The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness (5 page)

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Authors: Tamara Lejeune

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Mrs. Drabble blushed with embarrassment, Lady Jemima bristled with indignation, and Pru explained in a very loud whisper, “Mrs. Drabble takes her meals in the kitchen with the other servants, Patience.”
“Mrs. Drabble is hardly a servant,” Patience said indignantly. “She is a very skilled professional nurse, and, I hope, my friend. I know I’m very grateful to her for all she has done for me. Please, Mrs. Drabble, I would be honored if you would take your meals with us.”
“Your Ladyship is very kind,” Mrs. Drabble murmured, curtsying. “But I—I have already had my breakfast. Please excuse me.”
“Yes, do go on,” Lady Jemima said airily. “We will look after Lady Waverly.”
“You see,” Pru said airily, when the nurse had left the room, “Mrs. Drabble knows her place. You only make them uncomfortable when you encourage them to get above themselves.”
“It was your cold looks that made her uncomfortable,” Patience said angrily. “It’s not for you to say who I can and can’t have at my table.”
Pru shrugged. “Well, now that you are better, I’m sure you will be giving Mrs. Drabble her notice anyway. What you need now, instead of a nurse, is a lady’s maid. You should hire one at once. Mine is French. She is called Yvette.”
“A lady’s maid? We never had a lady’s maid in Philadelphia,” Patience objected. “We always looked after ourselves. I can brush my own hair and darn my own stockings, thank you.”
“That was all right for Philadelphia,” Pru told her. “But it won’t do in London, I’m afraid. I don’t think you realize, Pay, that, once the Season begins, we’ll be far too busy to do any mending. And we’ll be changing our clothes five and six times a day. You wouldn’t be able to keep up. As for your hair—you really ought to have yours cut and styled like mine. Well, perhaps not exactly like mine,” she added. “I have a book of heads. I will let you borrow it.”
“Don’t you mean you
shall
let me borrow it?” Patience said waspishly.
Pru made a face at her.
“Anyway, I don’t need a maid. I shall never be too busy to do my own mending. And I shan’t be changing my clothes five times a day. That’s just silly.”
“Of course, you will have to change your clothes!” Pru protested. “You must have morning gowns, carriage gowns, walking habits, riding habits—Well, I don’t suppose
we
need riding habits, since we don’t actually ride, though Lady Jemima says we ought to learn. But in any case, we shall need afternoon dresses, tea gowns, dinner gowns, evening gowns, ball gowns, and, of course, court dresses.”
“I have my everyday dresses and my Sunday best,” Patience stubbornly replied. “That has always been sufficient. I don’t aspire to be a fashion plate.”
“No! You aspire to humiliate me—and yourself, if you only knew it!” Pru shot back. “You must have new clothes, Patience, and a lady’s maid to keep you in fashion. People will think you are a backward American bumpkin if you do not dress properly. I can arrange for you to have an appointment with my modiste—Madame Devy is the best in London. And I’m sure Lady Jemima would be glad to help you find a maid.”
“Indeed, I would, Your Ladyship—” Lady Jemima began, eager to ingratiate herself with the baroness.
“That will not be necessary,” Patience said shortly. “There must be a hundred servants in this house. Some one of them must be capable of ironing a dress and mending a hem. If I find I need a new dress or two, I will—I shall make them, as I have always done.”
“This economical streak of yours is so unbecoming!” Pru complained. “You can’t be seen in London wearing your home-sewn atrocities. You must remember that you are a baroness now, Pay. People will expect you to look the part.”
Patience laughed. “And play the part, too, I suppose!”
“Well, yes,” Pru said insistently.
“As if I were a character in a play?” Patience scoffed. “I am no such thing.”
Pru looked at her slyly. “And if you are busy sewing for yourself, when will you have time for your charity work? Or do you mean to abandon the poor little orphans completely?”
