Carola Dunn Page 4

  He reminded himself sternly that her welcome stemmed from desperation. Even if he had not started out by humiliating himself before her with that caperwitted keyhole business, she could not possibly love a cripple. Her gratitude must satisfy him.

  He was glad to have been able to help her, to prevent the eviction of her family. Tom was a good miller, a good husband and father, even though he was the biggest braggart in Norfolk. Only a gullible sapskull like the Duke of Diss would believe his tall tales and expect the impossible of his daughter. Only a selfish coxcomb like the noble Duke of Diss would threaten to beggar her family if she failed.

  “Cousin Edward? Come and see.”

  Returning to the tower room, he watched Lizzie preen before the looking glass on the wall. She turned to him and curtsied low.

  She had put on a dress the pale pink of wild roses, a shade produced by Edward’s magic quite against his intentions. It suited her, reinforcing what little natural colour she had in her cheeks. The style suited her, too, transforming incipient embonpoint into a pleasing plumpness.

  Recalling his struggle with the mother-of-pearl buttons circling the skirt between the rows of narrow lace, Edward grinned at Martha. She did not notice, for her eyes were downcast in the submissive stance of a servant.

  Such meekness was all wrong for her, he thought, suddenly angry. He hated to see it. Why should so bright and lively a girl defer to his cousin—insipid, Mama had called her, not without justice—because of a mere accident of birth?

  “You have worked magic, Miss Miller,” he said, glad to see her soft lips quirk in amusement as she bobbed a deferential curtsy. “I have never seen Lady Elizabeth look so well. You will take the Ton by storm, Lizzie.”

  “Do you really think so, Cousin Edward?” Pleased, she turned back to the looking glass. “I own it is a charming gown, though rather plain.”

  “Surely you cannot want an excess of ornament to distract attention from your face?”

  “I suppose not,” she said dubiously. “Let me try another, Martha. That lilac—it is not at all my colour.”

  To Edward’s relief he was exiled to the landing only four times more before he succeeded at last in convincing Lizzie that her entire new wardrobe became her to perfection. He was aided by her qualms at the prospect of being caught there by her brother.

  Quickly she changed back into the gown she had arrived in, only to stand frowning before her reflection, vaguely dissatisfied.

  Consulting his watch, Edward looked grave. “Even Reggie will not stay much longer abed.”

  “Oh, let us hurry away! I should not care to meet him upon the stairs. Thank you, Martha,” she said graciously. “I am quite pleased and so I shall tell the duke.”

  Edward had no excuse to linger. “I expect the duke will be with you soon,” he said to Martha. “I am sure he will be delighted with what you have accomplished.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said demurely, curtsying, eyes still cast down. But as he followed Elizabeth out of the room, he thought he heard a soft, “Thank you, Edward.”

  Limping awkwardly down the stairs after his happily chattering cousin, he followed her into the sunny breakfast room, where they found his aunt and the rest of his cousins. The smells of coffee, bacon, ham, and toasted muffins made him realize how hungry he was—and Martha must be. After greeting the duchess and the girls, he directed a footman to take up a tray to Miss Miller.

  “Oh, m’lord, I daresn’t,” the lad quavered. “His Grace gave orders no one’s to go up the tower, and he’s a’ready dismissed Albert just for rattling the coals in the scuttle when he made up the fire in his Grace’s chamber ‘smorning.”

  “Reggie is shockingly unreasonable, Edward,” lamented Alicia, Duchess of Diss, a wispy, grey-haired lady. The over-elaborate gowns she favoured in an apparent attempt to lend herself substance only succeeded in making her look still more fragile and ineffective. She had as little colour sense as her eldest daughter. The puce she wore this morning needed an imposing figure to carry it off in style.

  “Albert did nothing so very bad,” she continued. “He is an excellent footman and certainly did not disturb Reggie on purpose. And I’m sure the poor girl ought to have something to eat, but it is as useless to argue with Reginald as it was with his father.”

  “I know, Aunt Alicia.” With a sigh, Edward once more addressed the footman. “John, you may inform Albert that his position will await him when his Grace returns to London. Now make up a tray, if you please. I shall take it up to the tower myself.”

