by Esther Hatch
“I can prove she does. I have a list.” Anthony would show her. He had worked on that lists for weeks before he’d settled on Miss Morgan.
“Oh, devil take that list of yours, Anthony. Do you think I married Mr. Jorgensen because he met a list of requirements?”
“You didn’t? I always had thought, with how different you two are, that you felt the need to marry someone who would balance you out.”
“I married him because he makes me happy, Anthony.” Sophia glanced at her children, now quietly reading. They were the most well-behaved children he had ever met. “I don’t think we are faring very well without him.”
“Any news as to when he might return?”
“I was hoping you might have some.”
“I haven’t seen Father for over a month, and he doesn’t exactly confide in me about regimental issues.”
Sophia nodded and looked once again at her children. Lines of worry etched across her forehead. Nothing seemed wrong to him. He never saw them fight or even speak louder than they should. Sophia had raised them remarkably well while her husband was in Freetown. They were fine, sensible children. A lot like Sophia had been.
“Your children are doing very well, Sophia. You were just like them as a child.”
“That is exactly what worries me. I feel like Mr. Jorgensen would be doing some things differently, and I think whatever those things were, it would make the children smile more.”
Anthony didn’t know how to respond. Harry turned a page in the atlas he was reading to Augusta. Six was young to be reading and reading an atlas no less. How could his sister not see how remarkably well her children were faring?
Should he put an arm about her shoulder? He moved his arm slowly in her direction, but she straightened, and he pulled it back. What was he thinking? His sister was the strongest person he knew. If her younger brother put his arm around her, she was likely to gouge him in the eyes like father had taught them. Maybe that was what was missing: self-defense training. Anthony had been about Harry’s age when his father first started teaching him.
“Would you like me to teach them some self-defense?”
Sophia jerked her head away from her children and furrowed her brow at him. “No, what in the world made you think of that?”
Anthony shrugged. He wasn’t going to tell his sister the image of her gouging him in the eyes had made him think of it. If he had learned anything from managing his father’s estate, it was when to be silent during a consultation.
***
Stitching was the one duty of hers Patience actually excelled at. Who would have thought that hours of needlepoint could actually be useful? One of the maids had torn her dress outside—not because she had been forced to go through the hedges. She had caught it on a nail that had come loose on the door to the carriage house. Mrs. Bates had sent Patience off to sew it up to the best of her abilities, so here she was in her tiny room, sewing together the rip in quiet. Nicholas had berated her for adding work like this to the help’s load, but sewing was hardly work compared to cleaning grates and sweeping floors. Mrs. Bates had never asked her to polish anything after her first fiasco with the furniture. Luckily, the red wax had come out of everything except her cap, which Mrs. Bates still made her wear, unless she would be somewhere the family or their guests were about. She wanted Patience to remember that acting without reason or understanding can have consequences that last long after the job is done.
Patience was certain either Mr. Woodsworth or Mr. Gilbert had saved her from being fired outright over the issue, and a stained cap was a small price to pay to keep her position.
There was a quiet knock at her door, and slowly it opened. Mr. Woodsworth poked his head in, as if to ascertain that she wasn’t doing anything that would require privacy. He must not have considered sewing to be the type of activity for which she needed to be alone, for he stepped into the room and softly shut the door behind him with his foot.
Patience jumped up from her bed—the only furniture in the room, save a wooden chair—and the dress she had been working on dropped to the floor. She had never been alone like this with a man other than Nicholas or her father, and although she could see that Mr. Woodsworth was a gentleman—a gentleman who wouldn’t allow anything to stain his reputation, not when he had already found the perfect woman—she was suddenly extraordinarily aware of how small and dim her little room was.
“May I help you, Mr. Woodsworth?”
He waved his hand and shook his head. “You have already helped me quite a good deal. I’ve brought you something.”
He held something large behind his back. Bright-yellow fabric peeked out from his sides.
“A dress,” Patience supplied the answer. And then something happened. Mr. Woodsworth’s mouth, so often set in a straight, serious line, turned up at the corners. His deep frown lines became smile lines. His piercing light eyes became bright. He leaned forward, and although still feet away from her, she felt he was too near.
“A dress,” he agreed, and he brandished it around his body to the front to show it off.
It was a nice dress. Yellow had never been her color exactly, but it was a color, and after two years of mourning, a color so bright would be like heaven to wear. The material was fine, but nothing like the ball gowns she was having made for her presentation at court. She tried to look excited by the dress, as any maid would be. It was a ball gown, after all. But her eyes kept going back to Mr. Woodsworth’s face.
“You should smile more often,” she said without thinking.
“What? I should . . . what do you mean, I should smile more often? You haven’t spent more than fifteen minutes in my company. For all you know, I might smile all the time.”
“You might. But I doubt it.”
“I came here to deliver this dress, not to hear a critique of my appearance.”
Patience shrugged. She wasn’t critiquing his smile—there was nothing there to critique. “At any rate, it suits you.”
His smile faltered, and his brow furrowed. “The dress?”
“No.” She knew Mr. Woodsworth was intelligent. She had seen the books he kept as she swept his study. “Your smile.”
