The Emerald Swan (21 page)

“My lady’s clothes. Lady Dufort said they were to be given to the other one.” Berthe nodded toward Miranda. “My lady’s to be left with only her chamber robes.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Gareth said. “You must have misunderstood Lady Dufort. In the short term, Miranda will borrow some of Maude’s gowns that will be suitable for formal social occasions, until we can have a
wardrobe made up for her. I expect her ladyship wishes to look through them all in order to make a selection.”

“That wasn’t what I heard,” Berthe mumbled, going to the fireplace where she began to stir the coals with jerky stabs of the poker.

Gareth frowned, then decided to let it alone. He turned to leave just as the door opened and a man in a rusty black doublet and old-fashioned striped hose bustled in with a cracked leather bag.

Gareth recognized the household’s physician. “Are you ailing, cousin?” He glanced over at Maude.

“I am to be bled, my lord.” Maude lay back on the settle, while Berthe hastened to take off one of her slippers.

“Do you have the fever?”

“My lord, it is Lady Maude’s day to be bled,” the physician announced, taking a sharp knife from his bag. Berthe fetched a pewter bowl from the cupboard beside the fireplace.

“Do you make a habit of it, cousin?” His frown deepening, Gareth approached the settle.

“I believe regular bleeding is necessary for her ladyship’s health, my lord,” the physician intoned, bending to take Maude’s foot in one hand, his knife in the other. “It thins the blood and prevents overheating.” Berthe knelt beside him, positioning the bowl to catch the blood.

Gareth raised an eyebrow. The prescriptions of physicians were always a mystery to the layman but he assumed the man knew his job best.

“It seems foolish to be bled if you’re not ill,” Miranda declared. “Mama Gertrude held that cupping and leeches weakened the body.”

“Who’s Mama Gertrude?” Maude inquired, turning
her head against the cushions at her back just as the physician opened the vein in the sole of her foot. Blood spurted into the bowl.

Miranda flinched just as Maude did. She could feel the sharp sting of the knife in her own foot, the sensation of welling blood.

“Does the sight of blood bother you?” Gareth asked, seeing how white she had become.

Miranda shook her head. “Not usually.”

Interesting, Gareth thought, glancing between the two girls. Maude was lying back, her eyes closed, face as pale as Miranda’s, no longer interested in the answer to her question. Miranda abruptly turned away and began to fondle Chip, murmuring to him.

“I’ll leave you to the physician’s ministrations, cousin,” Gareth said, striding to the door. “Miranda, I believe Lady Imogen wishes you to try those gowns without delay. We shall be attending court this evening and you must have something suitable to wear. Some adjustments may well need to be made.”

“Court?” Miranda gasped.

“Aye, I’ve been bidden to the queen’s presence after dinner.” Unconsciously, Gareth’s voice took on an oily mimicry of the queen’s chancellor’s tone. “Her Majesty protests that she has seen nothing of my lord Harcourt for so many weeks.” He smiled briefly, the smile that Miranda so disliked, and she saw that the sardonic light was back in his eye. Gareth knew perfectly well the queen was simply curious. He had had to get her permission to leave court and travel to France and Her Majesty had been very interested in his errand, and fortunately willing to give it her blessing. Now she would be impatient to hear the outcome.

“Couldn’t it wait for a few more days, milord?” Miranda asked. “I don’t feel ready yet.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Gareth said, lifting the hasp on the door. “The presentation will be brief. I have more faith in you than you do, firefly.” And now he smiled at her in the way that warmed and steadied her. “You will learn on your feet, never fear.” The door closed again behind him.

“I wish I could be so sure.” Miranda glanced toward the settle, absently rubbing the sole of one bare foot against her calf. It stung and itched for some reason. The physician was now binding Maude’s foot with a bandage while the invalid lay back, eyes closed. “Have you ever been to court, Maude?”

“No. But I know something of it,” the other said faintly.

“Will you tell me what you know?”

“For goodness’ sake, girl, can’t you see her ladyship needs to be quiet and rest?” Berthe demanded, depositing the bowl of blood on the table for the physician’s examination.

