Hester had opened her mouth to protest, but decided it was pointless to attempt resistance over such a trifling matter. Having Lady Augusta on her side was daunting, but it would be worse to offend her, and have her revert to the frosty hostility she had demonstrated when she’d first arrived.
* * *
By the time she returned to the house in Brook Street later in the day, she was in a much healthier frame of mind. How could she grumble about her circumstances when there were women facing complete destitution not half a mile from her door?
Jasper had called while she was out, leaving a message to say he would take her riding early the next morning, if she felt up to it.
* * *
She bounced out of bed the next morning while it was still dark to pull on her riding habit. Escaping from the stultifying atmosphere of Brook Street to ride in the park with Jasper, even if they could only trot sedately side by side, sounded like a slice of heaven.
Clothilde came to tell her his lordship had arrived, and Hester dashed downstairs. Jasper had brought a sweet little bay mare for Em to ride while they were in town, and she had Strawberry.
‘Good morning, Lady Hester, Miss Dean.’ Stephen Farrar touched his crop to the brim of his hat as they came out of the front door.
Jasper pulled alongside her as soon as she was in the saddle. ‘How are you?’ he said quietly, leaning into her so that the others had little chance of overhearing.
‘Glad to be on horseback, my…l…I mean, Jasper.’
He looked around at the cold and gloomy street with a grimace.
‘It is a great pity we have to rise this early, but it’s the only way to get a decent ride in London. If you want a gallop.’
‘If?’
His stony face relaxed into a smile. ‘It’s the only way to start the day, isn’t it? I feel heartily sorry for the fashionable folk who keep to their beds and only emerge when the park is crowded.’
The gatekeeper at the Grosvenor Gate Lodge tipped his hat as they went through, and they urged their horses into a trot. The only sounds were of the beat of hooves on turf, and the occasional protest of a bird they roused as they cantered beneath its misty roost. It was almost like being in the country.
Lord Lensborough led Hester to an open swathe of grass, she dug her heels into Strawberry’s flank, and for a few minutes, she left all her cares behind in an exhilarating burst of speed.
When they reined in, in a little copse, Em and Stephen were nowhere to be seen.
Lord Lensborough laughed. ‘We have lost our chaperons.’
‘Should we go back and look for them?’
‘Not yet.’ He placed his hand on Strawberry’s bridle when she would have turned. ‘This may be our only chance to indulge in private conversation.’
‘Is there something you particularly wished to say?’
‘Yes. My offer to cancel my mother’s plans and have a private ceremony still stands. We can put it about that I insisted on observing strict mourning for my brother.’ It was hard to read the expression on his face, since it was shadowed by the overhanging branches. The only thing Hester knew was that it was unpleasantly dank under the trees. She shivered.
He was trying to put it kindly, but the truth was he thought she was not up to the rigours of a large society wedding. He had seen her stumbling her way through a private family ball. How would she cope in a glittering salon crowded with upward of three hundred people?
She manoeuvred Strawberry out into the open. ‘Your mother is looking forward to hosting the event of the season. I do not wish to disappoint her, just when she seems to be thawing towards me.’
‘And what of your wishes? I am trying…’
Hester flung up her head. Didn’t he know that if he cancelled the showy wedding, everyone would know it was because he was ashamed of letting her out in public? So, he regretted the chivalrous impulse that made him propose to her instead of her cousins. She had never wanted to marry anyone at all.
‘You know very well my wishes have nothing to do with this. Let your mother enjoy herself, then at least someone will get something out of this farce.’
Hester’s heart was pounding as she waited for his response. He had never hesitated to roundly curse her before whenever she stepped out of line. She was staggered when he merely enquired politely how she planned to spend the rest of her day.
Darting him one nervous look, she told him, ‘Your mother is taking me to her modiste.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘You make it sound like some form of punishment.’
‘It will be.’ She flung her chin up. ‘I hate being measured and fussed and prodded about.’