He shook his head as if confused. “But what do you think about the dress?” He took one step forward. Patience instinctively stepped back, but there was only her bed behind her. Her calf hit the bottom of it, and she fell into a sitting position.
“Oh bother. Here.” Mr. Woodsworth stepped forward with an outstretched arm, but the voluminous fabric of the dress tripped him, and he pitched forward toward Patience. She quickly jumped out of his way, narrowly missing him as he fell forward. The bright dress twisted about him as he scrambled around in her bed. “Blast,” he mumbled, frantically trying to untangle himself.
Patience pressed her lips together as hard as she could. A maid shouldn’t laugh at a gentleman.
A lady probably shouldn’t either.
He attempted to stand, but one foot was still caught on the fabric, and a ripping sound made him flop back down. This time he was completely hidden behind yellow. Despite her best efforts a snicker escaped her throat. The scrambling on the bed stopped.
“You find this funny?”
She backed away from him, closer to the door. Of course she found it funny. Mr. Woodsworth was the most solemn person she had ever met—save perhaps her newly serious brother—and yet he couldn’t untangle himself from her dress. She couldn’t really tell him that though, could she?
“Well?” he demanded again, this time poking his head out from under the bodice of the dress. His hair was tousled, and his frown lines looked different somehow—less stern and more exasperated.
“It is only that . . .” Oh, she couldn’t say it.
“It is only that what?” he practically growled.
“Well, in hindsight, that dress does suit you.” She bit her li
p, poised to run. When she teased Nicholas as a child, a remark like that would have meant she was about to be chased about the room. She eyed Mr. Woodsworth.
He wouldn’t dare.
And he didn’t dare, as it turned out. Instead his shoulders slumped, and he sighed. He finally untangled himself from the dress and left it lying on the bed.
He smoothed his hair and pulled on each of his shirt sleeves. “Sorry about the tear.”
“I can mend it. Sewing is one of the few things I’m good at.” Patience pointed to the dress she had been working on earlier. He looked so downtrodden that she reached for his hand. He jumped at her touch and stepped away from her. “It really is a beautiful dress. Thank you.”
He straightened his shoulders and strode to the door, his back still toward her. “I thought yellow would suit you. At any rate, for a first ball gown, it should do.”
He yanked the door open and was gone. The room felt quiet and empty without him. Patience sighed and picked up the dress. The tear was small and wouldn’t take her long to repair. There was no mirror in her room, but as she held the dress up to herself, she decided yellow wasn’t a bad color after all. After two years of wearing black, she could use something cheerful and bright. She spun in a circle, and the fabric of the skirt belled out around her. She would need a petticoat. Hopefully whoever had loaned him this dress would also be able to provide one. Tomorrow she would dance. She would even dance with the strange Mr. Woodsworth, and hopefully when in public he wouldn’t flinch away from her touch.
There was a soft knock once again, and Patience threw the gown on the bed and hurriedly touched up her hair. She concentrated on breathing in and out.
“Come in,” she called when the door didn’t open right away.
Once again Mr. Woodsworth poked his head in. His eyes flashed to the bed, where the dress was obviously in a different position than the wild mess he had left it in.
“I forgot to tell you. Meet me in my study tomorrow morning at ten, sharp. I need to introduce you to my sister and her two children. My sister, Mrs. Jorgensen, will have her maid help you both get ready for the Simpsons’ ball. After tonight, you will begin your duties helping with her children.”
He shut the door quietly.
For several minutes Patience watched the door, waiting for his knock, but it never came. She sat back on the bed, once again picking up the yellow ball gown. Mr. Woodsworth unsettled her, with his surprising smile and his desire to please her with a dress. No matter how worried she was about being discovered, she would need to make certain Mr. Woodsworth felt that he had made her happy. She had seen him try to please his father in his choice of bride and try to please his choice of bride by signing up for this charade. The last thing he needed was one more person who was hard to please.
Chapter 7
The next morning, after leaving the dress, repaired and folded as neatly as she could manage, on the wooden chair in her bedroom, Patience approached Mr. Woodsworth’s study. She turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door. Mr. Woodsworth sat at his desk, and a woman in her day dress sat at a chair just to his side, her back as straight as Mr. Woodsworth’s and her frown just as severe. Miss Morgan?
No, his sister.
Mr. Woodsworth had told Patience she was here to meet his sister. This must be Mrs. Jorgensen. Her eyes were the same startling pale blue as Mr. Woodsworth’s. She was a female version of her brother. Was Miss Morgan like this woman—slender and serious? It would mean no laughter in their home, but not all homes had to have laughter in them. More often than not, hers didn’t.
But she missed it.
She waited for Mr. Woodsworth to rise at her entrance, but of course, he didn’t. What did maids do when they entered a room? Bow?
She lowered to a curtsy but stopped halfway down. She was quite certain no servant had ever done a low curtsy to her. She hastily stood up straight and just caught the end of a look between the siblings.
“This is the beautiful maid you told me about?” Mrs. Jorgensen said in French. Her eyebrow was raised even though her mouth stayed the same.
French. A maid wouldn’t speak French. Patience concentrated on not reacting to the woman’s words.