  The footman was eager to make amends. “I’ll get Cook to pack up a basket o’ goodies, m’lord,” he offered. “‘Twill be easier for your lordship to carry.”

  John even ventured to carry the basket as far as the base of the tower stair. There Edward took it and wearily limped back up the stone spiral—fortunately, as it turned out, for he had forgotten to lock the door.

  He found Martha asleep again, curled up on the chest, her blond head pillowed on her hands. She had tidied the room, pressed the last gown and hung it with the rest.

  Setting down the basket on the table, he stood looking down at her. His heart twisted in his breast. Too late for caution, he realized. He was in love.

  * * * *

  Martha woke when the late morning sun touched her face. Within her middle was a growling void. She sat up, stretched and rubbed her eyes, and noticed the napkin-covered basket on the table.

  At once she guessed who had brought it, climbing the stairs with his poor, hurting leg. Lord Tarnholm must be the kindest gentleman in the world.

  She feasted on cold ham, buttered rusks, and an apple hoglin. There were two biffins for her to nibble on, too. Cook, who was Martha’s uncle’s wife’s sister, must have tucked them in, knowing her liking for the sugar-glazed dried apples. A corked jug held home-brewed ale.

  Appetite satisfied, she stowed away the remains in the basket and hid it in the cupboard. She was just closing the cupboard door when she heard voices on the landing.

  The lock screeched, the door swung open, and the duke appeared in all the glory of morning dress. A blue coat of Bath superfine, superbly tailored, topped skintight, dove-coloured pantaloons. Gold tassels swung from his white boot tops and a gold signet ring adorned one finger. On either side of his starched, pearl-pinned cravat, his shirtpoints rose so high he had no choice but to elevate his haughty chin and look down his aristocratic nose.

  Doubtless that explained his use of a quizzing glass, through which one cold, arrogant eye, horribly magnified, appraised Martha.

  Stifling a nervous giggle, she curtsied. He strode into the room, followed by Lady Elizabeth and Lord Tarnholm.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Please, your Grace, I have made twenty-four gowns for my lady, like you said.” She indicated the rack.

  He went over, beckoning his sister to follow, and gave the dresses a cursory inspection.

  “Satisfied, Lizzie?”

  “Oh yes, Reggie. They are beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Excellent.” Rubbing his hands together, he returned to the table and counted out five gleaming golden guineas, one by one. “Those would have cost me fifty times as much in Town,” he told Lord Tarnholm. “If not a hundred times. I shall save a fortune.”

  Martha curtsied again, with difficulty tearing her gaze from the coins. “Please, your Grace, can I be my lady’s abigail when she goes to Town?”

  “Yes, yes, make her a dozen evening gowns by this time tomorrow and you shall be her abigail. Fail and I’ll see your father clapped up in gaol as a charlatan.”

  “Reggie!” protested Lord Tarnholm. “At least let Miss Miller rest before—”

  “A firm hand, coz, that is what’s needed with these yokels. Peasants are bone idle without a crack of the whip now and then to keep ‘em on their toes. Tell those fellows to bring in the stuff.”

  Two footmen bore in a bale of cloth wrapped in unbleached calico. The duke and his retinue departed, and th
e key turned in the lock.

  Martha stood by the table, fingering her gold guineas. Gaol! If she failed, would his Grace not only send Pa to gaol but keep her imprisoned here in the tower forever?

  She shivered. A grand nobleman like the duke turned the law to his own ends, and woe to those who crossed him. Even the baron could not stop him. It must be wonderful to have so much wealth and power.

  But as for Martha and her family, their only hope was that once more Lord Tarnholm would take pity on them.

  Sighing, she began to unwrap the bundle of cloth. To her dismay, the entire bale was made up of the coarse calico she had supposed was protecting lengths of silk and satin. Edward had turned plain muslin into fine muslin without great difficulty, once he had worked out how to set about it. She suspected changing cheap cotton stuff into sarcenet, lutestring, velvet, and crêpe was not going to be so easy. He was only half faerie, after all.