After a slight pause, he said, ‘I confess, I spend as little time as possible under the tailor’s hands myself.’
She looked at the elegant cut of his coat, running her eyes down the length of his snugly fitting breeches to his immaculate boots, and quirked her brow at him.
‘Ah, riding clothes.’ He was smiling now. ‘That is a different matter entirely.’ He ran his eyes over her own outfit, and as he took his time perusing every detail, from the feather that drooped over the brim of her hat, to the well-worn gloves that she had brought from Yorkshire, Hester felt herself deflating.
‘I won’t mind if you do not shine in society, you do understand that, don’t you?’ His tone was clipped.
Hester understood only too well. No amount of expensive clothing was going to make her halfway presentable. He expected her to be a complete disaster. She bit her lower lip.
‘I don’t normally spend a lot of time in London anyway,’ he continued. ‘My life revolves around the racing calendar. Luckily I have estates convenient for all the major fixtures and I roam between them like a gypsy.’ He swore. ‘Hester, I’m sorry, that was a tactless thing to say.’
She smiled sadly. There was no tactful way to inform your bride that you were going to stash her away from the public glare so that she could not show you up.
‘Do you wish me to…live like a gypsy? Or would you rather I settled in one of your many homes?’
He wanted her to be with him. He wanted to show her his racing stud, to be at his side cheering on the winners they would train together. But would she want to be dragged all over the countryside? He did not want to exert undue pressure on her.
‘You must make your own choice, of course.’
Hester nodded. He didn’t really care what she did, as long as she didn’t curtail his activities. She was surprised at how much this hurt, but she was determined to show him she could be reasonable. She leaned forward and patted Strawberry’s neck. ‘So long as I have Strawberry to ride, I will cope with whatever you require of me.’
Jasper frowned. This outing was not going at all to plan. He had wanted to reassure her that he would not ride roughshod over her feelings any more. All he appeared to have done was remind her that he had virtually forced her into marriage when she had vowed all her life to remain single. He had then further offended her with that oblique reference to her illegitimate niece—he was at point non plus.
‘We had better find our chaperons before they do each other serious harm.’ He sighed, turning back to the bridle way.
Tears sprang to Hester’s eyes when she registered the stiff set of his back as he trotted away. She had, after her initial flare of temper, told him she would go along with whatever he would prefer, but it had not been enough. She could hardly blame him. She had behaved extremely badly from the first moment they met, and he must be heartily sick of her tantrums.
Wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, she trotted after him. She did not want him to think ill of her. After all he had done for her, rescuing her from Lionel, she wanted to be able at the very least to—she gulped back a sob—prove that she would never let him down.
* * *
It was only this determination to earn his approval that kept Hester calm through the session at Madame Pichot’s later that day. The modiste was delighted with Lady Augusta’s p
ronouncement that Hester was going to pioneer an entirely new look, and had immediately begun to circle her, eyes narrowed, pulling at her arms and pinching at her waist. While Hester preserved a stoic silence, Lady Augusta and Madame Pichot between them settled it all.
‘We’ve had enough of ostentatious display, don’t you think? Hester must look different, chaste.’
‘Ah, like the goddess Diana, perhaps?’ Madame Pichot draped a length of shot silk over her shoulders, and twisted her hair off her face. ‘A variation on the classical theme—the gown will drape like so, disguising the bony shoulders. And with that hair, all her gowns must be bronze and gold, never white. She will stand out from all the other young ladies. Perhaps greens for the evenings to bring out the eyes.’
She then sat mute while a skilful friseur suppressed her unruly mane with plaits of bronze velvet. ‘Always bind it close to the head, like so,’ he instructed Clothilde, who would have to recreate the look each day. ‘So that the delicate bones of the face will no longer be overshadowed. And the length of it, ah, we will leave these magnificent tresses to cascade down her back.’
