by Anne Gracie
As he closed the door behind him, his aunt’s voice followed. “I just hope the chit can dance.”
Of course she can dance, Nash thought. All girls learned to dance, didn’t they? All the girls he knew did. They all played the pianoforte, too, and painted insipid watercolors. But she might need to polish her skills. It would be wise to check. He hastened to find Maddy.
He found her supervising a fitting of clothes for the girls. The three little girls and Lizzie stood on chairs, standing like slowly rotating statues while the village dressmaker and her assistants pinned up the hems of their new dresses.
Lucy squirmed, trying to see herself in the looking glass.
“Hold still, Lucy, unless you want to be pricked by pins,” Maddy told her.
The little girl saw Nash standing in the doorway. “I’m wearing a new dress. Don’t I look beautiful, Mr. Rider?”
“You do indeed, Lucy,” he assured her. “A very fetching picture you all make. Susan, I like that pink dress, and Jane, that blue matches your eyes perfectly.” He winked at Lizzie who was wearing checks. “Very smart, Lizzie.”
“But Maddy hasn’t got any new dresses,” Susan told him worriedly. “Only us. She should look pretty, too.”
“She does look pretty, and she’ll get new clothes soon,” Nash assured her. “Maddy’s dresses are coming from London.”
“London? But how will they know to make them the right size?” Jane asked.
Nash smiled. “I sent one of Maddy’s old dresses to London so they could get the measurements. And her old slippers, so the shoemaker could do the same.”
Maddy, who had half a dozen pins held between her lips, nearly spat them out. “You sent them one of my dresses? Without telling me? How? And which one?” She didn’t seem very pleased by his ingenuity.
“From that bundle of old clothes you left on the door. Remember, you were sorting out what to pack?”
Her eyes widened. “You sent a fancy London mantua maker my oldest rag of a dress?”
He frowned. “You didn’t want it, did you?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “No, of course I didn’t want it, it’s a rag!” She groaned. “Oh, how could you, Nash?”
How could he? He explained, “It’s actually rather a coup to have got her to take you on at all, especially at this time of the year, before the season. She’s the most fashionable mantua maker in London.” Aunt Maude would kill him when she learned that Nash had used her name in his armory to convince Giselle.
Maddy groaned. “So you sent the most fashionable dressmaker in London the tattiest old rag I owned and told her it was mine.”
Her attitude confused him. Perhaps she didn’t understand the full genius of his plan. “But it was the perfect solution. Giselle can copy all the measurements from the old dress and whip up a new one for you in no time. Well, in time for the wedding, actually. Only a week to go.”
“Yes, but now she will know that I wore old rags.”
“What does that matter?”
“She’ll think I’m the veriest pauper, some kind of desperate fortune hunter.”
Nash stared at her. “What do you care what she thinks? She’s only a dressmaker. And you’re buying a lot of new dresses and they won’t be cheap, so she’d better keep her tongue between her teeth if she wants any more of your custom.”
“Cinderella wore old rags,” Lucy said into the silence that followed.
Maddy laughed and hugged the little girl. “Yes, she did, darling, and her fairy godmother gave her a new dress. And I’m sorry I was cross with Mr. Renfrew for doing the same, no matter what his methods were, his intentions were the best.”
Lucy frowned. “He’s not the fairy godmother, he’s the prince.”
The talk of Cinderella reminded Nash why he’d sought Maddy in the first place. “Can you dance?” he asked her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Can you dance?” Nash repeated. “You know, country dances, cotillions, waltzes, quadrilles, that sort of thing. You can, can’t you?”
She bit her lip. “I know some country dances, and I’ve learned the steps of the cotillion, and a quadrille is a variation on that, is it not?” He nodded. “So I can probably manage that, but I’ve never learned to waltz, never even seen it danced.”
“Never seen it danced?” he repeated. “You must have attended some very dowdy balls then.”
“I’ve never attended any sort of ball at all.”
Nash was shocked. He knew she hadn’t made her come out, but . . . “Not even a local assembly?”