“I’ll come back later, then.” Still holding Chip, Miranda left the room and returned to the green bedchamber.

The pile of garments Berthe had transferred from Maude’s linen press lay heaped on the bed. For someone who rarely left her bedchamber, Maude had an extraordinary array of elaborate gowns, Miranda reflected, examining the richly embroidered stuff. Most of them looked and felt as if they’d never been worn.

Chip suddenly yattered and launched himself at the open window. He paused on the sill, assessing the fine rain now falling, then disappeared from sight, climbing down the ivy to the garden beneath.

Miranda was only puzzled for a second. A rustle of stiff skirts heralded the appearance of Lady Imogen, who, tight-lipped and grimly silent, entered the chamber with the two maids who had helped with the bath the previous evening.

Imogen stood on the threshold of the room for a minute, glancing warily around. There was no sign of the monkey. She stepped inside, grimly prepared to do her brother’s bidding, but at first, after her earlier mortification, quite unable to bring herself to talk directly to the girl herself.

She issued orders to the maids, using them as mediums for communication, but as she watched the transformation some of her bitterness dissipated in awe at her brother’s scheme. The resemblance between Maude and this girl was more than a resemblance. It was almost frightening, almost magical.

Miranda yielded herself up to the attentions of the maids, who stripped her, dressed her in clean petticoats, chemise, and a new and very wide farthingale, and then proceeded to try on the gowns in quick succession, buttoning, lacing, tucking, pinning, as if she were a wooden doll. The gowns needed very little adjustment. Her bosom was a little fuller than Maude’s, her hips a little rounder. But the difference was barely noticeable.

Imogen walked all around Miranda, now standing in her undergarments waiting for another gown to be put upon her. “It’s a pity neither of you has much stature,” she mused, almost to herself. “Stature lends grace to the most ungraceful figure.”

Miranda flushed, feeling vulnerable and exposed before this critical scrutiny.

“But by all that’s good,” Imogen continued in the
same self-reflective tone, “you’re Maude to the life. It’s unnatural.”

The maids laced Miranda into a gown of peach velvet with a scarlet taffeta stomacher. Imogen unfurled her fan and again walked around Miranda. “Straighten your shoulders. No girl of good standing would slouch in that way.”

Miranda had never given her posture a moment’s consideration. She believed she was standing perfectly straight, but now doubts assailed her. If something as simple as how she stood and walked would give her origins away, what chance did she have of convincing people face to face? And the queen? She was to be presented to the queen of England tonight! It was absurd, totally ridiculous. A nightmare. She was a vagabond, she’d spent nights in gaol for vagrancy. She’d starved and slept under haystacks. She’d been found in a baker’s shop!

“Lucifer!” A wave of nausea swept through her and she dropped onto the side of the bed, heedless of the row of pins sticking out from the side seams of the gown as the girls fitted it to her body.

“What’s the matter?” Imogen demanded.

Miranda stood up again. She had promised Lord Harcourt that she would try her best, and she would not back down on a promise. “Nothing, madam.”

Imogen frowned at her for a minute, then said to one of the maids, “You, wench, go in search of Lord Dufort. Ask him to attend me here.”

Lord Dufort? What did he have to do with all this? Miranda wondered. But not for long. Lord Dufort appeared in a very few minutes, just as the second maid had removed the peach velvet and Miranda was
standing once again in her undergarments. “You wanted me, dear madam?”

“Yes. Decide which gown she should wear this evening.” Imogen gestured toward Miranda and the array of gowns on the bed. “Maude’s shoes are too small for her, unfortunately. She’ll have to put up with pinching until the shoemaker can accommodate such big feet.”

That at least didn’t trouble Miranda. She knew that she didn’t have big feet, although they were long and narrow, and the soles were somewhat rough. “I think I look best in the peach velvet,” she said firmly. “Are you experienced in matters of wardrobe, sir?”

“I have some small reputation,” he said modestly, lifting the peach gown from the bed. He held it up against her and shook his head. “No, it does nothing for your coloring, my dear. It didn’t do anything for Maude’s, either.”

