Thea’s heart leapt into her mouth. Surely Fanny wouldn’t divulge the fact she’d likened Aunt Minerva to a toad emerging from a bank of sludge when wearing the supposedly fashionable outfit? She shuddered with fear and accepted that she’d only been receiving her just desserts; for shortly after Thea declared to her cousins that she’d rather deport herself in public wearing nothing but her petticoat than suffer the humiliation of being seen in such an abomination, her aunt gifted her the notable creation.
Aunt Minerva’s cloying smile at Fanny’s compliment was a glower by the time she swivelled her jewelled throat in Thea’s direction. “Perhaps I shall attend the Assembly Rooms tomorrow night. It’ll give Thea an opportunity to sport the brown and green. I’d been thinking only recently I hadn’t seen her wear it, but then reasoned that it was because I’ve not taken her anywhere it can be seen to advantage. I was surprised when, last Thursday, she did not put it on when I knew how much she harboured hopes of securing the interest of the nice young curate who insisted on coming to tea long after I’d made it clear his hopes were…well, hopeless. Now I realise that it is as you say, Antoinette, and I’ve been unkind in keeping Thea at home with me. Even if it’s impossible she’ll ever marry, given her parlous financial state, it would be a kindness to allow her to attend a few entertainments, though not so many that would stretch her limited wardrobe and make her a subject of unkind gossip for having only the one dress to wear in company.”
Thea resolutely drank her tea. Oh my dear Lord, she’d rather die than go forth in the hideous ensemble her aunt would have her wear. She directed a desperate look at Fanny, who said smoothly, all wide-eyed innocence, “Why, Aunt Minerva, that was because she thought the gown so much more flattering to your colouring, she told me. You must have been quite a head-turner with your lovely bronze ringlets, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Her gaze travelled with clear-eyed scrutiny over Aunt Minerva’s visage before fixing upon the somewhat odd length of orange fur that blended with the ginger ringlets that hung in front of her ears. “It is remarkable time has not dulled your assets.”
Thea held her breath as Aunt Minerva narrowed her eyes. Fanny had gone too far this time. But then her aunt put her hand once more to the squirrel’s tail hairpiece that supplemented her sparse greying locks, and smiled coyly. “Oh, I have my secrets, even at my age,” she simpered. “Let me tell you, when I was young, the gentlemen were fighting over me. One in particular was so distraught by my rejection he shot himself.”
‘He wanted to marry you?’ Antoinette squeaked with such incredulity, Thea and Fanny both sent her the evil eye, so that she added with commendable alacrity, “But of course, what young man would have passed up the opportunity to secure your hand in marriage?”
“Mr John Dempster was his name,” Aunt Minerva recalled, gazing moist-eyed into space, apparently mollified by the turn of the conversation. “But I rejected him, and what do you think he did? Rushed off to the continent where, in his mental derangement at my rough treatment of his hopes, he shot himself through the heart.”
Antoinette tilted her head. “The heart? One doesn’t shoot oneself through one’s own heart, surely? Is he actually dead, then?”
Aunt Minerva cleared her throat and replied smoothly, “Mercifully, the Good Lord was not yet ready to take him.”
“So he’s not dead.” Antoinette clarified. “I must say, trying to shoot oneself through the heart doesn’t sound very efficient if you’re intent upon succeeding. Why didn’t he put the pistol into his mouth? That’s what one does when one really wants to kill oneself.”
“Antoinette, that’s enough,’ her sister warned, turning back to her aunt with a sympathetic moue. “Poor Mr Dempster. I’m sure he never got over you, Aunt.”
“Indeed he did not. Never married, I hear.”
“Never married! What a cruel waste, Aunt,” Antoinette went on blithely, “when you could have made him so happy and we’d have had possibly dozens more cousins and not just poor Thea, who is all alone.” She clapped her hand to her mouth at a fierce look from her sister, no doubt recalling that Thea had once been the eldest of six before the scarlet fever.
Thea forced her mind onto other matters as she pushed away the pain.
“Mr Dempster sounds a particularly foolish and unworthy suitor, Aunt Minerva.” Fanny took over smoothly. “Perhaps you had a special admirer amongst them all?”
