Chapter 8
While I sincerely hope to prove my worth to Lady Caroline, please, Lord, let that endeavor not involve shopping.
—Mr. Lawrence Sinclair
“How can the man not know how to dance?” Horatia said as she turned this way and that, admiring herself in the long standing mirror.
Her new gown of ivory lustring was lovely, but if Horatia didn’t stand still, Madame Fournier’s poor apprentice, Mary Woodyard, would never be able to pin up the hem evenly. Frederica had stood, docile as a lamb, while the apprentice made alterations to her ball gown. Horatia couldn’t be shepherded into submission no matter how often Mary coaxed her to be still. Her mouth full of pins, Mary made a small noise that might have been a low growl, if such a thing weren’t too impertinent for one of her station.
“Imagine not knowing a gavotte from a quadrille.” Horatia punctuated the remark with a little snort of derision. “I for one can scarcely credit it, Caro.”
“You’ll credit it well enough this evening.” Caroline ran her fingertips over a bolt of pale blue tulle. Her chaperone, Anna, had escorted the girls to the dressmaker’s shop and then left them there while she ducked into the bakery next door for tea and scones with her friend, Lady Dinwattle’s housekeeper. It was a pleasant break for the old woman and a relief to Caroline to be out from under her watchful eyes.
“I don’t expect Mr. Sinclair to become a polished dancer, of course,” Caroline said. “He only needs to be able to make a decent showing at Lord Frampton’s ball. I’m counting on you and Freddie to help. Come to supper and then stay the night, won’t you? Together, we can put Mr. Sinclair through his paces.”
Frederica looked up from the bolt of dotted Swiss she’d been admiring. “How will we do that without additional partners?” she said with unusual practicality.
“I’ve enlisted my brothers’ help.”
“Which ones?” Frederica asked.
“Charles and Thomas. Of the five of them, they’re the best dancers. Benjamin will play for us, so we’ll have music.”
“Bredon won’t be involved?” Horatia asked, all innocence. Caroline had long suspected her friend of being sweet on Teddy but knew there was no chance he’d return her affection. Horatia’s gossipy tongue had always tried his patience. He’d often told Caroline that only his devotion to her made him contain his irritation with her flighty friend.
And sometimes even that wasn’t enough to keep him from vacating the room without explanation while Horatia was tittering her on-dits. Horatia was bewildered by his behavior, but Caroline knew Teddy was trying to spare her.
“Involved? Of course Teddy will be involved. It was his idea that I teach Mr. Sinclair to dance, after all. Throughout the evening, Teddy will be coming in and out and sending one of my other brothers down to take his place,” Caro explained. “Someone has to play piquet with Mother in the parlor if we don’t want her to discover we’re playing caper masters on the fourth floor.”
“Your parents won’t notice anything strange if the three of us never appear in the parlor?” Horatia stopped batting her eyes at her own reflection long enough to ask.
“Mama knows we’d rather talk than play cards. She’ll assume we’re in my chamber,” Caroline explained. “And once my father sticks his nose in a book, he wouldn’t notice if an anvil fell from the sky and crashed through the roof.”
“Is everything to the lady’s satisfaction?” Madame Fournier came breezing in from the back room, a cunningly devised headdress in her hands.
Horatia squealed in delight when she saw it. “Yes, I think this will do quite nicely for Lord Frampton’s ball.”
When they’d first arrived at the shop, Horatia had given the dressmaker an earful about Penelope Braithwaite’s yellow gown. Madame Fournier had seemed aghast at the news. She’d insisted, even swearing an oath on her mother’s grave, that she would never make the same gown for two of her clients. It would be a grievous breach of trust.
“Perhaps one of my competitors, she has copied my style, mademoiselle,” she had suggested. “It is—how you say?—an unhappy coincidence, nothing more.”
Then, after Madame Fournier promised to make Horatia a coronet of embroidered muslin and tulle to match her new gown, all was forgiven.
The dressmaker positioned the little cap on Horatia’s head, realized it needed to be a bit bigger, and disappeared once again into the back room.
“So, will you two help me with Mr. Sinclair or not?” Caroline asked.
Frederica nodded. “Of course we will, won’t we?”
“Why not?” Horatia turned sideways to view herself from that vantage. “It will be delicious fun to watch the man make a cake of himself.”
“I have to give him high marks for persistence.” That morning, Caroline had glanced down through the banister from the first-story landing and caught Mr. Sinclair practicing the traveling waltz step down the hall for a few beats as he followed Bredon out the door for their daily jaunt to White’s. It was strangely endearing. Caroline had clamped a hand firmly over her mouth, lest she burst out laughing and embarrass him. “He is trying.”
“Very trying, no doubt.”
“Don’t be unkind, Horatia,” Frederica admonished.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But I do expect to be entertained. If your Mr. Sinclair is as awkward with his feet as he is with his tongue, this promises to be an amusing evening.”
