Nearly a Lady

by Alissa Johnson

  It wouldn’t be such a hardship to spend a few weeks in a place such as this, she thought.

  The carriage began to slow, and for a moment she thought they were going to stop in front of a respectably sized house with cheerful green shutters on the front windows, but they turned instead and into yet another world.

  The houses weren’t respectably sized and cheerful here; they were enormous and daunting. And the carriage stopped in front of the largest and most daunting of them all—a three-story brick building that looked to take up a third of the block.

  “Your aunt lives here?” Her voice sounded weak even to her own ears.

  Gideon climbed off the carriage, turned, and assisted her down. “It doesn’t meet with your approval?”

  She honestly didn’t know how to answer that. Fortunately, Lilly’s emergence from the carriage meant she didn’t have to try.

  Grinning from ear to ear, Lilly practically skipped over to take Winnefred’s hands in a viselike grip. “We are here. Can you believe it?”

  “It does seem rather fantastical,” she admitted.

  “It seems marvelous,” Lilly returned. She looped her arm through Winnefred’s and fell into step behind Gideon when he headed toward the house. “What do you think, Freddie? Will it do?”

  “It is not what I had expected,” she hedged. It was all so much more. The house was bigger, the gardens more extensive—though they did not, she was relieved to note, appear to have any peacocks in residence—and the front door looked stout enough to keep out an army. When they were admitted into the house, she discovered that the front hall was large enough to fit the whole of Murdoch House, and quite possibly the gardener’s cottage.

  She’d never been exposed to such wealth before. Even the country manor she had visited as a child with her father could not compare to the extravagance of Lady Gwen’s London home.

  Even Lady Gwen herself wasn’t what Winnefred had expected. In an effort to quash her fears about staying with a stranger, Winnefred had begun to picture Gideon’s aunt as a short, plump woman with round, rosy cheeks and a friendly disposition. It seemed reasonable to assume she would have to be at least a little friendly to have agreed to sponsor two young women who were completely unknown to her.

  Unfortunately, Winnefred’s assumptions turned out to be so far off they would have been laughable, had they been at all funny.

  Lady Gwen descended the wide stairs into the front hall with the physical bearing of a fair-haired Amazon and the dress and manner of royalty. She looked to stand somewhere near to six feet, and though Winnefred estimated a full three inches of that height was owed to the heavy mass of hair that had been pinned up in thick curls and fat ringlets, the woman was still undeniably tall. And severe . . . She looked to be very, very severe. Which is why Winnefred felt no desire to laugh.

  Lady Gwen stopped before them, acknowledged their curtsies and her nephew’s greeting with a regal nod of her head, and then proceeded to walk a slow circle around her two new charges, eyeing them down the length of her rather prominent nose in the same manner Mr. McGregor eyed their yearly calf.

  Winnefred glanced at Gideon, but he was too busy speaking with the butler to notice. Tired, irritated, and insulted, she clenched her jaw to keep from speaking out and stared straight ahead until Lady Gwen had completed her circle.

  “Well, they certainly are not fresh misses, are they?” Lady Gwen gave a quick nod of her head in approval. “Thank heavens for that. Foolish business, wedding giggling infants before they have a chance to know their own minds.”

  She stepped a little closer to Lilly. “The hair is too dark for fashion, but I daresay the rest is more than adequate. You are fortunate in your eyes, Miss Ilestone. That shade of blue is not often seen.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  Lady Gwen harrumphed by way of reply before turning sharp eyes on Winnefred.

  “This one looks green.”

  Gideon cast a look over his shoulder. “Winnefred? Didn’t I mention this is her first season?”

  “Not green, you buffoon. Green.”

  He lifted one dark brow. “Of course, green. What was I thinking?”