For a moment Aunt Minerva stared into space as if recalling something very intense. Her lips worked and her head shuddered slightly on its well upholstered stem. She opened her mouth to speak before shutting it abruptly, her eyes narrowing into slits of malice.
“I think it’s high time you took Thea off to the nursery,” she muttered. “I can see the children later when they’re clean and ready for company.”
As soon as the girls reached the nursery, after a promise to bring young George and Katherine down to see their great-aunt later, they broke into convulsive laughter.
“Oh, Thea, if it weren’t that you had to live with her the year through, we’d be looking forward to the old gorgon’s annual visit with the greatest anticipation.” Antoinette hiccupped. “Did you see the evil look she sent some unknown past would-be lover? If she could just have put a hex on him, he’d have been writhing on the floor in front of us, spitting out green smoke as he slowly turned into a toad.”
“Hush! Not in front of the servants,” Fanny admonished, waving away the nursemaid as she picked up young Katherine and cuddled her. “You say you were courted by the curate?” she asked Thea.
“But a lowly curate?” Antoinette clarified. “Please say you didn’t entertain the idea for a minute.”
Sadly, Thea forced her longing gaze away from Fanny and her baby to look at her feet. “He was a very sweet young man. I was fond enough of him that if he’d asked me I’d have consented to be his wife for I couldn’t imagine I’d receive an offer from anyone else, but Aunt Minerva said it was out of the question.”
“Of course it was,” Antoinette said roundly. “You’d be subjecting yourself to a life of penury from which there’d be no return. For once Aunt Minerva did you a service.”
Fanny, now bending over the pristine coverings of her baby’s crib to tuck Katherine back into the warmth, harrumphed. “That was no service. That was simply self-serving. Aunt Minerva will not sanction any marriage for you, Thea, as she has you in mind for far more important things.” She kissed her baby’s plump little fist, which remained wrapped around her finger, adding, “Yes, indeed, as her handmaiden into old age. No, there really is a great urgency to find you a husband in the next couple of weeks. But of course you’ll need clothes. Antoinette and I have already discussed it. Aunt Minerva would far rather see you step out looking like last season’s sludge, all but announcing to the world that you’re as poor as a church mouse. But Antoinette and I were, too, only last season—and aren’t we a stellar advertisement of how one’s star can rise in such a short time?”
Thea felt a surge of such gratitude she didn’t know how to adequately respond. When she’d thanked her cousins, who now declared they’d take her directly to their dressing rooms, she remained in the doorway.
“Can we play with the babies a little longer? See, George doesn’t want to go to sleep just yet.”
They stared at her, open-mouthed.
“You mean, instead of going to look at clothes?” Antoinette asked with a frown.
Thea nodded. “I’ve been dying to hold both little George and Katherine in my arms all the way here and I don’t think I can wait another minute.”
Her cousins exchanged glances. “Well, you’re an odd one, Thea,” Fanny remarked, “but you’re so pretty, so your future will be assured if Antoinette and I have anything to do with it. And it certainly won’t include rubbing unguents into gouty feet. If I have my way, you’ll be outranking Aunt Minerva before the end of the season.”
“And then,” said Antoinette as she returned to her youngster and picked him up, “yo
u can start having all the babies you want, though why you’d want to, I don’t know. I mean, the beginning part is highly entertaining but everything else after that—”
She broke off at an unusually fierce look from her sister.
Thea couldn’t believe how much fun she’d had. Trying on her cousin’s clothes, which they insisted she might borrow, had been like having the keys to some wondrous palace, but playing with the babies had been the most fun of all.
Now, as she waited in the drawing room to leave for the Assembly Rooms, giggling with Fanny and Antoinette, it was like the old days when she’d giggled with her sisters in a home filled with warmth and love and laughter.
More fun was in store when Fanny and Antoinette’s brother made his appearance, looking surprisingly elegant in a pink and gold striped waistcoat beneath his coat of navy superfine for his night on the town.
“Oh, Cousin Thea!” he declared, bringing his hand to his heart as he stood before her in the centre of the Aubusson carpet beneath the chandelier. “What a celestial vision! May I have this dance?”