“He’s not my Mr. Sinclair,” Caroline protested, but her insides did a shivery little jig nonetheless. When she’d called him by his Christian name last evening, the look on his face was astonishing. He couldn’t have been more pleased if she’d offered him a handful of diamonds and pearls.
“That insipid little smile of yours when you think we don’t see begs to differ,” Horatia said with a disgustingly knowing look. “Doesn’t she look positively moonstruck, Freddie?”
“I am not.” Caroline gave herself an inward shake. “Never mind about the dancing lessons. If you’re intent on being hurtful, don’t come.”
“Hold a moment.” Horatia abandoned the mirror, crossed the room to Caroline, and grasped one of her hands. “I was only teasing, Caro.”
“I don’t appreciate being teased.”
“Then I won’t do it. Besides, we know you’re only spending time with Mr. Sinclair to please Lord Bredon. And I won’t say a single unkind word to the man. I promise.”
“Maybe you won’t say them, but you think unkind things about him and…it makes me feel so very low when you do.”
“Why, Caro,” Frederica said, “if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you are harboring a tendresse for Mr. Sinclair.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh, my stars and garters!” Horatia eyed her with such intensity, Caroline wondered if she could look directly into her heart. “Freddie’s right.”
“She is not. Not that you aren’t right sometimes, Freddie dear,” Caroline hastened to add when Frederica’s face fell. It never failed to amaze her that her sensitive friend seemed to feel unintentional pricks from her more deeply than real jabs from Horatia. She pulled her hand away from Horatia, wondering, not for the first time, if their friendship, which had begun in childhood, had run its course. “Just because I don’t wish Mr. Sinclair to become an object of ridicule, it does not follow that I am enamored with the man. I merely feel we ought not to mock someone whose life has been so very different from ours.”
Caroline thought she heard the dressmaker’s apprentice murmur “hear, hear” under her breath as she rose to her feet. Horatia had refused to stand still, so the woman was evidently giving up on pinning her hem.
“You’ve hit upon the very thing that puzzles me, Caro,” Frederica said.
“When are you not puzzled, Freddie?” Horatia rolled her eyes and returned to the raised area in front of the mirror. Mary Woodyard dropped to her knees and went back to work on the hem with all the urgency of a squirrel gathering nuts for winter.
Undeterred by Horatia’s remark, Frederica continued. “Why should Mr. Sinclair’s life have been so different from ours? He was raised in Ware Hall. For pity’s sake, the man is heir presumptive to an earldom—”
“Emphasis on presumptive,” Horatia interrupted.
“At any rate,” Frederica went on placidly, “it does seem odd that he shouldn’t have learned how to dance…or converse…or manage his teacup…or—”
“Yes, I know. He’s different, but I don’t know why he is as he is,” Caroline said in frustration. “The fact remains that Mr. Sinclair is a…a very singular gentleman.”
“Singular,” Horatia repeated meaningfully. “As in one.”
“Oh! You’re implying a deeper significance,” Frederica said, happy to have followed her clever friend’s train of thought. “You mean as in one and only?”
“Not at all,” Caroline said testily, “and I’ll thank you two hens not to entertain such faradiddles.”
She was saved from further mortification when the dressmaker returned with a gown of pale pink silk in her arms. “Madame Fournier, is that mine?”
“Oui, bien sûr. This is the fine silk you have chosen, is it not?”
“Yes. Good. Then I shall go next.” Caroline flounced away to the dressing room in the back, with Madame Fournier’s apprentice following close behind her to carry the gown and assist while she changed into it. Caroline loved Freddie—and Horatia, too, when she didn’t make Caroline the target of her barbed tongue—but she needed to be away from both of them. Immediately.
Unfortunately, the dressing room wasn’t far enough.
As Mary Woodyard helped her strip down to her chemise, she could still hear Freddie say in a stage whisper, “My word, I believe we have offended her.”
“If we have, it’s only for speaking the truth. Our Caro is dangerously close to forming an unwanted liaison.”
If Horatia was only trying to protect her from making a mistake, perhaps she was right to be a little cutting. Caroline’s irritation at her friends began to fade.
“I believe you’re wrong, Horatia. I don’t think Mr. Sinclair is unwanted at all. I think she rather likes him.”
No, I don’t, Caroline almost shouted, but she held her tongue. As the only girl in a household filled with boys, she’d learned long ago that she might hear the most amazing things if others weren’t aware she was listening.
“No, goose. I meant her attachment to him is unwise.”
“But I’ve never known Caro to do anything unwise.”
“Mark my words, she’s close to it now.” Horatia sighed expressively. “Honestly, one may see a puppy in the street and find it sweet, but one ought not to bring it home.”
Frederica was silent so long, Caroline knew she was puzzling out the metaphor. Finally, she said, “Ah! I understand. Mr. Sinclair is the puppy. But…but Caro didn’t bring Mr. Sinclair home. Lord Bredon did.”