  She turned to the magazines. Lady Elizabeth had marked all the most elaborately embellished gowns. Martha trusted Lord Tarnholm would once again contrive to persuade his cousin to accept simpler, more becoming trimmings, which would be a great help.

  However, each gown consisted of slip and overdress, doubling the work, and the shapes of bodices and sleeves varied. This time they could not use one paper pattern for all.

  Never one to mope when there was work to be done, Martha fetched paper and busied herself with coloured chalk, measuring tape, and scissors. She finished a pattern for the petticoats, but Lord Tarnholm did not come. She finished patterns for two different styles of overdresses, and still Lord Tarnholm did not come.

  Lords had more amusing things to do than to help a poor seamstress, she reminded herself forlornly. He had been generous with his time helping her last night. If he had not, her family would have been turned out of doors.

  But if he abandoned her now, her father would go to gaol, perhaps die of gaol fever, leaving Mam and the children to starve.

  Her vision blurred by tears, Martha started on a pattern for a puff sleeve.

  Chapter V

  A halting step sounded on the landing. Martha looked up, afraid to hope. Iron scraped on iron. The door swung open and she ran to meet Edward, hands outstretched in welcome.

  Into her hands he put a heavy basket. “I have made sure we shall not go hungry today. What, tears, Martha? Surely you did not think I would fail you? The duke insisted on my company for a while.”

  “I have no right to expect your lordship’s aid.”

  “I was well paid, remember. What will you give for my aid this time?” he asked, smiling.

  “All I have is five golden guineas, which is nothing to your lordship.”

  “Give me a lock of your golden hair to plait into a ring for my finger.”

  Wondering at the note of sadness beneath his joking, she took her scissors and went to the looking glass to cut off a curl. As she gave it to him, she thought she saw a glistening web of tenuous threads, finer than her hair, stretching between her hand and his.

  She blinked and it disappeared. Lord Tarnholm put the lock away carefully in the tiny leather case with the four-leafed clover.

  “Let us get to work,” he said cheerfully.

  All afternoon they toiled, all evening, and into the night. As they toiled they talked, of village life and of the great city Martha was going to see with Lady Elizabeth, of books she had read and books he thought she would enjoy.

  She told him about reading to old Mrs. Stewart, the vicar’s mother, and listening to lessons at Mrs. Ballantine’s Academy, about her brothers and sisters and her suitors. He told her about his childish experiments in magic and his dearly loved nixie mother who lived in the lake in the woods on his estate, with otters and frogs for servants.

  Hotiron in hand, she sang the ballad of The Outlandish Knight:

  “‘Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,

  “‘Lie there instead of me,’“ she carolled.

  “‘Six pretty maidens you have drowned here before,

  “‘But the seventh has drowned thee.’“

  Lord Tarnholm grinned. “The ladies emerge victorious in all your favourite songs,” he commented.

  “Indeed,” she answered saucily, “for my liking there are altogether too many tales of deceived maidens dying of broken hearts.”

  By trial and error they worked, laughing together over the freakish results of his frequent blunders. His first attempt at a scalloped hem turned into a skirt split to the high waist into narrow panels like daisy petals. Velvet grew a nap so long it looked like a shaggy dog. A net overdress appeared with a mesh too large to catch any fish smaller than salmon.

  “It will do,” Lord Tarnholm joked, “since Lizzie is sure to throw back anything smaller than a marquis.”

  The fine cording of lutestring silk gave him particular difficulty. At first it came out like thick-ribbed corduroy. After several unsuccessful attempts, Martha had the idea of starting from corduroy and thinning the ribs magically, instead of starting with smooth cloth and creating ribs. It worked perfectly.

  The next problem was a fringe of vandykes around the hem and bodice. Each pointed ornament was finished with a little bobble of chenille.

  “They look like harness bells,” Lord Tarnholm remarked, and of course, once he had that notion in his mind, little bells they became.

  Martha picked the dress up, shook it, and giggled at the tinkling.

  “I think it is a silly decoration anyway,” she said. “I am surprised you managed to make it at all.”

  “Perhaps my talent has a sense of humour,” he said with a tired grin. A wave of his hands and the vandykes disappeared, bells and all.