“Oh,” Miranda said, disappointed. She’d thought the peach velvet embroidered with gold thread quite enchanting.

“But we all make mistakes in taste on occasion,” Miles continued, warming to his subject, as he examined the other gowns. “It’s very easy in a particular light to think something will look well and then in another setting to see how perfectly dreadful it is.”

Miranda glanced toward Imogen, wondering how her ladyship was taking this discourse from her husband. To her surprise, she saw that the lady was paying close attention, her lips pursed as she nodded in agreement.

“What about the emerald green?” Imogen suggested, and again to Miranda’s surprise, the suggestion sounded almost tentative.

Miles lifted the gown, examined it in the light, held
it up to Miranda’s face, then said with a considering frown, “Put it on, my dear. The color may be right, but the style might drown you. You’re so very small.”

Miranda stepped into the gown and peered down at her front as the maids laced the stomacher that was of plain apple-green silk, contrasting with the rich emerald brocade skirt embroidered all over with a pattern of vine leaves.

Lord Dufort walked all around her, tapping his lips with one finger, his expression grave. “Oh, yes,” he announced finally with an approving nod. “Yes, it will do very well. The color is excellent and the style is simpler than I thought at first sight. If I might just …” He twitched at the pads beneath the high shoulders, smoothed the close-fitting sleeves over her upper arms, then adjusted the small ruff that circled her throat and brushed her earlobes.

He stood back and took another look, still tapping reflectively at his mouth. “Very nice,” he pronounced. “Do you not think, dear madam?”

Imogen nodded, that same startled look in her eyes. “If she can carry the part …” she murmured, half to herself. “Gareth was quite right. Maybe we’ll pull the coals out of this fire after all.

“But what of her hair?” she continued, a deep frown furrowing her brow. “It’s all very well to say it was cropped for a fever, but it looks quite dreadful, perfectly ugly.”

Miranda ran a hand over her head, thinking of Maude’s auburn-tinted locks. Maude’s hair was a trifle lifeless, but it was enviably long. She’d never thought about her own crop, but now she could imagine how ugly and unfeminine it must look.

“The snood worked quite well last even,” Miles said,
pulling at his almost nonexistent chin as he pondered the question. “But I believe a cap and veil will work even better. With her hair drawn back from her forehead beneath a jeweled cap and the falling veil at the back no one will see the deficiency.” He smiled apologetically at Miranda as he made this comment.

“In a few weeks, of course, you’ll have an abundance of lovely thick, dark hair, my dear, and then we can dress it properly. It will be a delight to do so.”

“In a few weeks it’s to be hoped the girl will be long gone,” Imogen said tartly. “By that time, my cousin will have been brought to a proper sense of her duty.” She swept toward the door, commanding the maids, “Take the gown off her and have it pressed and made ready for this evening. Do the necessary alterations on the others and have them ready to wear by this afternoon.”

“I believe Lady Mary is belowstairs, Imogen,” Miles said. “I heard the chamberlain letting her in through the front door as I crossed the hall.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Miles, why could you not have said so before?” Imogen demanded crossly.

“We were a little busy, my dear,” Miles said apologetically.

Imogen paused in the doorway, surveying Miranda with the same frown. “You had better put on that turquoise gown again and present yourself downstairs to pay your respects to Lady Mary. You had as well get used to being in company.” Without waiting for a response, she swept from the room.

“You’ll do very well, my dear, I have every confidence in you,” Miles said, seeing Miranda shiver suddenly in the thin undergarments. “Put on the chamber robe, before you catch cold.” He draped the garment
around her shoulders and she gave him a grateful if slightly wan smile.

“There, there,” he said awkwardly, patting her shoulder. “Everything will work out, you’ll see.” He hastened after the maids, leaving Miranda to her own reflections.

Chip, with impeccable timing, bounded back onto the windowsill. “Ah, Chip!” Miranda held out her arms to him and received his scrawny little body. “How did I get myself into this?” She buried her nose in his damp fur. “You smell like a compost heap!”

Chip grinned and patted her head, stroked her cheek.

Chapter Twelve