fitzsimon doesn’t pay for it—”

Hazel nodded in grim agreement.

It would come out of Ella’s salary. Glancing over at the silk, which now lay on the work table, she sighed, for it was ever so lovely a dress and it had been meant to be worn this night and this night only.

Lady Fitzsimon was utterly mistaken on the matter. Lord Ashe would never have thought that gown common. He would have loved it.

“Gar, Ella! Whatever is that in your hand?” Hazel said, coming around the work table in a flash.

Martha had slipped into the workroom just then, a stack of sample brocades in her arms. Her mouth fell open and she nearly dropped her burden when she saw what Ella was holding. “Oh, as I live and breathe! It is.”

“Is what?” Ella said, before she glanced down at the thick cream card in her hand.

Ella’s mouth fell open. An invitation to the Ashe Ball.

Hazel began to laugh. “That old cow must have dropped it when she went off in a huff.”

“She won’t be able to get in without it.” Ella crossed the room and caught up her cloak. She started for the back door, when Hazel caught her by the arm.

“And just what do you think you are doing?”

“Returning this to Lady Fitzsimon.”

“Why would you be doing that?” Hazel held her fast.

“Because she can’t get in without it,” Ella told her, pulling her arm free and reaching for the door.

“Well, she don’t need it now, does she?” Martha said. “Since her daughter hasn’t got a gown to wear.”

Something about the girl’s words — nay, suggestion — stayed Ella’s steps. “Whatever do you mean?”

Martha glanced over at Hazel, who nodded in agreement. “That we didn’t work our fingers raw to see that gown spend the night here, being taken apart, so the mistress could not only charge you for it, but sell the makings off again to someone else, taking the profit twice over.”

Hazel nodded.

“You could go, with that gown and that invitation,” Martha whispered.

Ella shook her head. “I couldn’t—”

“And why ever not? It isn’t like you aren’t quality, and it isn’t like that gown doesn’t fit.”

“You could see
him
again, Ella,” Hazel said.

“No,” Ella gasped, staring down at the name on the invitation.
Viscount Ashe.

Him.

“I can’t … I would be discovered … Think of the trouble …”

“Think of seeing him again,” Hazel said. “You know very well that you sewed that gown with him in mind. So he would think it was you.”

“I did no such—” But she stopped herself. She had. Shamelessly designed and embroidered every stitch for his eyes, his favour.

“Wouldn’t seeing him again be worth a bundle of trouble and then some?”

“Julian, you vowed tonight would be the last time,” Lady Ashe said, over the tea table.

The Ashe residence was a flurry of activity as the servants and the added help that had been hired for the ball continued working at a furious pace to ensure that everything went off as planned.

“Yes, yes, Mother, I recall my promise,” Julian, Viscount Ashe, told her.

“You will choose a bride tonight and no more of this foolishness about finding ‘her’.”

Julian glanced out the window at the garden beyond. Her. His mysterious lady love. The one who’d come to the first Ashe Ball five years earlier.

The Ashes had always been a romantic lot, and family tradition held that the Ashe viscount had five seasons to find his true love. Five. A bride to be plucked from a masquerade before the five years were out.

Julian had found his the very first year.

Found her and lost her.

He’d spent the last five years searching for the mysterious lady who’d come to the ball, danced with him, kissed him — Julian glanced over at his mother who was deep in discussion with the housekeeper over where to find their extra plates — the lady whose virginity he had stolen in an impetuous moment of passion.

But it wasn’t just her passion that had intrigued him, it was her lively nature, her bright eyes, her sharp wit.

She’d stolen his heart that night, just as the Ashe legend said a lady would. But what the Ashe legend didn’t say was what to do when the love of your life, your future viscountess, ups and disappears into thin air.

And now tonight was his last chance to find her.

It wasn’t as if Julian hadn’t searched for her — but all he’d come to were dead ends.

At first, he’d thought his choice was Lady Pamela Osborn. Everyone had assumed that the young lady, who the elder Lady Osborn hauled out of the ball just before the unmasking, had been her daughter. But, as it turned out, Lady Pamela had given her costume to another and used the night to elope with Lord Percy Snodgrass. Who Lady Pamela’s twin had been was the real mystery, for Lady Osborn had refused to give Ashe any information about the scandal. And the newly minted Lady Percy had sent back his enquiries unopened.