"Connie, are you all right?"
She plummeted back to reality to see the concern on his face. Sweet Christ! What was happening to her?
"Of course I am." Angrily she slapped his hand away and pushed herself past him toward the door. "I don't want Noelle to know there is anything wrong, so I will expect you to dine with us at one o'clock, but I want you out of this house immediately afterward. I will let you know what I plan to do before you leave."
As she put her hand on the knob his voice taunted, "You're a cold fish, Connie."
In her room, Noelle stowed the knife under some petticoats in her bureau. As she shut the drawer her thoughts were spinning, a jumble of ideas, feelings, misgivings. It had been an extraordinary morning.
Tossing herself down on her bed, she rested her elbow atop the smooth mahogany cylinder that made up the headboard and tried to imagine what the next year would bring. Doubts plagued her. Was she going to be able to learn all Simon expected of her in so short a time? Although she did not take his threat to toss her back on the streets seriously, she still knew she could not allow herself to fail. She would earn every farthing of the salary he was going to pay her. If she were to become his hostess, she would be the best hostess in London!
For the first time since the night she had been violated, her dream of revenge seemed more than a shadowy specter. The odds had abruptly shifted, and a ragged little pickpocket setting herself against a rich and powerful man no longer seemed such a patent absurdity.
Except it wasn't really the little pickpocket who would even the score! Instead, it would be a sophisticated, educated woman made deadly by possessing the same knowledge that had enabled the pickpocket to survive for so long on London's brutal streets!
She jumped up from her bed. It was nearly time to dine, and her dress was hopelessly crumpled. She certainly couldn't appear in the dining room like this.
The hallway clock chimed one as, her face washed and her hair combed, she reached the bottom of the stairs. Constance was speaking to Simon outside the dining room doors. "… for me, I'm not pleased about it, but I see no other way."
Noelle noticed that Simon was stiff.
"You won't regret it, Connie. I promise you that."
"Don't make promises over which you have no control, Simon."
She seemed about to say more, but then she caught sight of Noelle. "Hello, dear. Mrs. Finch has really outdone herself this afternoon." Linking her arm in Noelle's, she began a stream of conversation so amusing that Noelle soon forgot the puzzling exchange she had overheard.
Chapter Ten
Constance did not immediately call in her dressmaker. Instead, she quietly purchased some lacy caps and several simple cotton frocks to replace the unattractive dresses Noelle had been wearing. With each new day Constance could detect marked changes in Noelle's features, and now she intended to give the girl's frail body a chance to heal itself before she properly outfitted her.
The time passed pleasantly. They continued to have their lessons in the morning; in the afternoons, Noelle napped and walked. Throughout the day she consumed generous quantities of the nourishing food Mrs. Finch thrust upon her, eating with such relish that the cook soon forgot she had ever been opposed to the young girl's presence in the house.
Noelle and Constance spent each evening relaxing after dinner over thimbles of sherry. Constance told Noelle about her girlhood, her education, and even the loneliness she felt after her husband's death, and Noelle spoke about her mother. She could not tell it all -it was buried too deeply-but she sensed Constance understood much of what was left unsaid.
Every evening Letty came to her room and brushed her hair. The lamplight began to pick up warm, golden-brown strands growing from the healthy scalp. With repeated washings, and the help of Letty's silver scissors, the bright carrot hues were becoming less and less noticeable.
Noelle's eighteenth birthday came and went. She received a beautifully bound copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from Constance and, from Simon, a gold locket with a note expressing his regrets at not being able to be with her.
The days grew warmer, and Noelle found herself napping less frequently as her body gained strength. One warm June afternoon she was in the garden enjoying her new book when Constance came out to join her, a shawl dangling from her ringed fingers.
"Put this around your shoulders, dear. I don't want you to get chilled."
Noelle took the shawl and looked fondly at Constance. "You spoil me, you know."
"Posh! I enjoy taking care of you." She reached out her hand and lightly stroked Noelle's cheek. "Have you looked at yourself lately in the mirror?"
"I don't like mirrors very much."
"Perhaps you should give them another chance." Constance smiled cryptically.
That night, Constance's curious statement came back to Noelle as she was preparing for bed. Impulsively she stepped over to the mirror she had been so studiously avoiding.
It was as if she saw a stranger.
First to catch her attention were her eyes. No longer dimmed by poverty, no longer obliterated by great purple shadows, they almost leapt from her face-beautiful, bright, tawny as sparkling topazes in her clear, smooth skin. She lifted her hand in wonderment and gently slid the tip of her finger along the dainty curve of her jaw. She tilted her head to the side and stroked her cheek and the smooth expanse of her forehead. Her face was still thin, but now it was the thinness of bone structure, not of poverty. Yes, there were still a few pale mauve shadows. In places, the skin seemed stretched too tightly. But, dear God, the difference! Delicately carved, finely molded, the face in the mirror stood, incredibly, on the threshold of great beauty.
Her eyes flew to her hair. It curled in a shiny nimbus around her head, only the ends having retained any trace of the orange dye; the rest was a rich golden brown as warm as spilled honey. It was as if another had taken her place in front of the mirror.
With trembling fingers she unfastened her petticoats and then shed the thin camisole beneath so that she stood naked. Here, the steel jaws of poverty were giving up their hold more reluctantly, but the improvement was still amazing.
Her long legs were more shapely, the muscles beginning to define themselves. Although her rib cage was visible, each rib no longer stood out so rigidly, nor did her hip bones protrude at such sharp angles. She doubted that she would ever develop the fashionably dimpled buttocks and rounded stomach that so delighted painters and sculptors, but at least she looked healthy. Then she scrutinized her breasts. High and full, they stood out proudly from her body, the nipples blushed with coral.
Intensely she studied her reflection, searching for the truth of it, unclouded by her preconceptions. Her old self was gone. No one seeing her now would ever recognize this finely made sylphid as the shabby Soho pickpocket.
The breathless promise of the mirror's reflection stunned her.
Several weeks later, Scheherazade herself would not have felt out of place had she wandered into Constance's sitting room, for it looked like something from The Arabian Nights. Filmy gauzes and exotic silks lay next to gay muslins and taffetas that gleamed like precious jewels. Bolts of every stylish fabric of the day were strewn haphazardly about the room. Some lay in stacks; others were unrolled with great lengths draped across furniture, carpets and, in the case of a vibrant cherry satin, the arm of Madame Renée LaBlanc.
"C'est parfait, Madame Peale. With those beautiful eyes, it will be magnifique, non?"
"No." Constance shook her head. "Absolutely not. The color is much too vibrant; she has not yet come out." Despite Constance's tendency toward the ruffled and beribboned for herself, her taste was excellent, and she had an unerring instinct for the fabric and cuts that would be most flattering on Noelle.