Page 30 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Emma replied, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “But now you wish to ... uh, change professions?” she prompted.
Fae relaxed again and looked up from the carpet, which she had been contemplating. “I don’t see a future in this one, especially if other men are like John Staples,” she said simply. “And I fear they are.” She met Emma’s eyes then. “And I know how to make hats! Let me show you what I can do.”
Emma spent the next hour in Fae’s chamber, admiring the woman’s dash and flair with bonnet trimming. “I buy the best from the shops here.”
“I’ve seen the bills,” Emma interjected.
Fae chuckled. “Then I rearrange them to suit myself,” she explained. “A ribbon here, a bit of trim there.” She placed a high-brimmed chip-straw bonnet on Emma’s head and tied the green satin bow under her ear. “There now. See what I mean?”
Emma looked in the mirror, delighted with Fae’s efforts. “It makes my eyes so green,” she marveled, turning this way and that for the full effect and trying to remember when she had last worn a hat. She took it off reluctantly. “I know that you will manage very well in Bath, and so, I will tell Lord Ragsdale.”
Fae hugged her. “Bless you. If Lord Ragsdale had sent that sourpuss David Breedlow, I’m sure I would have gotten my walking papers and nothing more.” She frowned at Emma’s expression. “But I hear that he is soon to be transported, and one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Emma shuddered. “Just because he is going to Australia does not mean that he is numbered among the dead!” she burst out, freeing herself from Fae’s embrace. She was immediately ashamed of the ferocity of her outburst.What mustyou think?she asked herself, embarrassed in turn by the look of surprise on Fae’s well-fed face.I must not cry, she thought next.What will Fae think?
But Fae only looked at her and took her by the shoulders again.
“So that’s how it is?” she asked softly. “Bah, these English! Sometimes I think the guillotine is more merciful. Oh, Miss Costello, do let us soak this Englishman for all we can. It is a revenge of sorts.”
It was easy then to dry her tears on one of Fae’s wonderful rose-scented handkerchiefs, eat a few more macaroons, and then put her head together with Lord Ragsdale’s mistress to create a list of necessities for the proposed shop. When Emma finally left the house with a kiss and a wave of her hand, she was wearing one of Fae’s many pairs of kidskin gloves and clutching a precise account of Fae’s demands.While it will not choke you, Lord Ragsdale, she thought as she hurried along,it will give some satisfaction to two powerless women. Fae will have a future, and I will have ... what?
The rain began before she reached Curzon Street, but she tucked the list down the front of her dress to keep it dry. She knew that Lord Ragsdale would swallow Fae’s demands and count himself lucky to be so easily rid of her. He would buy his horses, spend his money, and probably take another mistress later, after he was married. She stood stock-still in the rain, fully aware that John Staples represented everything that she hated about the English.I cannot go back in that house, she thought.But I must. I owe him at least my services until this indenture is paid off.
She went up the front steps slowly, dreading the people inside, the silence of the servants’ hall when she appeared for dinner, the cold room she shared with a most reluctant scullery maid. She stood on the steps, unwilling to raise her hand to the knocker as she thought again for the thousandth time of the events of that last dreadful day in Wicklow. The weather had been like this, only she had been on theother side of the window glass, watching a solitary figure approaching her father’s house. “And I let you in,” she said, her hand on the knocker. “Oh, I wish I had not, for all that you were Robert Emmet.” She spit out the name as though it was a bad taste. “Ireland’s hero. Why, why did I do it? Why?”
The door swung open then, and she gasped out loud. Lord Ragsdale stood there in his shirtsleeves, staring back at her. When she did not move, he took her by the arm and pulled her inside.
“I saw you from the upstairs window, you silly nod,” he scolded. “Don’t you have door knockers in peat bogs? Really, Emma.”
She wished her face did not look so bleak. She shook herself free of him, wishing she could just bolt the hallway and leave him standing there. She could only shiver and look him in the eye, daring him to say anything else.
“We had a door knocker,” she said simply.
She didn’t know what it was about her words, but he touched her arm again. “Emma, what’s wrong?” he asked, bending closer to look into her face.
Startled, she looked at him.Can you possibly care?she thought first, wild to tell him, wild to tell anyone, wanting to talk out her misery until it didn’t hurt anymore. Perhaps when it had all been said, he could help her. She opened her mouth to speak when Lady Ragsdale’s voice came lightly from the sitting room.
“Johnny, are you ready yet? You promised.”
Emma closed her mouth.That was close, she thought.I almost wasted my breath telling my story to someone who would only shrug when I had finished. Thank you, Lady Ragsdale, for reminding me that this is my burden alone.She took a deep breath and pulled Fae’s list from the front of her dress.
“Miss Moullé offered these conditions, my lord.”
Lord Ragsdale took them from her. “That’s not what you were about to say,” he commented, his voice mild as he scanned the list.
“No, but it will do,” she replied candidly. “We had a rational conversation, and I presented your offer, and asked her what would make her the happiest.”
She started down the hall toward the stairs that would take her belowstairs. The marquess sauntered along beside her. “And she decided that a hat shop would do. Women are strange, Emma.”
“No stranger than men, my lord,” she said without thinking.
He laughed. “I have it on good authority that men are simple.”
“Whoever told you that has cotton wadding for brains.”
“It was Fae, dear Fae, Fae with the round eyes and cotton stuffing for brains.” He took her arm. “Well, tell me: what would makeyouhappy?”
Locating my father and brother, she thought,but I don’t want you to know that.She thought a moment, standing there with the rain dripping off her. “I would like a bed of my own and a chance to hear Mass.”There now. Make something of that.