“Not one.”
“An impromptu dance at a party?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never been to a party, and never actually danced with anyone, except for a couple of country dances at the village fair last year. Strip the Willow, and the Scotch Reel, that sort of thing. Oh, and we danced around a maypole, didn’t we girls?”
Nash did his best to mask his shock, but his heart sank. She’d never even been to a party? Her sole experience of dancing in public was at a village fete with some drunken rural clodhopper? And dancing around a maypole, for pity’s sake! It was worse than he thought.
He thought of the hundreds of glittering balls he’d attended in palaces and ballrooms all over Europe, where men and women flirted, plotted, and made scintillating conversation as they danced, each step and complicated sequence as familiar as walking. And she’d never even been to a party.
The gulf between his diplomatic life and her knowledge and experience widened by the minute. His future as a country squire seemed inevitable.
Aunt Maude must never find out how socially inexperienced Maddy was.
“Very well then,” he said. “We’ll commence dancing lessons this afternoon. Three o’clock in the green saloon.” At his words, the little girls squealed with excitement, and he kicked himself for mentioning it in front of them. “Oh, but—” he began, but then it occurred to him it was as good an excuse as any. If Aunt Maude enquired, he and Maddy were teaching the children how to dance.
Maddy’s eyes shone. “I look forward to it,” she said quietly. “I’ve heard the waltz is a very romantic dance.”
Nash nodded brusquely. It was a romantic dance, but not when his whole future was riding on it.
Twenty-two
Maddy was running late for her waltzing lesson. The modiste from London had arrived at noon, and most of the afternoon had been taken up with fittings and adjustments.
To Maddy’s relief, the modiste was not the famous Giselle, but her assistant, Claudine, another Frenchwoman, and though Claudine initially eyed Maddy’s shabby clothing with ill-disguised distaste, from the moment Maddy addressed her in French, Claudine softened.
Maddy wasn’t able to get away until well after three, but she left Claudine and her two assistants enthusiastically planning a range of stunning dresses for her.
Maddy hurried down the stairs and along the corridor. The green saloon was in the far wing of the building. She slowed to walk more softly past the pink drawing room. Lady Gosforth had established it as her own special territory, and Maddy had no desire to attract the woman’s attention.
The door was ajar. As Maddy tiptoed past, a voice floated out. “That chit has caught him in her toils somehow.”
Maddy froze. It was Lady Gosforth, Nash’s aunt.
Lady Gosforth continued, “I wouldn’t have thought it of your brother to be caught by a brazen little fortune hunter with big brown eyes. Of all you boys, I always thought Nash the most level headed.”
They were discussing her. She ought to do the polite thing and tiptoe away. Outraged curiosity glued her to the spot. Brazen little fortune hunter indeed!
“To be fair, Nash was seriously injured. His brains were quite addled,” said Maddy’s future brother-in-law, the earl. “She took advantage of that to entrap him.”
Entrap? Maddy bristled. How dare he suggest such a thing! Nash wasn’t addled in the least when he asked her. And she’d done everything s
he could not to entrap him—and at considerable risk to her own reputation. If anything, he had entrapped her!
“You know the gel better than I, Marcus. What do you make of her?”
“She’s interesting,” Marcus began.
His aunt cut him off. “I meant, can you suggest a way out of this pickle?”
Maddy clenched her fists. Her marriage to Nash might not be what his family expected, but it was not a pickle.
“She’s as poor as a church mouse, so I doubt it.” The earl snorted. “There’s no shifting Nash when he’s in one of his gallant moods—you know how stubborn he can be.”
“Pish, tush! All you Renfrew men are as stubborn as blocks,” his aunt said caustically. “That simply means we can’t expect him to act on his own advantage. Doesn’t mean we can’t act for him. Good God, boy, have I searched the length and breadth of the kingdom for the finest available brides, only to have him trapped into marriage by some scheming little nobody who for all I know caused the accident deliberately?”
