theatricals have Maude and Gareth prevailed upon you to join?’
‘Good morning Miss Gifford.’ Lady Dereham came to shake hands, then sank down on a dining chair and peeled off her gloves. ‘Yes, we insist upon knowing all the details at once.’ She lifted the silver pot before her. ‘I fear we will need sustaining with considerably more coffee.’
‘Templeton has become fixed in his intention to carry out the exceedingly mawkish scheme he cooked up with my esteemed parent and marry off Maude and myself.’
‘Not so mawkish if you consider the land holdings,’ Lady Dereham observed, stirring sugar into her cup. ‘Templeton’s no fool—he is dangling an estate almost the size of your own before you.’
‘Quite. How can I refuse? That is the problem. He has decided I am perfect for Maude—but it is obvious that even he would draw the line at marrying her off to a libertine. Or, at least, to one who created a public scandal. He has a strange way of showing it, but he is fond of Maude and would not want her to be hurt by her husband’s public infidelities.’
‘His private ones would, no doubt, be of no account,’ Lady Sebastian remarked wryly. A flicker of memory came back to Jessica—Lady Sebastian’s first husband, the Grand Duke, had been a notorious rake, leaving a trail of highly visible liaisons across Europe.
‘Exactly. I, therefore, must become not just a rake, but a very public philanderer.’ Gareth reapplied himself to his sirloin, then looked up to find three pairs of eyes fixed upon him, sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘Our intention is that Jessica, who is the widow of a gentleman who performed some service for the Duchy…’ he raised an eyebrow at Lady Sebastian, who nodded ‘…has returned to London to re-establish her life. Bel has leased her the Half Moon Street house as a favour to Eva and will introduce her to society at Maude’s charity ball. Jessica, it will soon become apparent, is an adventuress at whose feet any number of gentlemen are about to prostrate themselves.’
Jessica could almost feel the effort it took the two ladies not to turn and look at her in disbelief. ‘I,’ Gareth concluded, ‘will make a complete cake of myself over her, conduct a flaming affaire in the full glare of the Season and Templeton will cast me off.’
‘I see,’ Lady Dereham said with what Jessica regarded as almost supernatural calm. Suddenly she could see the family relationship between them—Lady Belinda was exhibiting the same calm as she had seen in Gareth in the brothel. A sort of watchful stillness. ‘And our role—other than providing an entrée for Miss Gifford—is to be what exactly?’
‘I am very much afraid that Lord Standon expects you to transform me into a dashing adventuress,’ Jessica said, bracing herself for the polite laughter that must surely follow. ‘A glamorous siren,’ she added, heaping on the improbabilities.
Both ladies did turn at that, fine dark eyes under arched brows and amused grey ones regarded her. Neither woman laughed. They must feel it was past a joke to achieve such a task.
‘Oh, yes,’ Lady Dereham said. ‘Hair first, don’t you agree, Eva? And then see what suggests itself once we know what colour we are working with?’
‘MonsieurAntoine.’ Lady Sebastian nodded. ‘Gareth, would you be so good as to ring for Jordan, I must send a note immediately.’
‘You think it is not impossible?’ Jessica shook her head. Not only did she have to appear stylish enough to be seen with leaders of the ton such as these, but in addition she must seem alluring and dangerous.
‘I think Gareth is showing remarkable insight,’ his cousin said with a mocking smile in his direction. ‘Lord Fellingham was saying to me just the other day that Gareth seemed jaded; one can only be relieved that he is not so bored that he missed this opportunity.’
‘Fellingham is an ass,’ Gareth retorted, pushing his plate away and reaching for the toast. ‘Bored? I have estates to run, a speech to write for the House, that damned orphans’ charity Maude nagged me into chairing…’
‘You enjoy it, you know you do. If you did not, why did you invite them all down to Hetherington in the summer and teach the boys to play cricket?’
Gareth grimaced. ‘Smashed half the glass in the succession houses, young hellions.’
‘So did you when you and Sebastian were boys,’ Lady Dereham retorted. ‘You don’t fool me, Gareth Morant—you are working hard for those orphans, and you enjoy it. But being busy does not preclude becoming jaded; this will do you a power of good.’
‘We are doing this to rescue Maude from an impossible situation, not me from the ennui of my duties. Ah, Jordan, Lady Sebastian wishes to have a message delivered.’ The butler bowed his way out with instructions to deliver the hairdresser on Lady Sebastian’s doorstep in an hour equipped with sufficient tools of his trade to create a transformation. What if he is not free? Jessica wondered, then smiled at her naïvety. Not free for a Grand Duchess, the sister-in-law of a duke?
Jessica sat, eating her breakfast in the unobtrusively quiet manner life as a paid dependent in numerous households had taught her, and watched with the focus she would have applied to learning a new instrument.
She watched the unselfconscious grace and command of the two women, she listened to the freedom with which they conversed and the lightness with which they teased Gareth. And she allowed her eyes to feast on their clothes, on carriage dresses in the very latest stare, crafted from fabrics of quiet luxury, trimmed with exquisite detail. She looked longingly at the smart gloves, tossed carelessly to one side, the thickness of the grosgrain bonnet ribbons, the pretty clasps on the reticules. How could she even learn to treat such luxury with nonchalance, let alone seduce men to her side while she did it?
‘What name will you be using?’ Lady Dereham asked, cutting across her increasingly alarming thoughts.
‘Name?’ On top of everything else she had to lose her identity as well, it seemed. Her mind went blank.
‘Francesca Carleton,’ Gareth said. Three women looked at him in enquiry. He shrugged. ‘It just came to me.’
‘Well…’ Lady Sebastian got to her feet, gathering up her possessions ‘…in that case it is time for Mrs Carleton to come with us.’ She paused on the threshold, waiting while Gareth came round the table to open the door for her. ‘Be prepared for a surprise, Gareth.’ As she looked at Jessica her eyes twinkled in a smile of pure naughtiness. ‘We are going to have so much fun.’
Jessica sat in the closed carriage and tried not to look anxious under the combined scrutiny of the ladies opposite.
‘How on earth did you become entangled in this madcap scheme?’ Lady Dereham enquired, in much the same tone as she might have used to enquire whether Jessica had enjoyed a concert.
‘Lord Standon rescued me from a brothel.’ Lady Sebastian opened her mouth, then closed it again without speaking. It seemed there was something that would shake their sang froid after all. ‘I am a governess.’
‘I rather thought you might be.’ Lady Dereham nodded.
‘I was kidnapped when I arrived on the stage and taken to the brothel.’ She shivered—repeating the story did not make it any less horrible. ‘Gareth—Lord Standon—rescued
