Page 106 of The Scoundrel's Daughter
Lucy added in a reminiscent tone, “In fact I was wearing an apron when Gerald and I first met.”
“You were wearing anapron?” She saidapronas if Lucy had confessed to wearing a filthy old sack.
“Yes, perhaps that’s what attracted him—something a little bit different from the usual run of girls he’d been meeting.”
“Why were you wearing an apron?” A filthy, old manure-stained sack.
Lucy smiled sweetly. “To protect my clothes. I was tending geese at the time.”
Almeria’s well-plucked eyebrows almost disappeared. “Tending geese? You were agoose girl?”
“Yes. But they were very well-bred geese.”
A muffled sound came from the sofa. Lucy couldn’t see Alice’s face.
“They were French geese,” Lucy added. “They belonged to a French comtesse—”
“French!” Almeria said with scorn.
“Yes, but German geese are held to be very fine, too, I believe.”
“Young woman! I have no interest in geese, French, German or otherwise.”
Lucy widened her eyes. “But you must. I mean, you surely sleep on a goose-feather mattress—they are the finest. And what about the Christmas goose? Do you refrain from eating that, too? Preferring pork, or perhaps chicken. Or do you eschew meat altogether? Is that how you stay so skinny? I mean, thin. No, slender—is that what you call it?”
“Cease and desist, you impertinent gel!”
“By all means, your ladyship. Just tell me what you wish me to cease and desist from, and I will gladly oblige.”
“My son’s betrothal—”
“Except for that.”
For a long moment Almeria huffed and puffed in silence, then she rose and with freezing dignity said, “I am deeply disappointed in you, Alice, for bringing this atrocious female into our circle. As for you”—she pointed a bony finger at Lucy, who had also risen—“the only way you will marry my son is over my dead body.”
“Oh surely, nothing so drastic,” Lucy said chattily. “We’d have to go into blacks and that’s such a gloomy color for a wedding, don’t you think?”
Almeria’s eyes were chips of ice. She opened her mouth, closed it, glared at Lucy some more and with a final muttered, “Abominable creature,” she swept from the room.
Lucy waited until she heard the front door close behind her, then sank into her chair with a gusty sigh. “Oh, that was fun, wasn’t it?” She glanced across at Alice, who seemed to have collapsed on the sofa. “Are you all right, Alice?”
Alice sat up, clutching a crumpled handkerchief. She regarded Lucy with awe. “ ‘Fun’?” It was... You were so...”
“Brassy? Bold? Impertinent?”
“All of the above—and utterly brilliant! And so brave.”
“Brave? Oh pooh. What can that woman do to me, after all?”
“She’s going to be your mother-in-law.”
Lucy wrinkled her nose. No danger of that. She really wished she could tell Alice it was a false betrothal, but she’d made a promise.
She almost wished she was going to marry Lord Thornton. It went wholly against the grain to give that woman what she wanted. It would serve Almeria right if Lucy married him after all.
After a moment Alice said, “You and your well-bred French geese. I thought she was going to burst.” She glanced at Lucy and clapped her hand over her mouth. A snort escaped her, their eyes met, and suddenly they were both laughing uncontrollably.
***