Patience gasped indignantly. Mrs. Drabble was part of a charity organization that attempted to provide warm clothing for London’s myriad orphans. In her free time, she was forever knitting hats, mittens, and scarves. Patience, who hated to be idle, had put herself to work as soon as she was able, producing many admirable woolen shawls. “Of course not,” she said. “If it comes down to a choice, I am adequately clothed; they are not.”
Pru let out a groan. “And while we are on the subject,” she went on after a short pause, “we must have a carriage. We cannot do without one.”
“No, indeed,” Lady Jemima echoed, drawing a look from Patience that effectively silenced her.
“While we are on the subject!” Patience repeated. “I’m quite sure we weren’t anywhere
near
that particular subject. A carriage! What’s next? A yacht?”
“We were on the subject of things we must have,” Pru said coldly. “We must have a carriage. Yachts, as nice as they are, can’t really be considered essential—at least not in London.”
“We don’t need a carriage,” said Patience. “I know one thing about London: it is full of hackney coaches. They’ll take you anywhere you want to go, and, what’s more, it’s cheaper than keeping horses and grooms and drivers. Think of it this way: the less you spend on transportation, the more money you will have to spend on clothes.”
“Yes, but, Patience, one cannot go to a ball in a hack! A yellow hack with a number plate on the door?” Pru howled. “I’d rather die! Why, the person who sits on the seat before you could be anybody! And one cannot go to the Court of St. James in a hack!”
“No, indeed!” Lady Jemima could not help exclaiming.
“We must have a carriage with our coat of arms on the door,” Pru said confidently.
“We have a coat of arms?” said Patience, momentarily distracted.
“Of course we do; we are the nobility,” Pru replied.
“What does it look like?” Patience asked.
“Oh, it’s very grand,” Pru assured her. “Three golden lion’s paws on an azure field.”
Patience made a face. “Rather gruesome, don’t you think? Anyway, shouldn’t a lion have four paws? What happened to the fourth?”
“Never mind!” Pru snapped. “The point is that we are aristocrats and aristocrats do not go around in hacks! We simply must have a carriage. Surely even you can see that. Everyone will be laughing at the stupid Americans in their hack! Is that what you want?”
“No,” Patience said quickly. “You’re right. We must have a carriage. I’ll write to Mr. Gordon. He has the authority to release funds from the accrued interest of the trust.”
“Yes, but he never does,” Pru said darkly.
“He does when I ask him,” Patience said simply.
Pru shook her head. “It will take too long—months!—to get anything out of Mr. Gordon. We must have a carriage as soon as possible. Certainly, we must have it when the Season begins.”
“I’ll ask Mr. Bracegirdle to inquire about hiring a carriage,” Patience promised.
“A hired carriage!” cried Pru. “Why, that’s hardly better than a hack! No, we must have our carriage built to order. I know just how I want it. I’ve already selected the upholstery for the cushions.”
“Nonsense,” Patience said flatly. “Buy a carriage? Prudence, may I remind you that England is not our permanent home? Our first business here—our only real business here—is to settle our uncle’s estate.”
“But it wouldn’t be all that expensive, really. The carriage maker’s already given me a very good estimate. How much, do you suppose? You will never guess, so I’ll tell you. Only two hundred dollars! Only two hundred for the sweetest town carriage you ever saw with all the amenities! London, you see, is not as expensive as Philadelphia,” she went on quite smugly. “Though I very much doubt we could find anyone to make us such a carriage in Philadelphia. Wait until you see it!”
Patience set down her fork. “Two hundred dollars?”
Pru nodded eagerly. “You stare! But everything in London is too absurdly cheap! And of such quality! We’d be fools not to buy everything in sight!”
Patience’s eyes widened in alarm. “Is that what you have been doing?” she said slowly. “Buying everything in sight?”
Pru laughed. “What do you suppose my ensemble cost?” she asked, pronouncing the French word just as it was spelled. Full of her own cleverness, she stood up and turned slowly in a circle so that Patience could take in the full glory of one of her newest gowns.