  “I believe she means ill,” Winnefred informed him and immediately regretted having unclenched her jaw, because now that she had allowed herself to speak, she found she couldn’t stop. She turned a haughty face toward Lady Gwen. “I’ve ears, a mouth, and a reasonable grasp of the English language, my lady. I’ll thank you not to speak of me as if I’m deaf, mute, and stupid.”

  Lilly gasped. “Winnefred!”

  “Ha! The gel has spine!” To Winnefred’s shock, Lady Gwen nodded once more in approval. Then, somewhat less surprisingly, she immediately narrowed her eyes. “See that you do not confuse it with insolence, child.”

  Gideon stepped forward and grinned. “The sort of insolence that results in the daughter of a marquess marrying a mere baronet rather than the viscount picked out for her?”

  “That was not insolence,” Lady Gwen replied with a sniff. “That was shrewdness, which is always to be commended.”

  Gideon merely winked at Lady Gwen’s glare. “Be merciful, aunt. The journey was a taxing one. Winnefred needs to rest.”

  “Miss Blythe,” Lady Gwen said with enough emphasis to show her displeasure with Gideon’s use of first names, “shall be shown up to her chambers directly.”

  “Excellent.” Gideon slapped his gloves against his leg. “Then if you ladies need nothing further, I’ll beg your leave.”

  “Where are you going?” Lady Gwen demanded.

  “Home.”

  “When will you return?”

  “I am at your disposal, naturally,” Gideon said easily. “Send one of your footmen with word when you have need of me.”

  “A waste of time and staff. You shall stay here.”

  If it hadn’t been unforgivably rude, Winnefred would have laughed outright at the appalled expression on Gideon’s face. “I will not.”

  “Would you have the ton say Lord Gideon Haverston cares so little for his wards that he could not stand to be under the same roof with them?”

  “They are my brother’s wards,” Gideon argued.

  “I’m not anyone’s ward,” Lilly pointed out.

  “I certainly don’t want to be,” Winnefred muttered.

  Lady Gwen ignored all three statements. “Have your man bring what . . . You haven’t a man, have you? I keep forgetting your propensity for living as a savage.”

  “A house in Mayfair and a day maid is hardly—”

  “Never mind, a few of my staff can be spared this once to fetch what you need.”

  “Generous of you,” Gideon drawled. “Aunt—”

  “It is settled then.” She motioned for a pair of maids to step forward. “Sarah and Rebecca shall show the ladies to their chambers.”

  Chapter 24

  Winnefred followed Lilly and the maid upstairs, but the long walk went by in a blur. Her mind registered the expensive carpet under her feet, the elaborately framed portraits on the walls, and the passing of a seemingly endless number of doors and hallways, but she found it impossible to concentrate on anything but the growing knot of worry in her belly.

  The house was too big. There were too many servants. She’d already forgotten the names of the maids she was following. Lady Gwen hated her. She shouldn’t have agreed to come to London.

  “You’ve the blue room, miss.”

  “What?” Winnefred blinked and noticed for the first time that they’d stopped.

  Lilly reached out and rubbed her arm. “You look done in, dear.”

  “I feel ghastly, to be honest. Lilly—”

  “Get some rest.” Lilly gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’m only down the hall a little ways.”

  Winnefred nodded and sighed in relief. She’d rather feared they’d be settled in different wings. But the small boost in confidence quickly diminished as she watched Lilly walk away with one of the maids. A little ways down the hall was
not quite so little when that hall was very, very long.

  “Miss? Would you like . . . ?”

  “Hmm?” She turned and found the other maid holding open a door. “Oh. Right. Thank you.”

  Winnefred gave the girl a sheepish smile and stepped over the threshold and into the most enormous, most extravagantly appointed, and most . . . blue room she had ever seen.

  “Good heavens.”

  “Shall I stoke the fire for you?”

  Winnefred was only vaguely aware of nodding. She was overwhelmed by the size and hue of the room. Everything was blue—the canopy over the ocean-sized bed, the settee and matched set of chairs in front of the fireplace, the drapes over the long line of windows, even the yards and yards of carpet . . . The very fine and very expensive-looking carpet. She would spill something on it. She was certain of it.

