“Could you tighten the stays on my corset?” Sapphire asked, turning her back to Angelique.
In less than an hour, several gentlemen would be arriving to escort them to the theater, and Sapphire was as nervous as she had been the first day of schoo
l with the nuns in Martinique. Sapphire still remembered the smell of her mother’s hair as Mama leaned over to kiss her goodbye, and she recalled her own excitement…and fear that she would not succeed. And it was fearing that she would not be able to pull off this ruse that made her palms damp and her stomach flutter. Would Aunt Lucia’s far-fetched plan work?
“Your stays are tight enough.” Angelique gave them a tug and then spun Sapphire around to face her. “If your waist was any smaller I’d find it difficult to ever speak to you again. Now, calm down. This is going to fun, you’ll see.”
“I don’t know that it’s going to work. I don’t know if I can do it.” Shaking her head, Sapphire took a seat on a velvet-covered stool in front of the charming dressing table and gazed into the oval mirror, studying the serious young auburn-haired woman with one green eye and one blue who was looking back at her. “What if the men don’t believe I need a protector? Or that I’m willing to take one?”
“They’ll believe it because they want to, and it doesn’t take much to bait men this age.” Angelique sat on the edge of the bed and began to roll on a silk stocking she’d just removed from a sheet of tissue. “They’re already randy. One look at you, that hair, those eyes, that mouth of yours, and they’ll be lining up on the street.”
Sapphire’s fingertips went to her mouth and she stared at the mirror, frowning. “What’s wrong with my lips?”
“Not a thing except that they haven’t been kissed enough.”
Blake Thixton’s face flashed in Sapphire’s mind and she remembered the feel of his lips against hers, the heat that raced between them. “I can’t do this,” she cried, drawing her fingers away from her mouth as if she could somehow erase the memory of him.
“Don’t be such a goose!” Angelique ran her hands over the smooth stocking that covered her shapely leg and reached for a ribbon garter. “It’s easy. Smile. Laugh deep in your throat, like this.” She demonstrated a husky laugh that exuded sexuality. “Men like a husky laugh.” She gave a wave of her hand. “Simply say things they’ll find flattering.”
Sapphire dusted her nose with a little rice powder, still wondering what was wrong with her lips. Was it the fact that her lower lip seemed larger than her upper? She grabbed a brush to pull through her long hair, which she’d washed and perfumed earlier with Avena’s help. “I don’t know what flatters men. How many men have I actually known besides Maurice and a few other boys on Martinique?”
“Just say anything complimentary to them, true or not.” Angelique picked up the other new stocking from its wrapping. “You’re thinking too much about this, Sapphire. This is supposed to be fun. No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Even Aunt Lucia is having fun with it.”
Sapphire exhaled, meeting Angelique’s gaze in the mirror. “We’re relying on the power of gossip to get word back to the countess and Mr. Thixton, and in the meantime, look at all the money we’re spending.” She picked up the glass container of rice powder and set it down, then indicated her own new silk stockings on the dressing table. “If this doesn’t work, if it doesn’t force Mr. Thixton—”
“Ah, we’re back to Mr. Thixton again, are we?”
“Whatever is that supposed to mean?” Sapphire rose and walked to the open bedchamber door, poking her head through the doorway. “Where has Avena gotten to? She said she’d pick up the dresses at the dressmaker’s and be right back. I hope the gowns are completed. I really love the blue fichu-pelèrine.” She stepped back into the room, glancing at the porcelain German clock on the fireplace mantel. “Our escorts will be here soon and we’re not even dressed.”
“We’re nearly dressed and they won’t be here for another half an hour.” Her stockings secured just below her knees, Angelique stood, letting the stiff fabric of her petticoats fall until they almost brushed the floor. “And I have an idea it’s not the dressmaker that is keeping Avena, but rather her son the tailor.”
“Avena has eyes for the dressmaker’s son?” Sapphire smiled. Once fed, deloused, bathed and dressed, Avena had thrown herself wholeheartedly into her new occupation of lady’s maid, immediately earning the respect of them all. And although she was certainly different from the lady’s maids found in Lady Carlisle’s home, Sapphire thought Avena was wonderful. She was helpful and efficient and always willing to throw a sage tidbit of advice into any conversation—advice that sometimes sent Sapphire into peals of laughter, and other times made her turn red with embarrassment.
“Haven’t you noticed how many times this week she’s gone down to check on the gowns since our fittings?” Angelique stepped into a pair of new gold kid-skin slippers. “Sometimes twice in one afternoon.”
“I suppose I haven’t noticed. I’ve been selfishly too busy with my own thoughts,” she admonished herself. “It just makes me so angry to think that I am forced to do all this, to fight some…some American for the right to my father’s name.” Sapphire walked back toward the dressing table, clenching her hands. “And every time I think about that Mr. Thixton, I just…I just—”
“Do you spend a great deal of time thinking about Mr. Thixton?” Angelique raised an eyebrow suggestively.
“Certainly not in that way!” Sapphire turned hastily to check herself in the mirror, again sweeping up her hair, which was still slightly damp. “Up high, or lower?” she asked, first bringing the locks high on her head, then lowering them to a more ordinary chignon.
“Oh, high, definitely.” Angelique came up behind her, wrapped her fingers around Sapphire’s knot of curls and began to twist them artfully one way and then another. “Pins. I need pins.”
Sapphire grabbed a handful of tortoiseshell pins from a silver dish on the dressing table and began to hand them one by one to Angelique. In a matter of moments, she watched her hair transformed from a wave of unruly curls to a fashionable, sleek coiffure.
“Like it?” Angelique asked, taking a step back to admire her creation.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“You are beautiful, and I believe Mr. Thixton is quite aware of that fact.”
Sapphire frowned. “I was finally calm and now you have to mention him again? He thinks nothing of the sort. He only kissed me to…to humiliate me.”
“Perhaps, but all in love play,” Angelique cooed. “This is a complicated man, your Mr. Blake Thixton, the American.”
“He is not my Mr. Thixton!” Sapphire strode to the open door again. “If Avena doesn’t get here soon, I’m afraid I’m going to have to parade down the street in my underclothes to get the gowns myself!”
“Leave the strumpin’ work to the likes a me,” Avena announced, hurrying down the hall toward Sapphire, her arms filled with the gowns wrapped in bleached muslin to prevent them from being soiled in transport up the dirty street.