“Your ensign bull?” Patience repeated, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“My ensemble!” Pru explained, twirling. “It is French for—for—well, for clothes, I suppose, for lack of a better word. I told you I had been taking French lessons. You should have lessons as well,” she went on, ceasing to twirl. “In English society it is de rigueur to speak French.”
“De rigueur” was pronounced emphatically as “day rigger.”
“In just a few weeks, I have learned ever so many useful phrases from Mamselle. Nest paw. Silver plate. Mares-ey. Mares-ey bow coop. And ... ensign bull. So? What do you think I paid for my ensemble?”
Patience did not think the morning gown of grass green and canary yellow stripes became Pru at all, but she reserved the full force of her loathing for the short, sky blue spencer worn over the striped gown. Cut much too small to meet over Pru’s chest, it was by no means lacking in very large buttons, two on each side—but, of course, no buttonholes. It offended practical Patience in every possible way.
“Whatever you paid, it was too much!”
“That is what you think!” Pru exclaimed in triumph. “Only thirteen dollars for all of this! In Philadelphia, it would have cost me at least fifteen!”
Patience groaned. “Pounds, Prudence! Pounds, not dollars. Thirteen pounds for a perfectly stupid, tiny, little jacket.”
“It is called a spencer,” Pru informed her coldly.
“Why have buttons on a jacket that obviously can never be fastened? Why have buttons and no buttonholes? Why have a jacket at all, if the point is to leave your bosom exposed?”
“It is the fashion,” Pru explained.
Patience frowned. “How many of these little ensign bulls have you bought?” she demanded.
“It was necessary!”
Patience closed her eyes. “How much have you spent?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Pru answered.
“Approximately then!”
“A lot,” Pru admitted.
“I would say,” ventured Lady Jemima, in an attempt to be helpful, “not more than a thousand pounds.”
Patience paled to the roots of her hair. “A thousand pounds!” she gasped. “On clothes? Pru, you bought all new clothes before we left Philadelphia!”
“But they were the wrong clothes,” Pru explained. “Philadelphia is at least two years behind the rest of the world. And I needed a dress for court. That cost over two hundred all by itself.”
“Almost enough for a carriage!” Patience said furiously. “Two hundred pounds for one dress? That’s nearly eight hundred dollars!”
“Well, I can’t very well go to St. James’s Palace dressed in rags, can I?”
“No, indeed,” Patience said angrily. “But you will be going in a hack! Oh, I beg your pardon! You
shall
be going in a hack!”
“I hate you!” cried Pru, bursting into violent tears.
“Perhaps it is not my place to say this, Lady Waverly,” Lady Jemima began tentatively. When Patience did not immediately respond, she went on, “But a thousand pounds is not so very much to spend on a London Season. Miss Prudence will make a brilliant marriage, you’ll see. And then, of course, the outlay will have been worth it all.” She smiled benevolently.
Patience shot her a swift glance. “Marriage!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you talking about? We haven’t come here to find husbands.”
Lady Jemima stared at her, quite shocked. “Lady Waverly! Don’t you want to be married?”
“Certainly not, and neither does my sister. If she did, she could have had her pick in Philadelphia.”
Pru scowled, her tears drying up as suddenly as they had appeared. “Oh, who could marry any of those yokels? I
do
want a husband, as it happens. I would very much like to get away from
you
and set up my own house!”
“You don’t mean that,” Patience said, wounded.
“Did you think I would be content to live with you forever?” said Pru.
“It had occurred to me,” Patience answered, “that one day you might fall in love and get married, but ... Well, you make it sound as though you want to escape from me!”
“I do,” said Pru.
Patience was deeply hurt. Tears pricked her eyes. “Well, if that is how you feel about it,” she murmured. Climbing to her feet, she dragged herself toward the door.
Almost immediately, Pru was stung by guilt. “I’m sorry!” she cried, overtaking Patience and kissing her hand. “I didn’t mean it. Oh, I hate it when we fight. Whatever happens, we will always be the closest of sisters.”

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