  She would have worried over that frightful inevitability longer, but a movement in the hallway caught her eye. Turning, she saw Gideon stop in front of her open door. He glanced both ways down the hall, then poked his head into her room.

  “Will it suit you, Winnefred?”

  “It is enormous,” was all she could think to say.

  “And blue,” he added with thoughtful nod. “I’ve always thought this room too blue.”

  “Perhaps . . . Perhaps I could . . .” Go back to Murdoch House. Oh, but even the idea of climbing back on a carriage made her stomach roll.

  “Do you want a different room?” Gideon prompted.

  Yes. “No. Of course not. It was very generous of your aunt to . . . It’s only . . . It’s so big.”

  “Average for a house of this size.”

  “It’s colossal. Look at all of this space.” She spread her arms out, a small bubble of laughter catching in her throat. “Whatever is it for? Did the original occupant perform acrobatics in her bedchamber?”

  The maid fumbled the poker, banging it against the metal grate.

  Winnefred dropped her arms at the sudden realization of what might have been inferred from her comment. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean . . .” She trailed off, felt color rise to her cheeks, and dearly hoped the maid would see only her embarrassment at the slip and not the laugh that wanted to escape. The laugh she was not going to allow to escape. Absolutely not.

  A helpless giggle escaped, and then another. She slapped a hand over her mouth, disgusted with herself. Bloody hell, what was wrong with her? It was one thing to be crass in a remote tavern with only Gideon present; it was something else to be so in his aunt’s home, in front of his aunt’s maid.

  Gideon stepped into the room. “Rebecca. I believe the fireplace in the sitting room requires attention.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Winnefred watched with increasing alarm as Rebecca opened a door she had assumed led to a closet. Her hands fell away from her mouth. She didn’t want Gideon to know how awful she felt, how overwhelmed and out of place. But . . . “There’s more to this room? Oh, this is . . . This will never work. I knew it wouldn’t work.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gideon asked gently.

  “This.” She threw her arms out to indicate everything around her. “Me. In London. It was a dreadful idea. We’ve been here less than an hour and already I’ve been disagreeable to your aunt, made a very vulgar jest, and laughed at it. I should not have come.”

  “Sit down, Winnefred.”

  “I don’t want to sit down. We’ve been sitting down for days.”

  “You’re overwrought.”

  She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Small children and silly woman become overwrought.”

  “So do sensible ladies who have spent days traveling and battling illness.”

  “I . . .” She hated that she knew he was right. “I’m not quite myself, it’s true. But I don’t think I can sleep, Gideon. I was so tired on the carriage, but now I’m much too . . .” She searched for the right word, but her whirling mind refused to provide it. “Too awake,” was the best she could come up with.

  “You don’t have to sleep. Just lie down and close your eyes for a bit . . . An hour.”

  “Just lie down? For an hour?”

  “I’ll tell you a story to pass the time.”

  It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, she thought, to lie down awhile and listen to Gideon. Or perhaps it would be. She glanced at the open door to her chambers, then craned her neck to look into the sitting room.

  “Are you supposed to be in here?”

  Gideon shrugged. “The door is open, Rebecca is right there, you are ill, and until my brother returns, I am essentially your guardian.”

  She gave him a bland look. “Are you supposed to be in here?”

  “Probably not, but my aunt is in the orangery and Rebecca isn’t one for gossip. Now.” He took her hand and led her to the bed. “Have a seat.”

  She sat on the edge of the mattress and nearly jumped out of her skin when Gideon knelt down in front of her and began to unlace her boots. “Don’t. I can—”

  She pulled her foot away, only to have him snag her ankle and gently pull it back. “Hold still . . . And quit arguing.”

  “I’m not . . .” She pressed her lips together to keep from arguing. When his fingers brushed bare skin at the top of her boots, she pressed them together to keep from shivering.