“I didn’t call her beautiful,” Mr. Woodsworth said in bored tone. “You guessed that she was beautiful.”
“Well, I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, but I hardly see your point.”
Patience smoothed each of her fingernails with the pad of her thumb. How was one supposed to act when one’s looks were being tossed back and forth like a shuttlecock? Like she didn’t know what they were talking about, she supposed.
“Don’t fall for her,” Mrs. Jorgensen said.
Patience nearly choked.
“Enough about her looks. You should know me better than that.” The frown lines around Mr. Woodsworth’s mouth were even deeper than usual. He switched back to English. “She can’t look like this at the ball anyway. We wouldn’t want anyone to recognize her as my maid.”
“So you mean not only to dress her up but also to disguise her?” his sister asked, voice rising an octave.
“Yes, a wig will be needed for certain.” Mr. Woodsworth stood from his chair and walked around his deep mahogany desk. “Her hair is quite remarkable and would be remembered.”
Patience’s nails weren’t smooth like they used to be. She rubbed furiously at them, jagged edges and all. Servants weren’t expected to speak unless spoken to, and it was one of the hardest rules she had ever tried to follow. Mr. Woodsworth had called her both beautiful and remarkable in the course of only several minutes. But not in an affected way—in an analytical way she wasn’t sure how to respond to.
Mr. Woodsworth’s sister stood. She was very near Patience’s own height. The dress Mr. Woodsworth brought her fit quite well. She’d added a few tucks in the fabric at the waist to make it a perfect fit. She would still need to ask for a corset and petticoat, but other than that, the dress would do nicely. Thankfully Mr. Woodsworth hadn’t brought her the underthings. His coming to her bedroom last night had been awkward enough as it was.
“This is my sister, Mrs. Jorgensen. Sophia, this is our maid who will be helping us: Patience.”
“Patience?” Mrs. Jorgensen pressed her lips together. “Rather a pretentious name for a maid.”
“Yes, well . . .” It was habit to answer about her name, and despite her best intentions, Patience continued. “My brother would say that when I am around, everyone within a two-mile radius needs patience, and therefore, I am well named.”
Mrs. Jorgensen didn’t seem impressed. She only nodded, as if now the name made sense. “Did you try on the dress?”
Perhaps it was better to stay with short answers. “Yes.”
“And did it fit?”
“I took it in at a few places, but yes, for the most part, it fit very well.”
A slight chill ran through the room. Mrs. Jorgensen smiled, but it was cold and unfriendly. Her face didn’t transform like her brother’s, at least not in a positive way. “I would like to see you have such a figure as mine after two children.”
“As would I,” Patience agreed. Sometimes diplomacy was the best answer, and indeed Mrs. Jorgensen had a very fine figure.
“I suppose we’ll have our work cut out for us presenting you as a young woman of means. Let me see your hands.”
Patience held out her hands. Just a week ago they had been as soft as Mrs. Jorgensen’s, but now they were red and rough.
Mrs. Jorgensen inspected her ruined hands. “Thank goodness for gloves.” She turned to her brother. “You can dress up this woman all you want, but you can always tell a lady by her hands.”
“Well, then it is good that starting today she will be in the nursery with your children. They will have some chance at softening up.”
Mrs. Jorgensen grunted. “We wi
ll see about that. Patience, follow me. It is time you met my children. While you are in my service, I trust your brother’s adage about patience will not be needed.”
“No, ma’am.” Patience shook her head and followed Mrs. Jorgensen. After living in the general’s house for a week, she sensed authority for the first time. Mr. Woodsworth, although serious, didn’t have the same commanding presence. Crossing Mrs. Jorgensen would be a terrible mistake. Something told Patience that punishment for indiscretions would be severe and quick.
“Wait,” Mr. Woodsworth called. “You forgot this.”
Mrs. Jorgensen stopped. With a grimace, she returned to fetch a blonde wig Mr. Woodsworth must have pulled from a drawer somewhere.
“I didn’t forget it so much as try to block it from my memory,” Mrs. Jorgensen said. “You do know what people will think of her if she shows up in a wig.”
“We have no other choice.” Mr. Woodsworth held it out toward Mrs. Jorgensen. It was already styled, with the hair parted down the middle and perfect curls cascading below a low knot in the back. Patience could never obtain such sleek curls with her own unruly hair. “Patience agrees that she must be disguised.”
“I will do my best to make it look as natural as possible. But if it is found out, I highly doubt it will do your suit of Miss Morgan any good by showing interest in a woman who is wearing a wig. Everyone will assume she has syphilis.”
Mr. Woodsworth’s jaw went slack. Patience bit back a laugh. His perfect plan truly would be thwarted if those types of rumors started floating around.
Enough of this. Patience grabbed the wig from Mrs. Jorgensen. “No one will think I have syphilis. I am the picture of health. Even with a wig.”
“But what if they do?” Mrs. Jorgensen pulled the wig back out of Patience’s hands. Those curls would be a lot less perfect if they kept this up.
“Well then, I suppose when you introduce me, you may say, ‘This is Miss Patience. She does not have syphilis.’”
