Pendragon (Sherbrooke Brides 7)

“Why, she’s my dressmaker, has been since Douglas and I married.” Alex broke off a moment, a wicked memory breaking into a big smile. “Hmmm, oh yes, between the two of them, you will look like a princess. Trust whatever your uncle says. He has excellent style.”

Both her uncles had had excellent style when it came to ladies’ clothes, Meggie had been told all her life. Her own father did too, one assumed, since all Sherbrooke males had unconscionable portions of luck and style, but as a vicar, he normally didn’t let his style out in full company.

Mary Rose, Meggie’s stepmother, and Meggie, in a house full of males, had long ago pulled together and seen to their own shopping, enjoying it immensely. Because they weren’t dolts, the four males in the Vicarage household, including Alec and Rory, knew that they were to instantly compliment any new garment, the greater the length of the compliment, the better treatment accorded them. Their father, hardly ever a dolt, roundly endorsed this.

“Now, Douglas wishes to leave as soon as he changes from his riding clothes. He has a meeting with the foreign office this afternoon. I do hope it’s not yet another offer of a diplomatic post. The last one was to Rome. It was very hot when we were there. We spent a lot of time with cardinals and bishops, and that meant I was very well covered up.”

“I would perhaps consider Paris,” Meggie said.

“He turned that down two years ago,” Alex said. Indeed, Lord Northcliffe had turned down several diplomatic offerings, and was frequently called in by the King, George IV, particularly on matters pertaining to the French, a people Douglas understood very well, and then he would snort.

An hour later Meggie and her uncle were discussing fashion with Madame Jordan in her elegant shop in the heart of Regent Street, at #14, on the east side.

It wasn’t raining, a miracle, Meggie said to her uncle, since it had poured all the way to London, poured the entire previous evening, but beginning at dawn, April was strutting beautiful spring plumage. Flowers were bursting out and trees were turning green. Meggie couldn’t breathe deeply enough.

There were only three ladies and their maids in the shop that morning because it was quite early. Madame Jordan took one look at Meggie’s uncle, and flew to him, presenting her cheek to be kissed, which he did. After tea and gossip, Madame Jordan said to Uncle Douglas, considering Meggie irrelevant to the process, which she was, “Just fancy, a young lady for you to apply your excellent taste to, my lord. She will be a beauty, with my assistance. Hmmm, a nice waist, which is good since ladies are now allowed to have waistlines again, and her bosom is ample. Yes, nice skin, and that hair, the same rich color as Mr. Ryder Sherbrooke’s and Lady Sinjun’s, all blonds and browns and sunlight. And those blue eyes, I will make them sparkle with magnificence. Now, let me take her measurements, and we will see what is what.” Meggie was stripped to her petticoat and chemise and stockings, stood upon a small dais, measured, large swatches of material draped over her, from the filmiest silks to the most brilliant and shimmery satins, all with Uncle Douglas looking on, making comments, stroking his jaw, looking like a man in charge of an army, and every soldier in that army was ready to do his bidding.

When she saw the ball gown Douglas picked out for her to wear the next evening, Madame Jordan nodding enthusiastically, her heart thrummed with excitement and pleasure. It was glorious, tulle over white satin with two lines of exquisite embroidery from the waist down the skirt to the hem, suggesting an open robe.

“Thank God you look very fine in white, Meggie,” he said, looking her up and down and nodding. The sleeves were short and tight, the neckline square. There were very narrow flounces, one at the hem, the second nearly to the knees.

“It’s not overdone,” said Douglas, “and at last the waist is where it should be. You have a nice small waist, Meggie, and your bosom is particularly pleasant—ah, perhaps I shouldn’t point that out in your hearing, but it’s true, just as Madame said. Yes, this style will become you. No more schoolgirl gowns, my dear. You are now a young lady in her first Season.”

Madame Jordan sighed. “Remember, my lord, when you first brought your young bride to me? What atrocious taste she had, and still has, for that matter, but she did understand the power of her magnificent bosom, and dug in her heels.”

“Women always understand the power of the bosom,” Douglas said, snorting. “As for my wife, she still wears her gowns cut nearly to her knees, and I don’t like it any more now than I did then. Men ogle her, Nicolette. Three men could ogle her at the same time, she is so well endowed.”

Madame Jordan laughed and poked his arm. “Ah, a jealous husband, isn’t it delightful, my dear?”

Meggie looked from Nicolette to her uncle, getting her first glimpse of uncharted territory. “Yes, ma’am, now that I am thinking about it, why yes, it is quite delightful.”

Then came a riding habit in royal blue that made Meggie want to weep it was so beautiful. “Oh goodness, Uncle Douglas, it is too fine,” she whispered as she ran her fingers over the fabric that one of Madame’s minions had delivered directly to Meggie’s fingertips.

“We will come back tomorrow, Meggie, to order up more gowns for you and to have your ball gown fitted. This is just the beginning. Tomorrow evening you will look like a princess for the Ranleigh ball.” He said to Madame, “Her coming-out ball will be in two weeks. I want something very special for her that night.”

“I will find it,” Madame said comfortably, and if Meggie wasn’t mistaken—and she wasn’t since she’d seen the same look many times in Mary Rose’s eyes—there was a gleam of pure lust in Madame’s fine dark eyes as she watched Uncle Douglas leave her shop.

“She, er, really appreciates you, Uncle Douglas.”

A dark eyebrow went up. “You are eighteen, Meggie, a vicar’s daughter. What do you know of men and women sorts of things?”

She laughed. “I live with my father and Mary Rose. Those two—they laugh and hug and sneak kisses when they think they’re alone, which they never are in the vicarage. What’s more, Rory came into my bedroom two weeks ago, afraid because he’d heard his mother yelling. I am not an idiot, Uncle Douglas.”

“Your father is a very happy man,” was all that Douglas would say to that revelation. Then, later, he laughed and said, “Ah, I would like to hear some day how you dealt with little Rory’s concern. Now, Meggie, I have something to say to you. You will enjoy yourself here in London. You aren’t hunting for a husband, just having fun. There is no pressure on you to attach some idiot gentleman. That’s all your grandmother’s idea, not ours. Your father is in complete agreement. Also, you are something of an heiress, so there will be some men drooling on your slippers in hopes of attaching you. You will be careful of any man who goes over the line. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes. Aunt Alex told me that she was thrown at you because her papa needed money desperately, but, she told me, since I’m not in that situation, I can just skip about and smile and flirt with whomever pleases me. Papa kept telling me that I was to waltz and learn how everything worked and remain reasonably modest. Mary Rose wants me to see all the plays. Now that I think about it, Uncle Douglas, I don’t think Papa wants me to marry and leave the vicarage until I’m thirty.”

“That’s possible,” Douglas said, and smiled, imagining that he wouldn’t want a man near his daughter, if he and Alex had produced one, which they hadn’t.

“Grandmother Lydia tells me I must be vigilant or I will end up on the shelf like Aunt Sinjun nearly did. She kept insisting that eighteen was the perfect age to marry.”

Douglas laughed. “Bless my mother, at least she will never change. You will have fun, Meggie, that’s what it’s all about.”

The evening of the Ranleigh ball, Alex said as she smoothed her hands over the soft silk of her deep rose ball gown, “I am so pleased that my waistline is finally down to where my waist actually is.”

“On the other hand,” Douglas said, looking over at his wife, “you always looked splendid in the empire style, with the focus on your endowments.”

Meggie wasn’t particularly surprised; it had always been so with her aunts and uncles. She saw her uncle’s fingers creep toward her aunt’s shoulder, pause, then fall back to his side.