Thea giggled as her cousin Bertram executed an elaborate bow before her. “What a paragon!” he went on as Thea rose then curtsied, fluttering her eyelids for Bertram’s benefit as she played along. “Aunt Gorgonia will just have to accept by the end of this visit that she will be losing you to the highest in the land. Why, I declare that the richest and the handsomest of men will come to blows trying to prove themselves worthy of you.”
Fanny and Antoinette laughed and Bertram added more soberly as he leaned against the mantelpiece, “Fact is, you look extremely fetching in that sparkling creation Fanny’s lent you. And it fits you a good deal better than it did Fanny last time she wore it.”
“Which was three days after I’d given birth and you burst unceremoniously into my room when I was seeing how many of my clothes I could still wear,” Fanny defended herself coolly as she reclined upon the chaise longue.
“Ah yes, weeping, if I recall. Fenton told me to get out using the coarsest language.”
“Well, of course he did! He was comforting me and reassuring me that I’d soon regain my figure and that I’d—”
“Always be the most exquisite creature in the entire world.”
They all turned at the caramel tones of Fanny’s husband, the incomparably handsome Lord Fenton, who appeared in the doorway like a sleek and supremely confident black cat.
With Aunt Minerva clinging to his arm.
Thea dropped back into her seat, head lowered, and waited nervously for her aunt’s reaction.
The laughter stopped, the general good humour in the room replaced by a tense anticipation. Aunt Minerva narrowed her eyes as she took in Thea’s appearance, her mouth a thin, tight line. “Thea, go upstairs and change.” Her voice was low and warning.
“But Aunt Minerva, I’m happy to lend Thea my gown,” Fanny began before her aunt cut her off, ignoring her as she prepared to speak once more to her niece. A pin could have been heard to drop in the uncomfortable silence as she held up her hand.
“Do it now, or we’ll hold everyone else up. If I’m good enough to lend you the clothes you need, you’ll show the gratitude I deserve. Now go!”
A very subdued Thea returned shortly afterwards wearing the brown and green velvet, stiffened with its monstrous padding around the hem, which made her feel like a burgher’s wife, parodied by fashion, her natural shape distorted with roulettes that encircled her upper arms. It would have been impossible to have appeared graceful, even if she were the most accomplished opera dancer in Covent Garden.
Silence greeted her as she self-consciously moved past the gathered assembly and reseated herself opposite Aunt Minerva with becoming meekness.
Antoinette sent her a silent, horrified look while Fanny pretended to be engaged in quiet chatter with her husband.
Bertram, who was playing with the lid of a snuff box as he continued to lounge by the fireplace, turned as she took her seat to remark, “That’s a mighty fetching object you have on your head, Cousin Thea. Might I ask what it is?”
“It’s a toque, of course!” snapped Aunt Minerva. “My finest, too, which I’ve gifted to Thea since it was made for that gown.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Bertram looked apologetic but he continued to stare at the toque with a concentrated frown while the rest of the party clearly forced themselves to chatter as they might before they were off to any diverting entertainment.
Thea simply sat on her chair, all pleasure at the possibilities the evening had previously held completely sucked from her, wondering how she could possibly contrive to develop some life-threatening ailment in the next two minutes. Anything would be better than having to actually appear in public wearing so painfully the advertisement of her leg-shacklement to her hateful aunt. Tears threatened, so when Fanny asked kindly, “Have you danced much in the past, Thea?” she could only shake her head.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Antoinette broke in. “Some of the young men who ask you will have two left feet, anyway.”
Bertram, continued to frown, his gaze still riveted on Thea’s ensemble. Gravely, he said, “I’ll dance with you if no one else asks.”
“Bertram!” Fanny rounded on him. “Cousin Thea will be swamped with offers.”
Thea could see that her lively, inventive, enthusiastic cousins didn’t know what else to say. Her shoulders slumped even more and she felt her Aunt’s gown about her as if it were a living thing, sucking the life out of her. “That’s very kind of you, Cousin Bertram.”
Lord Fenton rose. “Shall we go?”
