“I…I’m sorry to interrupt.”
The soft hand of sympathy that the girl laid on Hope’s bare shoulder was too much. For so long, Hope had bottled up her emotions so that even she might have believed Felix’s assessment that she had no heart. Until the storm of emotion hit.
“Hush!” Faith climbed onto Hope’s bed and wound her arms about Hope’s shoulders. “Hush, you don’t want Madame Chambon to hear you.” She sounded frightened. “I shouldn’t have let him in, but when he said you’d visited him earlier this afternoon and hinted at what you felt about him, I’d hoped he might …” Her voice trailed away.
Hope tried to bring her sobs under control. If the other girls heard, Madame would be here in a flash demanding to know every last detail, and declaring roundly her disgust that Hope had failed in one of her primary duties: to be impervious to all feeling when it came to the gentlemen. Hope had never received one of her famous lectures, though girls who’d been so foolish as to have fallen in love had.
Hope rubbed her eyes. “Hoped he might what? Ask me to marry him? That doesn’t happen at Madame Chambon’s.” She gave a bitter laugh.
“But if he was here, why didn’t you tell him what you really felt? He might have set you up. Isn’t that what all you girls want? A steady gentleman who is kind, and for whom you might feel a little tenderness.”
Hope shook her head. “I couldn’t tell him, though how I longed to.”
“Why not?”
“Because unless he marries a certain young lady, I’ve been assured by someone that my sister will learn the truth of what I am, which will threaten her magnificent marriage which is to take place on Saturday.”
“Oh. Blackmail.” Faith nodded slowly. “That’s a difficult one. Still, there’s always later.” She brightened. “Once you see your sister safely married, you can approach your young man and tell him the truth. Even if he is married, to someone else, he’ll be glad to know what you really feel for him. And then he might offer to set you up.”
Hope shook her head. “I don’t believe I’ll ever have an opportunity to tell him how I feel. Not when there is a malevolent gentleman who is determined to kill all feeling between Mr Durham and myself. And so, I must get used to the fact that the one man I’ve ever had feelings for is lost to me.” She drew in a shuddering breath and apologised. “I don’t know why I’m allowing myself to behave so foolishly when I knew long ago our love was doomed. Why, at fifteen, when I used to steal glances at him in church, my mother would kick my ankle and whisper that a future viscount, Mr Durham, would never look at a penniless female like me. A governess was what I was destined to become, and she always said I must remember my place.”
She saw Faith was dressed for entertaining. Her hair was curled and elaborately pinned, and she wore a silk princess-line gown in palest blue with an elaborately looped bustle skirt and train.
Hope laughed, her look admiring, as she attempted to steer the conversation from her own distress. She sat up, settling herself a
gainst the bed end. “You’d turn every head in the room if you were being presented at court.”
“My father is a silk weaver. Who knows but he wove this.” Faith touched the fabric reverently.
Hope put out her hand and touched the girl’s silk-clad shoulder. “And so you must look like a duchess to entertain the gentlemen. How long have you been here?”
“Eight months and I’ve never been with a gentleman.”
Shocked, Hope looked from Faith’s exquisite ensemble to the girl’s beautiful face. “But Madame Chambon teaches you the graces with everyone else. She teaches you how to entice the gentlemen with gestures and wit. She pays for your clothes”
Faith shrugged. “My benefactress pays for my clothes and for my lessons.”
“Your benefactress? She pays for you to live here?” Hope wasn’t sure how to go on. “What do your parents think about that?”
“Of course they don’t know. I was dismissed from my position as a housemaid one night after the young gentleman of the house took liberties. And Miss Gedge, an elderly lady staying at the house rescued me and, true to what she told my parents, has been responsible for turning me into a lady.”
Hope couldn’t fathom it. “A lady? Here? At Madame Chambon’s? Who is this Miss Gedge? Have I seen her?”
“She’d never come to this house. She’s a real lady. But I meet her for tea at Fortnum & Mason’s once a month where she ‘puts me through my paces’ as she calls it.”
“And is she satisfied with your…progress?”
“When I saw her yesterday she seemed satisfied.” The girl pressed her lips together. “Mrs Gedge smiled—which is rare—and touched my cheek. She called me her ‘beautiful weapon’.”
“Hope!”
The two girls drew apart guiltily as Madame Chambon threw open the door and beheld the miscreants with a fiendish glare.
“Faith! Get out of this room. And Hope, Lord Westfall is downstairs waiting for you, and do you look like you’re ready for him? He’s early but that’s no excuse. Good Lord! You’ll pay for this, believe me! Now, get dressed while I ply him with drink, and make sure this is the last time you ever disappoint me or a gentleman caller again.”
Chapter 12
“Darling, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Felix’s mother intruded into his orbit in a waft of lavender-scented water. The Ball at which his engagement would be announced later that night was the last place he wanted to be. It seemed surreal to be here after all that had happened since Hope had reentered his life two days before.