* * *
It took Clothilde well over an hour each morning to maintain the glossily pomaded ringlets to Lady Augusta’s satisfaction, but if that was what it took to look the part for Jasper, then she would endure it. She was determined not to let him down by the way she looked or the way she behaved.
Hester was amazed at the amount of accessories Lady Augusta informed her she needed to convince the ton that she was fit to marry Jasper. They spent a large part of every day purchasing hats, gloves, boots and slippers in shades to match each gown that came from the modiste, not to mention numerous lengths of corded hair ribbon, petticoats, stockings and fans.
And then people began to return to London. Word quickly got about that the Marquis of Lensborough had become engaged, during a Christmas house party, to a complete unknown, and her drawing room filled with morning callers.
* * *
‘I must say,’ she observed one afternoon to Em, as they were unwrapping the latest delivery from the milliners, ‘that there are far more people about with a social conscience than when I last came to London. So many people have invited me to attend fund-raising ventures.’
Em sniggered. ‘Naturally, people will go to any lengths to be able to say they rub shoulders with a marchioness, even so far as to pretend an interest in the poor.’
‘Oh, surely not.’
‘Don’t be so naïve. People want position in this world far more than they regard their ultimate station in the next.’
Hester lowered her new green shako-style bonnet back into its delicate shroud of tissue paper sadly. Why hadn’t she seen it? She had been quick enough to inform Jasper that people would curry favour with him by supporting a charity he fronted. She sighed. It was so hard to think that she now inhabited the same lofty sphere as he.
‘And then, of course, the way Lady Augusta makes out you are some kind of a saint. How you don’t have a mercenary bone in your body, and how pleased she is that her son has found such a worthy woman to share his life, how you are simply dedicated to good works.’
In mock-anger, Hester flung a pair of gloves at her friend.
‘I expect she only said it as a riposte to someone foolish enough to make a disparaging remark about my appearance.’
‘Now you come to mention it, I do seem to remember her launching her paean of praise by saying that a girl who will become mother to the next marquis needs to be a deal more than a mere adornment on her husband’s arm. That it was undoubtedly your ingrained virtue that captivated her son.’
‘What an absolute plumper. Jasper has never been captivated by anything about me at all.’ She laughed, but even she could hear how forced her laughter sounded.
Far from being captivated, it seemed that the more he saw of her, the less he liked what he saw. Oh, he was never unkind enough to speak harshly to her. It was just that he had taken to looking at her, whenever their paths crossed in public, as if he was poised to leap into action should she misbehave.
Even when they did manage to snatch a few minutes of conversation, during their early morning rides, he kept to impersonal topics such as horses, or the need for reform, or his progress with setting up a fund for dependents of Bertram’s regiment. The more he opened his mind to her, the more she admired him, and the more despondent she grew. What could a man as fine as this possibly find to admire in a girl like her?
Conversely, Lady Augusta was all sweetness and light to her, particularly once she agreed to leave all the wedding arrangements in her hands, whilst simultaneously breathing fire over anyone foolhardy enough to voice any criticism of her future daughter-in-law whatever. Moreover, she plied Hester with all sorts of little tips to get her through the sort of situations that had been her downfall during her Season. She must never hang her head. Instead, if a person began to make her uncomfortable, she must look just beyond their shoulder, as if there was something or someone of greater interest standing just behind them. And employ the tight little smile she spent hours practising in front of a mirror, to signify she was bored.
‘You are a success!’ Lady Augusta eventually declared. It was true that wherever she went, people went into raptures about Lord Lensborough’s refreshingly different betrothed. The adulation should have made her happy, but it couldn’t. Not when Jasper was growing more remote from her with every day that passed.
* * *
‘In time for the first ball of the Season.’ Lady Augusta patted her cheek fondly as she swept into the nursery, where Hester had elected to stay after that first, disastrous, sleepless night in Brook Street.
