better than no gloves at all.
“How long a drive is it?” Harriet asked, giving her hair one final inspection, then shrugging. The two women could have taken a train, for it would have brought them to Bellingham far faster, but were grateful the duke had sent his coach. In truth, their funds were so far depleted from hotels in New York and passage to England, they’d hardly been able to pay for a respectable hotel. As it was, they had only the fare to return home in their pockets. The two women had become exceedingly thrifty in the past weeks, counting their coins and carefully devising a budget.
They could not afford to bring a lady’s maid with them, so the two of them had muddled through the best they could in the past few weeks. Maggie, especially, had become quite proficient at her own grooming, but not so successful with her mother’s dandelion fluff hair. Her own springing black curls were quite forgiving and Maggie could gain a rather charming affect by pulling them back loosely in a single ribbon.
“It’s a two-to three-hour trip if we do not stop,” Maggie said pointedly, as her mother almost always found it necessary to stop.
“And they are expecting us.”
Watching her mother tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear gave Maggie a sudden jolt of tenderness for the woman who could drive her quite mad sometimes. She realized Harriet was nervous, more nervous than she herself was. No matter how many times her mother had told her she actually preferred traveling to England with her rather than going immediately to live with her sister in Savannah, Maggie still did not quite believe her.
“They are expecting us,” she said with an indulgent smile, and held up a missive she’d received just yesterday from Elizabeth gushing about how she couldn’t wait to see her friend.
“Oh, don’t look at me as if I’m daft,” her mother said with good humor.
Maggie came up behind her mother and helped her with her hat. “There,” she said, pushing it forward a bit. “You look quite dashing with it cocked this way.” The ostrich feather was looking a bit battered, but there was nothing to do for it. She kissed her mother’s cheek.
“It’s not the latest style,” Harriet said, eying herself critically.
“Oh, what do they know about style so far out in the country? And really, Mama, you know Elizabeth won’t care.”
Maggie beamed a smile at her mother hoping to ease her worry. She’d decided the day she received that invitation from the duke that this was the chance of a lifetime, a chance to begin a new life, a life that did not include a father in prison and one that certainly did not include all the horrible sordid things that she had done. She was Maggie Pierce, the indomitably happy, buoyantly joyful woman she always was. Fooling people was remarkably easy, including her own mother.
Maggie had not told Elizabeth of their woes in her letter accepting the duke’s invitation, though she had attempted several times. Somehow, writing it down made it all seem so sordid, and what her father had done to his friends was so absolutely unforgivable. Which, of course, it had been.
Her mother walked toward the door, then stopped and clutched her hands to her middle. “We had a maid, but she became violently ill before we departed and so refused to go aboard the ship.”
That was the story Harriet insisted on telling when the two women showed up without a personal maid.
“You know I do not feel comfortable lying to Elizabeth. They’ll have to know the truth eventually, Mama.”
“She refused to go aboard the ship,” she repeated, almost as if it were true.
“Fine. She refused to go aboard the ship. We had a boatload of servants who all refused to go with us. Does that make you happy, Mama?”
“Excessively so,” she said, smiling rather coyly for a woman in her forties.
“They are here,” Elizabeth said, hurrying as fast as her growing belly would allow to her husband’s study. “How do I look?” she asked, standing in front of the Duke of Bellingham and smiling.
“Like a cow,” Randall said dryly, standing immediately when she entered the room.
“Better a cow than a peacock,” Elizabeth said pertly, eying his jewel-toned vest with mock horror.
“You said you liked this.” He looked down at his rich-looking vest with doubt.
“And you,” Elizabeth said, edging around his desk and coming up to him to kiss his freshly shaved jaw, “told me I was beautiful just this morning.”
“You are and you know it,” he said, drawing her close. “I’ve noticed you getting a bit full of yourself lately. It’s decidedly unfashionable for a woman about to give birth to look so beautiful.”
Another kiss. “You just said I looked like a cow.”
“A lovely Hereford.”
She gave him a gentle smack on his shoulder as he continued to smile down at her.
“Excuse me, Your Graces,” Tisbury, their butler, said after clearing his throat. “Miss Pierce and Mrs. Pierce have arrived.”
Elizabeth clapped her hands, completely overjoyed at the prospect of having her greatest friend with her. How she had missed Maggie. No one knew her better, was a greater champion—except, perhaps, her new husband. Joy bubbled up her throat and came out as laughter. Maggie had always been the one to cheer her up, but she was undoubtedly more happy than she’d ever been and didn’t need her friend’s effervescent personality about now. Perhaps when she was in the throes of labor she would need Maggie’s incessant happy chatter.
“Where are Lord Hollings and Lady Matilda? And the children? They should be here,” Elizabeth said, dragging her smiling husband along. “Tisbury. Are Lord Hollings and Lady Matilda coming? And the children?”
Tisbury, one of the most efficient of men, was not affronted by the question. He simply nodded and said, “They are all in the grand hall, Your Grace.”
“The flowers. Did the maids check the flowers? They were looking a bit droopy and—”
Suddenly, Elizabeth found herself being kissed soundly. “Stop. Everything is perfect. And if it is not, I hardly think your Miss Pierce will notice. Your stomach will block out any view of the flowers.”
Elizabeth laughed, then scowled. “I don’t know why I laugh at you when you are perfectly horrid to me.” He bussed her cheek and looked down at her with such utter love, Elizabeth could not maintain her scowl for more than a few seconds. “It’s just that Maggie is not used to all this. I’m not used to all this yet. I still cannot believe this is where I shall live for the rest of my life.”
“She’ll be fine, Your Grace,” he said, tucking her arm against him.
“You’ll be fine, Mama,” Maggie whispered harshly to her mother, who hadn’t stopped her panicky monologue since the moment they’d peeked out of the carriage window and seen their first glimpse of Bellewood.
“We’re pretenders,” Harriet whispered in her ear as they walked up the shallow steps that led to the grand entrance of the enormous palace. Elizabeth’s descriptions had not done the place justice. It was far grander than