Thea sent a longing look at the door that led towards the passage that wound ultimately past her bedchamber. Perhaps if she clutched her stomach and claimed a sudden bilious attack, she could contrive to stay at home. She didn’t care if that was what Aunt Minerva intended—for clearly her aunt intended either that or an evening of total humiliation.
“Oh good Lord!”
Thea clutched her belly in preparation for her charade but not before Cousin Bertram’s expletive literally rained down on her, together with a good quantity of the contents of his generous glass of Madeira.
“Oh Cousin Thea, how clumsy of me!” he exclaimed, brandishing a snowy handkerchief and dabbing at the sticky wine that was all down the front of her dress, scarring the velvet and pooling onto the floor.
“Gracious, such a lovely dress! Ruined!” Fanny cried, rushing forward and attempting to help Bertram mop up the mess, yet managing to smear the damage to an even greater extent. “Can it be saved?”
“Of course it can’t. Well, not in time for this evening, at any rate.” Lord Fenton remained calmly in the doorway where he’d stopped, turning to watch the fuss. “Fanny, please go upstairs and find Cousin Thea something suitable of yours so we don’t hold up the party. My apologies, Miss Brightwell, for keeping you waiting.” He turned from where Aunt Minerva was staring at the scene with an expression of horrified outrage while Thea felt her dismay blossom into hope and happiness.
With an almost indiscernible wink, Lord Fenton was indicating the doorway through which Thea had almost condemned herself to a lonely, miserable night on account of Aunt Minerva’s poisoned chalice, or rather her gift of a dress, before darling Cousin Bertram had hit upon salvation.
Upstairs, already laid out upon her bed, Thea found a gloriously simple but elegant white muslin gown together with all the necessary accessories: long satin gloves, pearl-encrusted hair combs and a thin gold chain to wear around her neck. It did not take Thea long to dress.
“Oh Cousin Fanny, thank you! How clever of you to think of such a reprieve and to plan it all with Cousin Bertram. I don’t know what to say!”
“We’ll have to credit Bertram with a rare moment of genius, for he came up with that all on his own.” Fanny finished doing up the tiny pearl buttons on the back of Thea’s dress then stepped in front of her with a smile. “Now, are you ready?”
Thea took her cousin’s arm with a gr
ateful smile. “I’m ready.”
“And are you nervous?”
“I’ve never been more so.” Thea gazed at her cousin with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Cousin Fanny looked utterly ravishing yet once Thea had thought her merely lovely. Now Fanny had been imbued with the gloss of happiness and riches since her astonishing marriage. And Fanny claimed the same could happen for Thea. Could it? She barely dared hope, yet the truth was, all she wanted was a husband who would love her, and enough money to feed a large family.
“A touch of nervousness isn’t the end of the world. You look utterly charming.” Fanny sent Thea a satisfied look as she led her down the stairs. “Just remember,” she added over her shoulder, “Antoinette and I want only your happiness. If you do everything we tell you, I believe you have every reason to hope you’ll not die a dried-up old spinster having sacrificed your youth and happiness to Aunt Minerva.”
Her words reverberated in Thea’s head all the way down the remaining steps, clanging with greater force as she faced the patent disapproval of Aunt Minerva in the lobby, the only one of the company who did not compliment her when she was suddenly feeling like a princess.
Could it really be true that Aunt Minerva wanted to keep Thea unmarried for her own convenience?
Thea shuddered at an image of her venerable relative’s misshapen ankles and none too sweet-smelling feet.
Taking Cousin Bertram’s arm she smiled up at him, determined not to let a crotchety old woman spoil what now promised to be a thrilling evening.
“Cousin Thea, you are a vision,” he murmured, and Thea tingled all over with happiness.
Right now it seemed no risk was too great if it meant not having to massage Aunt Minerva’s corns and bunions until the end of time.
Chapter 3
THE music and gaiety as they entered the Assembly Rooms hit Thea in the face like a draught of fear and trepidation, mixed with the promise of so much. Now her stomach really did clench. She felt sick and lightheaded.
Rogue's Kiss (Scandalous Miss Brightwell Book 2) Page 3