  He pulled off one boot, then the other. “There we are. Into bed with you now.”

  She stifled a sigh, though whether it was one of disappointment or relief the task was done, she couldn’t say. And to hide her confusion, she took a few extra moments rearranging pillows before lying back, her arms folded over her stomach.

  “What sort of story are you going—?”

  “The sort of my choosing,” Gideon cut in. He picked up a small chair near the window and settled it, and himself, by the side of the bed. “And there will be no commenting from you. This is the telling of a tale, not a conversation.”

  She closed her eyes and smirked. “Aye, Captain.”

  “We understand each other. Now then, how would you like to hear the story of how Lady Gwen defied her parents and married a lowly baronet.”

  “Oh, very much.”

  “No commenting,” he reminded her. “The story is as such . . . My aunt was promised at the age of six to Viscount Wunrow. A short, fat man with a tyrannical nature and a propensity to whistle when pronouncing the letter S. Envision a rotund, lisping Napoleon . . . Stop laughing,” he chided. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  “Thank you. Not surprisingly, as Lady Gwen grew into adulthood, she became less and less enamored of the idea of becoming Lady Wunrow. She requested a release from the engagement and was soundly denied by both her family and Wunrow. He was vehement they would marry and threatened to ruin her good name should she attempt to break the contract.”

  “Could he do that?”

  “Not important. Rest.” He waited for her next nod before continuing. “Now, you may have noticed that my aunt is unusually tall in stature.”

  “I did.”

  “Shush.” This time, he waited for her to stop giggling.

  “What you do not know is that she was also unusually clever for her age, and patient. She was very, very patient. She began, at age sixteen, to place lifts in her shoes whenever Wunrow came to visit. Small ones to start, then gradually increasing in size. When larger ones were not to be had, she secretly paid a cobbler to add extra height to the heels of some of her shoes. By the time she was eighteen, she towered nearly a foot over Lord Wunrow. I’m told the sight was fairly comical. And all the while, she was encouraging the attentions of a man she did care for—an unknown, unconnected, and relatively poor baronet of respectable height.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Also not important. The result of her efforts is what matters. Wunrow broke the engagement—a scandal of insurmountable proportions by Haverston standards. The jilting of a viscount can mark a young lady as unsuitable
for marriage, and in the eyes of the Haverstons, an unmarried lady is a useless lady, a burden.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Stop talking. It benefited my aunt in the long run. When her young baronet came to ask for her hand—and her immense dowry—with nothing to offer in return but his lowly title, my family was all too happy to accept.”

  “That’s lovely.”

  “Shh. They honeymooned on the continent. Spain first, I believe. My aunt still speaks of the coastline. Golden sands and unpredictable waters. The sun shines more brightly there, or so she says. They went to Italy next . . .”

  Winnefred’s mind wandered as Gideon began to describe the travels of Lady Gwen and her baronet. Her limbs grew comfortably heavy. Soon, his voice became a low, soothing murmur in the background. She was only vaguely aware of him rising from his chair, of a warm blanket covering her, and of the soft whispering at the foot of her bed.

  “Shall I help her to change, my lord?”

  “No, let her rest.”

  And then she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Winnefred did feel improved after a long nap—an exceedingly long nap as it turned out. It was half past eight when she rose. But as much as the rest did to improve her physical well-being, it was a visit to Lilly’s chambers that lifted her spirits. She found her friend awake and sitting on the edge of a green bed in a decidedly green room.

  “Good heavens.” Winnefred laughed, closing the door behind her. “This room.”

  “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

  That was one word for it. “Are they all like this, do you think?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “But there are only so many colors to be had.” With green and blue already taken, she wondered what color was to be found in Gideon’s chambers.

  “What do you find so amusing?” Lilly inquired.

  “I am imagining Lord Gideon awash in a sea of pink.”