A shocked laugh rippled from Harry’s throat. “Why Emmaline Trent! If only Uncle heard you and he thinks you such an angel.”
A blush stole up Emmaline’s cheeks. “Even angels have their moments do they not?”
Harry nodded. “Of course, or how else could we poor mortals bear to be about them?”
Emmaline lifted her eyes to the ceiling in an overly tortured glance.
The sound of clattering gravel and carriage wheels cut through the air. Emmaline beamed as she vaulted to her feet so fast she nearly knocked Harriet onto her bum. “They’re here! At last!”
“Emmaline!” the voice of their cousin Meredith boomed down the hall and the girl who was all bosom and big, blonde curls bounded into the room. “Haste! Haste! The men are here.”
Harry pulled herself to her feet, a terrible sinking feeling flowing through her. This was it then. The beginning of a week of pure hell.
Meredith fluffed her already quite fluffed, blonde curls and immediately turned to the nearest mirror. Quickly, she reached her hands into her gown and adjusted her bosoms till they were two large swells hovering at the precipice of blue ribbons lining her bodice.
“They’ll fall out,” Harry teased, wondering where, exactly, Meredith had found such a lust for living, parson’s daughter that she was.
“And what a show that would be,” Meredith laughed. She glanced down and eyed her plumped up bosoms. “They shall not though. I am laced particularly tight.”
Harry didn’t doubt that, the girl’s waist was as tiny as the knot in a bow. No wonder men could never quite tear their eyes away from her figure.
“Stop primping,” Emmaline said brightly to Meredith, the two so similar looking what with their blonde hair and blue eyes, they might have been twins. Really all of them could have been sisters. Even Harriet had been painted with the honey blonde brush, though not with quite as much beauty. “I cannot wait to see my Edward.”
With that, the two other girls ran out into the hall, their feet pattering away.
Harry stood for a moment, completely alone in the salon, and wondered exactly how one girded her loins. For hers certainly needed girding.
Really her loins needed a full regiment to support them given what she was about to face.
Harry glanced to the large, gold gilded mirror. Her blonde hair was in a bit of a mess what with all the goings-on. It curled wildly about her face. And her cheeks were definitely still pink, thoughts of horrid, horrid lust cursing her complexion.
She hesitated for a very brief moment, then threw all second thought to the wind. She bent and pulled her bosoms up to their fullest which was nowhere near as full as Meredith’s voluptuous fullness. Flipping back up, she glanced at her suddenly much bigger breasts.
They would do.
Everyone had their weapons, and she’d take a page from Meredith’s book. In this battle, she needed every weapon in her rather minute arsenal. The one thing she would not allow Lord Garret Hart to believe was she had withered away, pining for him.
Head high, and bosoms now perfectly in place, Harry charged down the hall, ready for war. When she was finished with him, Garret Hart was going to be nothing but a mess beneath her very pretty, pink shoes.
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A FINE MADNESS
by Elizabeth Essex
Chapter 1
Twelve Mile Burn Village
Midlothian, Scotland
June, 1792
Spinsterhood.
Such an ugly, unforgiving word. Full of pity and dismissal, and nothing like the life Elspeth Otis had always dreamed for herself. Nothing.
She looked at the birthday present in her hands as if it were a spider, when, in reality, it was only a silly lace cap, delicate, frilly and handmade. But Elspeth felt its uneasy touch settle upon her skin like a stray cobweb stretched across the garden, unseen and unavoidable. And somehow inevitable.
Time had flown with such cruel speed that she had somehow passed straight through the years of great danger, to arrive at a time even more desolate and desperate. Because the present of the cap meant that she had, on what otherwise ought to have been a most pleasant day—her four and twentieth birthday—irrevocably joined her spinster aunts on the shelf.
Only women of a certain age wore caps. And unmarried women who put on caps were all but saying they had given up all hope of ever finding their true love. Given up believing such a man even existed.
Elspeth did not want to give up hope, but the plain truth was that she hadn’t much chance for finding true love, living with her aged aunts—the sisters Murray, as they were known—in a tiny, thatched cottage, at the bitter end of a lane, in a forgotten village at the edge of the world. The idea of finding true love seemed as far-fetched as finding a pot of gold hidden in the garden.
“Put it on,” urged Aunt Isla.
Elspeth held the fine lace creation up to the light and attempted to make appropriately admiring sounds. “So very pretty,” she managed. Really, it was pretty—fine and delicate and exquisite as spun sugar. And yet she could not bring herself to put it on her head.
She racked her brain for a suitable excuse. Anything would do—anything that wouldn’t hurt any finer feelings or seem ungrateful. Anything.
A sound came from without—the jangle of harness and the creak of cartwheels on the rutted track running up to the cottage.
“Someone’s in the lane.” Which was both a mercy and a true diversion—normally no carriages stopped at Dove Cottage. But Elspeth meant to make the most of the distraction, even if it were just a drover who had lost his way.
Anything to put off the inevitable.
She pushed the lace cap deep into the pocket of her practical quilted skirts and bolted for the door. “I’ll just have a wee look, shall I?”
“Elspeth!” Aunt Isla remonstrated. “Have a care!”
This was Elspeth’s task in life—to have a care. To never call attention to herself, nor give up her guard against her tainted blood. To keep vigilant against all manner of mischief or mischance lurking within and without. To keep safe, and quiet, and not—under any circumstances—to be herself.
“Don’t rush,” Aunt Isla continued to instruct. “Why must you always rush?”
Elspeth rushed because a clarty, mud-splattered dray was drawing up beside their gate, and the driver was looking meaningfully at their cottage.
She was down the path in a trice, despite the dreich, dripping June weather. The Aunts came hard behind, hovering in the doorway to listen to every word, so Elspeth was rather more careful of her diction—no scaffy, vulgar Scots cant for the genteel sisters Murray—than her skirts. “May I help you?”
“Deliv’ry fer Miss Otis,” bawled the driver over the chitter of the rain, shooting his thumb over his shoulder at the large tarpaulin-covered mound in the muddy well of his dray.
“There must be a mistake. We’re expecting no deliveries.” Aunt Molly came out of the doorway only far enough to wave her arm to shoo the nuisance of a mon away from the gate, as if he were a nothing more than a large, mud-splattered midge.
But the dray mon was stout of heart as well as of girth, and assessed the situation with one squinted eye. His gaze pegged square on Elspeth. “Ye be Miss Otis?”
“Aye. I am.” Elspeth stepped forward through the rain not caring if she did get soaking drookit—she was as stout-hearted as any other Scots lass, and she was far more curious than she was afraid of catching cold. “What is it you’re delivering?” She went on tiptoe to peer over the side. “From whom is it sent?”