brilliant wager.”
And giving her no chance at all, I swept over to Judith’s writing table, moved
aside some books, and set down the huge box. I opened it, then stood back. “It
is just as you ordered it, Miss Gillbank. I trust you won’t be disappointed.”
Miss Gillbank was beyond mystified. She lifted the lovely silver paper and just
stood there, staring, not saying a single word.
“What is it, Miss Gillbank?”
I said, “It is her gown to wear to the ball tomorrow night, Judith. What do you
think?”
With Judith shrieking for her to hold up the gown, Miss Gillbank, still wordless,
lifted out the beautiful gown I had ordered for her. I’d filched one of her
gowns so Belinda could measure it. It was glorious, a golden velvet ball gown
with an inch-wide band of golden satin beneath the breasts, the neck was very,
very low indeed, and the sleeves were long and fitted. There were no bows or
flounces or rows of lace. It was simple and elegant, its lines classical. She
would look magnificent.
She held the gown in front of her. Judith touched the soft velvet and shouted, “Oh,
goodness, you must try it on for us to see. Now, please, Miss Gillbank.”
And Miss Gillbank, that very steady and composed governess, carefully laid the
gown back into the box and burst into tears.
“Oh, dear,” Judith said to me. “Do you think she doesn’t like it? Didn’t you get
exact instructions for what she wanted, Andy? Perhaps you misunderstood what
color she wanted? Perhaps the neckline is too low? It rather looks like it would
come only to her waist.”
Miss Gillbank laughed through her tears. She refused to try on the gown for us,
mumbling something about she wanted to look just perfect before she put it on,
which would be tomorrow evening.
I was whistling when I left the nursery. I had forgotten for a good fifteen
minutes that someone wasn’t happy with me being here at Devbridge Manor. What
had Amelia carried out of John’s bedchamber yesterday? Surely not the knife,
surely.
I looked up to see a man duck around the corridor ahead of me. “Wait!” I shouted.
“Who are you? Wait!”
But of course the man was gone when I rounded the corner. “Well, damn,” I said.
My fingers were closed around my derringer. I was ready. I hadn’t frozen.
That evening, garbed in yet another beautiful gown, I stood by my husband as
thirty-six guests sat down at the dining table. I had overheard Brantley
instructing Jasper and the rest of the footmen to fetch every table leaf from
the storage room behind the pantry.
The table looked magnificent. The crystal shone, the silver and the dishes were
perfectly arranged.
Brantley had hired on an additional ten footmen so that they were each
responsible for only three guests each.
The menu, something everyone had advised me on, would have delighted even that
fatuous gourmand, the Prince Regent. There were sixteen different dishes, I’d
counted them as they were brought so elegantly and formally into the dining room.
I looked down the table at Miss Gillbank, simply beautiful in one of my gowns,
lengthened for her, a soft Nile green silk with an overskirt of darker green
silk. Belinda had dressed her hair. I had placed her next to the son of a local
baronet I’d heard her mention once. She was laughing. I looked at Amelia and
Thomas, seated next to each other, in the middle of the immensely long table.
They were speaking softly to each other. About what? Then they turned, as if
they’d planned it beforehand, to speak to their neighbors.
My dear Miss Crislock was seated at Lawrence’s left hand. She was smiling at
something he said.
Everyone seemed in good spirits. I couldn’t begin to count how many bottles of
wine were poured down guests’ throats during that two-hour dinner.
I looked down at John, even though I didn’t want to, even though I knew it would
just make me hurt and question myself and call myself a hundred times a fool. He
was seated next to one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life.