‘Now, don’t worry. The ball to celebrate your marriage will still be the event of the Season. There is no harm in permitting the Countess of Walton to open it. The Earl is not a person I wish to offend, since his half-brother is a particular friend of Jasper’s. Besides, there is no point in making matters worse for his poor little French bride by upstaging her. Turn around.’
Hester meekly twirled, the fluid silk of her apple green gown billowing to reveal a pair of sandals that were a delicate tracery of the softest ivory kid. Though her arms were bare from the shoulders, she did not feel exposed, since a pair of emerald-studded clasps fixed the softly pleated drapes that sheathed her entire torso.
‘Charming. You look as though you had stepped down from the Elgin Marbles and come to life.’ Lady Augusta beamed at her. ‘Now, don’t forget, when a gentleman asks you to dance, you must appear to consult me. If you do not like him, you will give me the signal.’
Hester pulled at one of the struts of her fan with her left hand.
‘That’s it. Then I will know to shake my head. Provided, of course, that he is not one of the very few gentlemen you may not risk offending. Then you must employ the other weapons in your armoury.’
The smile, and the vacant stare. Hester stood a little straighter. A few people might conclude she was haughty, but Lady Augusta had said haughtiness was a trait that no member of the ton would decry. And nobody could unsettle her by attempting to peer down her cleavage, since she was covered from the neck down. She might be able to get through this night without making a fool of herself, and letting Jasper down, after all.
After Lady Augusta left to finish her own toilette, Hester went to see how soon Em would be ready.
Em was examining herself in a full-length mirror with a critical eye. The pale blue of her gown, combined with her almost flaxen-blond hair, would have given an angelic quality to her looks, were it not for the scowl that darkened her features.
‘You should not have wasted your money on clothes for me, Hester,’ she said with some asperity when she saw Hester’s reflection join hers.
‘What else can I spend it on? Jasper insists on paying all my bills. It is the least I can do to see you get a pretty gown or two out of this trip to London.’
‘It is a pretty gown, isn’t it?’ Em ran her hand lovingly over the water
ed silk. ‘But the money could have been better spent on the poor.’ She half-turned, in order to better admire her demi-train, which was liberally sprinkled with sequins.
Hester sighed as she compared their two reflections. She felt like a ginger beanpole beside Em’s curvaceous blond beauty. ‘I wouldn’t care how much money I spent on a gown if, when Jasper saw me in it, he thought I looked pretty.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Em sighed. Then, colouring slightly, she added, ‘That is, I cannot help noticing that your feelings towards him have undergone quite a reversal.’
Hester agreed. ‘I am quite reconciled to the prospect of marrying him now.’
‘Oh, but surely..?’ She gave Hester a strange look. ‘Never mind. We had better go down. Lady Augusta must be champing at the bit by now.’
They had arranged to meet Lord Lensborough at Walton House. As they passed along the receiving line, Hester scanned the crowd eagerly for the first glimpse of his craggy profile. He always stood out amongst the glittering crowds in his stark black clothes.
Ah! There he was. Talking with a somewhat shorter man who…Hester gasped and her step faltered when the man turned to take a drink from a passing waiter. Though a heavy fringe hung over his brows, it could not conceal the way his left eyelid drooped into the ravages of what might once have been a handsome face.
‘My dear.’ Hester became aware that Jasper was observing her reaction to his companion. Her heart sank. His face might have been carved in granite, so devoid of welcome was it.
She made her curtsy, dipping her head to hide her disappointment. Why couldn’t she quash the foolish hope that would keep on bubbling up, only to burst at the reality of Jasper’s indifference to her? Dimly she was aware of being introduced to his acquaintance, Captain Fawley.
Hester forgot all about her own stupid hopes when she saw that the hand that protruded from Captain Fawley’s left sleeve was made of wood. His face twisted into a lop-sided grimace. ‘Don’t expect me to ask you to dance.’ He rapped his left leg through the pantaloons he was wearing. ‘Haven’t learned how with this peg, yet.’
His Cinderella Bride Page 22