Horatia made an exasperated noise and then got distracted with giving Madame Fournier suggestions for more embellishments on the little coronet. In the meantime, Mary Woodyard used a special hook to fasten the row of tiny buttons that marched down Caroline’s spine.
It was a gorgeous gown. Beautifully sewn, it was of the best quality silk. Seed pearls embellished the bodice and the fully lined train was long enough to do credit to a princess.
“If it not be impertinent,” Mary said, “I shouldn’t pay those two any mind were I you, my lady.”
It was a little impertinent. Shopkeepers, like servants, were supposed to behave as if they didn’t hear or see anything their customers said or did unless it was related to an ongoing transaction. Clearly, Miss Woodyard had chosen to ignore that unspoken code.
“They’re my friends,” Caroline said. “Why shouldn’t I listen to their advice?”
“Because they aren’t going to live your life for you, are they?” Mary stood and met Caroline’s gaze. “You’re the only one as can do that.”
“That’s true. You have some rather unexpected views. Have you, by chance, been attending the lectures of Mrs. Hester Birdwhistle?”
Just then, Madame Fournier called out to her apprentice, pronouncing her name as if it were Marie in the French style instead of plain English Mary. “Do not make to talk Lady Caroline to death. And hurry. Vite, vite!”
Mary smiled ruefully and whispered, “No, my lady. I’ve no time for lectures, save for those from my mistress.”
“But your views are those of an enlightened mind.” Caroline doubted she’d have thought about an independent life if she hadn’t first listened to Mrs. Birdwhistle. “Whence do you hail?”
“Surrey, my lady,” Mary said softly as she smoothed down Caroline’s train. “And you may blame my enlightened mind on my father. He was a vicar who believed his daughters should be as well read as his sons.”
Caroline remembered her struggle to learn Latin without her father’s consent or knowledge. It would have been so much easier if she could have sat in on her brothers’ sessions with their tutor instead of having Teddy deliver each new set of verbs for her to conjugate. “Huzzah for your father, the vicar.”
“Indeed, my lady.”
“Marie! Please to hurry. I need an extra pair of hands.”
“Coming, Madame.” But Mary didn’t go immediately. Instead, she gathered up her sewing kit in one hand and Caroline’s train in the other. Then she said, “About your Mr. Sinclair…”
“What about him?”
“The only one who knows what a person’s life is like is the one who lives it. There are as many tragedies behind fine doors as there are in the ghetto around Seven Dials,” Mary said. “If you want to know why he is as he is, discover his tragedy.”
“And then I’ll know the man?”
“Yes, my lady,” Mary said as she trailed Caroline out of the back room. “But first, you must do the hard part.”
“What might that be?”
“You have to make him trust you enough to tell you.”
When Caroline rejoined her friends in the main part of the shop, to her great surprise, Mr. Sinclair was there, hat in hand. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders stiff. He looked as if he feared to move a muscle lest he upset the displays of ribbons and lace. But when he saw her, the tension drained from his face and his shoulders relaxed. His gaze swept her form with obvious appreciation.
“My lady,” he said simply, followed by that quick nod of a bow of his. But the look on his face said, my goddess.
“May I take it you approve of my gown, Mr. Sinclair?” she asked, a ridiculously happy sensation heating her chest as she basked in his open admiration.
Caroline spread her arms and did a little spin, causing Mary Woodyard to drop her long train lest the gown tear. It was designed to be hooked up before the wearer launched into a dance figure, but Caroline had forgotten all about that. Unbound, the train turned into a flying whip at floor level. It caught on the bottom of the dressmaker’s dummy displaying a new style of frock fresh from Paris. The dummy toppled over onto a large jar containing assorted buttons, frogs, and hooks and eyes. The jar spilled onto the floor and shattered to pieces, sending hundreds of small bits of horn and shell, woven cord and metal, scurrying around the shop like ants pouring from an upturned hill.
Madame Fournier shrieked. Then she lunged across the room, trying to collect the dearer fasteners off the floor, cursing in French at the top of her lungs. The dressmaker caught the hem of her gown under the toe of one of her shoes and she went tail over teakettle into the long row of upright bolts of fabric that ringed the room. They began to topple like dominoes. The last one smashed into a display of spangles. The small decorative leaves pattered to the hardwood like metallic raindrops.
Once the last tinkling sound died away, the shop went completely silent.
Mr. Sinclair cleared his throat. “Lady Caroline, I’ve come to assist you and your friends with your parcels whenever you are ready to leave.”
“Oh, I think we’re ready to leave right now,” Horatia said, still perched on the raised dais before the long mirror, only now she was also clinging to Frederica. When the fiasco began, Frederica must have skittered over to join her there. The two of them were crowded onto that small buoy of safety above a sea of buttons and spangles, fallen lace and ripped muslin.
“But shouldn’t Lady Caroline…and we, too, of course, help with…” Frederica began.
“No, mademoiselles,” Madam Fournier said as she hauled herself from her sprawled position on the floor. “My poor shop, she could not bear so much as another thimbleful of Lady Caroline’s help.”