“How dare you!” Maddy stepped into the room. She was shaking with anger. “I did not cause Nash’s accident. All I did was to try to save a stranger’s life, and if you must know, it put me to a great deal of trouble and inconvenience!”
Lady Gosforth peered disdainfully at Maddy through her lorgnette, then sniffed, and turned her attention back to her knitting.
Maddy’s temper rose. “Don’t sniff at me, you obnoxious old woman! I would scorn to entrap any man. You may call me a nobody, and it’s true that my father’s family was undistinguished, though it was genteel, but my mother’s family was noble and well connected—”
Lady Gosforth’s finely plucked eyebrows rose.
“—even though most of them died during the Terror—”
“Oh, French,” the old woman said with a dismissive wave.
“Yes, French, and very proud of it I am, too!” Maddy snapped, almost dancing with rage. “I know the marriage is not the grand one you’d hoped for, and no doubt I should have refused your nephew when he made his offer, but I could not! I simply could not—and don’t curl your lip at me like that—my reasons are my own, of concern only to Nash and myself, and if he is happy with the situation, then you should respect his choice. He’s a man, not a foolish boy suffering from a fit of gallantry.”
She glared at his brother. “And, yes, he is gallant, but you should be proud of that and not dismiss it with a sneer. If there were more gallant men in the world, it would be a better place.”
She took a couple of deep breaths and when she spoke again, it was in a calmer voice. “You may call me a fortune hunter, and I admit, I do want the security and the position—and the pretty dresses and jewels that come with it.”
Lady Gosforth made a rude sound.
“Snort all you want, I won’t deny they appeal,” Maddy told her. “I’m as human as the next girl. But if you think that’s the only appeal, or even the main appeal, you couldn’t be more wrong.” She glared at the old lady. “Have you looked at your nephew, really looked? Have you spoken to him? Do you even know him? Because if you did, you couldn’t possibly think any woman would marry him for his fortune.”
Lady Gosforth stared down her long arrogant nose, as if Maddy were an insect, and in the most skeptical of tones drawled, “You would have me believe you desire my nephew for himself alone?”
“I don’t give a fig for what you believe!” Maddy snapped her fingers. “But I will make him a better wife than any of those blue-blooded girls on your precious list.”
“Pshaw! You haven’t the first idea how to support his career.”
“No, I don’t,” Maddy admitted. “Yet. But I will learn, just see if I don’t. I might not have lived in my father’s house for most of my life, but it was a gentleman’s establishment, and I ran it for the last year of his life. My mother and grandmother also trained me in some of the accomplishments of a lady—”
“Some?”
“I may not play the pianoforte or paint in watercolors, but my Italian is excellent,” Maddy responded coolly. She scorned to hide the deficiencies of her education to this vile old busybody.
“Your manners, however”—Lady Gosforth started a new row of knitting; it seemed such an incongruous occupation for such an elegant woman—“leave a great deal to be desired.”
“My manners are appropriate to the company in which I find myself,” Maddy flashed.
The finely plucked brows rose in faint incredulity at her blunt speaking. Maddy felt a spurt of satisfaction. She would not be cowed by this arrogant old woman.
She took a deep breath and continued, “I am not like the girls on your list, I know. I am not beautiful or rich, I haven’t received a fine education, and I no longer have any family, let alone one with influence. But unlike your girls, I’m not spoiled and I’ve never been indulged. I know that nothing worthwhile comes without hard work, I have courage and brains and determination. You think I’m greedy, and perhaps I am, but I’m not selfish. And I will be a good wife to Nash.”
Lady Gosforth stopped knitting and gave Maddy a hard look. “Such a good wife, in fact, that he is talking about giving up his career as a diplomat and becoming a country squire.”
Maddy blanched. “That’s not true.” It couldn’t be.
“It is,” Lady Gosforth said. “He told me so this very day. Said he’d developed an interest in agricultural endeavors.”
“Nash?” Marcus exclaimed in incredulity. “Interested in agriculture? What rot.”