  The last twist his roguish talent produced was Martha’s fault. Instead of just showing him a picture and an example of a particular kind of sleeve, she told him the style was known as “slashed.” Neither of them was surprised when the result was rags and tatters.

  In spite of all the obstacles, by dawn twelve glorious gowns hung on the rack. Martha looked at them and sighed, and wished she was going to wear them, to dance at parties where lords were two a penny and every single one was seeking her hand.

  * * * *

  “I say, coz, I’ve a devilish good notion!”

  Reggie burst into the chamber where Edward was catching up on missed sleep. The room was always kept prepared for him as he often stayed the night at the house when busy about his cousin’s affairs.

  He sat up, yawning and forcing his eyes to open. Then he quickly shut them again, dazzled. Was he imagining things, or was the duke’s scarlet velvet dressing gown really embroidered with gold Chinese dragons breathing multi-coloured flames? His magic had never yet produced anything quite so outrageously outlandish.

  “What?” he asked baldly.

  “I wish you would listen to me. I said—”

  “...You have a good notion.” Edward mustered the patience always necessary when dealing with Reggie. Nonetheless, his voice came out a trifle waspish. “I did listen, or at least I heard you, even though I was fast asleep at the time. What is this famous notion?”

  Reggie had the grace to look slightly abashed. It did not last. His self-satisfaction bubbled over.

  “If the chit’s done it again—made all those gowns—and she manages the next lot, I’ll wed her, damme if I won’t. That way I shall be sure of her services for the rest of the brood. Just think of it, five more sisters to go. I’ll save thousands!”

  “Wed her!” Edward was too stupefied to be aghast. “Wed Martha? You cannot be serious! Have you forgotten she is a miller’s daughter?”

  “Of course not,” said Reggie crossly, with a pout very like Lizzie’s. “I wish you will not always be taking me for a knock-in-the-cradle. That’s half the beauty of the scheme, you see, her being of humble birth.”

  Edward did not venture to voice his conviction that his cousin was either jug-bitten or even more fit for Bedlam than usual. “I don’t see at all,” he said. “Why is her
low origin acceptable to you?”

  “Not merely acceptable, it’s just what I need. The thing is, I must get an heir, for you’re certainly not going to provide one.”

  “Even if I did have a son, he would not be heir to the dukedom,” Edward pointed out. “Our families’ connection is through your mother.”

  “Yes, yes,” Reggie said impatiently. “One way or another, what it comes down to is that I shall have to marry, sooner or later.”

  “You should have no difficulty whatsoever in finding a blue-blooded bride.”

  “But a nobleman’s daughter will expect all sorts of finery and gewgaws! A well-born bride might even want to join me in Town, of all the ghastly thoughts, though Mother never complained when Father left her down here.”

  The late duke’s only interest in his family had been to ensure that his heir grew up as arrogant and selfish as himself. Though he rarely set foot in Norfolk, the duchess had admittedly always seemed contented with her lot. Edward assumed she had realized long since she was better off with her unsatisfactory husband at a distance.

  “But Martha—Miss Miller—wishes to see London,” Edward protested, recalling the light in her blue eyes when she spoke of going to Town with Lizzie.

  “Then she can go on wishing,” Reggie snapped. “I’ll be damned if I’ll parade a miller’s daughter before the Ton. Or any female, come to that, but her parents ain’t likely to rake me over the coals for neglecting her as Lord and Lady This or That would. I daresay the girl will be perfectly happy to stay here sewing and breeding. She’ll be a duchess, after all. What more could she ask for?”

  Not a word of argument would he hear. Pleased with himself, he went off to complete his toilet, leaving Edward to wonder if he could conceive of anything more painful than to see his own beloved the wife of his cousin.

  He tried to consider Reggie’s plan from Martha’s point of view.

  Unlike his aunt, Martha had not been brought up as a diffident, biddable young lady. She had set her heart on going to Town and she had too much spirit to give up easily. On the other hand, naturally she would be overjoyed to become a duchess. She would revel not only in the wealth and comfort, but in the power to assist her family.