“Precisely, Marcus. It’s as plain as the nose on your face that Nash is contemplating giving up the career he has worked so hard for and excels at, simply because he’s been forced into a mésalliance with a chit who is no more suited to be a diplomat’s wife than her maid.” She turned to Maddy and added, “He knows that you will drag him down.”
Maddy swallowed, her throat dry. “I won’t drag him down,” she said in a low, fierce voice. “I won’t let him resign from his job and I will make him a good wife. I don’t expect you to believe it or to take my word for it; time will prove me right.”
She took a few steps toward the door, then stopped. She wanted to get everything off her chest while her temper was up. She might not have the courage later. Or the opportunity. “I will marry Nash, and nothing you can say or do will change my mind. And I mean to make a success of the marriage. But you”—her glance took in both Lady Gosforth and Lord Alverleigh—“you still have a choice.”
Lady Gosforth exchanged an opaque look with Marcus. “We have a choice, do we? And what might that be?”
Maddy straightened her back. “You can continue to undermine me, whispering in corners and sniping behind my back, or you can help me make a success of my marriage to Nash, help me learn the things I must learn to help him with his career. And help me make him happy.”
She looked at Marcus, so like Nash, but with none of the warmth, and his aunt, who stared back with narrowed, gimlet eyes. “So which is it to be?” Maddy finished.
There was a long silence. Lady Gosforth examined the rings on her elegantly manicured, gnarled hands. Lord Alverleigh picked an invisible piece of fluff off his sleeve. Closing ranks.
Maddy had expected indifference; nevertheless, a ball of disappointment settled in her stomach.
“Then,” she said with resolution, “I will manage it on my own.” She turned to leave.
Lady Gosforth’s voice stopped her. “I was not whispering.”
“My apologies, Lady Gosforth, you are quite correct. You have a very carrying voice and your words were audible halfway down the corridor.” Maddy inclined her head in ironic concession.
“Young woman!” Lady Gosforth rapped, interrupting Maddy’s attempt to make a dignified exit yet again.
She swung around. “What?”
“Do you love my nephew?”
“That,” Maddy said, “is none of your business.” And finally she stalked from the room.
“Has she gone?” Lady Gosforth asked Ma
rcus.
Marcus looked out into the corridor and nodded.
Lady Gosforth sat back in her chair and gave a large sigh. “What do you make of that?”
Marcus gave her an enigmatic look. “Nash won’t thank you for interfering, you know.”
“Pshaw! Interfering? I never interfere.” Lady Gosforth twirled her lorgnette on its ribbon. “I like the gel! She has the kind of spirit you don’t see in the mealy mouthed chits of today.”
“She certainly has spirit,” Marcus agreed.
“And breeding.”
“Breeding? How do you surmise that?”
“Of course there’s breeding. Did she once treat you or me as anything but an equal? Was there even a sniff of toadyism? The slightest attempt to ingratiate? No, she slapped me down, stood there in that atrocious rag of a dress, flung my accusations in my teeth, took me to task, and even had the face to call me an obnoxious woman.”
“An obnoxious old woman,” Marcus corrected her, earning himself a sharp rap over the knuckles with a fan.
“You completely misled me about the gel.”
“Me? I never said a—”
“She’ll lead that boy a merry dance, and she’ll make him a splendid wife. She’s in love with him, of course.”
“In love? How can you possibly know that?”
“Dolt!” She smacked him again with her fan. “To anyone but a thick-headed Renfrew, it’s obvious. The real question is, does Nash love her?”
“It’s my opinion he’s besotted,” Marcus said. “But that could be the result of his accident.”
His aunt made a rude noise. “Accident! An accidental wedding, to be sure.” She gave a spurt of caustic laughter. “What fun! I’m so glad that I let myself be dragged to the wilds of Wiltshire. Now don’t lollygag around, boy, help me to my feet. I have a wedding to organize.” She bounced up with no help from anyone.
“Nash has already made the wedding arrangements,” Marcus said.