“Really? Mama said Aunt Frances was the only lady she knew who rode sometimes in races.”
“You’re introducing me to a lot of names I’ve never heard before. Give me a while to get my bearings, Anthony, then add a new name a day, all right?”
“I should have known you’d be tormenting poor Jessie.”
“Papa!” Anthony rolled off the bed, his nightshirt flying around his ankles, and dashed to the door where his father stood, dressed in riding clothes and lovely black boots that shone as clear as mirrors. The earl lifted his son high in his arms, then lowered him to give him a hug and kiss. “Your mama thought you might have slipped through Spears’s net. You’re slippery, my boy.” He looked at Jessie, who was struggling to pull the blanket to her chin. “We’ve considered locking him in the dungeon at night, but he’s got the knack of quivering his chin, and the servants fall for it every time. They’d never let him stay in the dungeon for more than five minutes. What are we to do? But I found him, right where his mama knew he’d be. Now, Anthony, you didn’t awaken poor Jessie, did you?”
“Oh no,” Jessie said quickly. “I woke up all by myself and there Anthony was, standing in the doorway, as quiet as a mouse, just waiting for me to do something.”
Anthony gave her an approving look and said, “She talks funny, just like Uncle James. Can we take her riding with us, Papa? She claims she’s good. I told her about Aunt Frances, but she said she’s got too many names on her plate now and I had to slow down.”
“An excellent idea. Go to Spears now and let him get you dressed. After breakfast, we?
??ll all go riding.”
Anthony squeezed his papa’s neck once more and scrambled down to his feet. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Jessie,” he yelled as he ducked behind his father and out the door.
“He’s the very image of you, my lord,” Jessie said. “He’ll slay women in droves when he grows up.”
“I’ll try not to let it bother me that you’re in a lady’s bedchamber, my lord.” It was the Duchess, and she was wearing a lovely dark blue riding outfit with a jaunty blue velvet riding hat that had an ostrich feather curving around her cheek. Jessie had never seen anyone so beautiful in her life. Actually, seeing the two of them side by side, she realized they looked remarkably alike. They were cousins, after all. Beautiful cousins.
“Good morning, Jessie. How did you sleep?”
“Like a dead rock,” Jessie said, and yawned, unable to help herself.
“I’ll take my husband from your bedchamber so you can bathe and dress. Here’s Ned with your bathtub and some water. We’ll see you downstairs.”
“What about Charles?”
“Unlike his brother,” the earl said, “Charles still doesn’t quite grasp that you’re here for him and thus at this moment, he’s quite uncaring, being burped by his other nurse after the Duchess here let him eat for nearly an hour.”
Maggie came into her bedchamber twenty minutes later, just as Jessie had finished braiding her own hair, she hoped just as Maggie had done it the previous evening. Maggie was carrying over her arm a riding habit of dark green velvet.
Maggie looked at her for a few moments, then said, “Sit down a moment, Jessie. I think you’ve half the knack of it.”
Jessie sat.
“Now, my pet, you don’t want to look outrageously beautiful the way I do all the time. I owe it to the house and to my husband to be a pearl during the day and a diamond during the evening and during the night—well, that’s something you don’t need to know just yet. But you, Jessie, you’re not like me. You don’t want to be unbraiding braids all the time. You want to be comfortable. Let’s save all the plaited braids for the evening. How about just a single one for the morning? Now, here’s how you make it straight. Yes, that’s it. Now we’ll just loop it up like this and pin it. Nothing to it. The last thing you do is loosen it all up.” Maggie looked at the tightly pulled-back hair, took the handle of the comb, and eased the hair looser on the top and sides of Jessie’s head. Then she pulled loose “streamers” to curl haphazardly about her face. The one that fell over her ear itched, but Jessie decided she could become used to it. She just stared at herself. It was amazing.
“See, that’s all you need to do. Tomorrow, you will try it while I watch.”
“Thank you, Maggie. I can’t quite believe what a difference it makes. Oh, you’re going to cream my face again.”
“Yes, and this time I will leave the cream for you. Use it in the morning and just before you go to bed at night. Now, if you were married, you’d have to use it before your husband visited your bed. My Sampson says that if Badger would only add some vanilla to the cream that he’d like to lick . . . well, never mind that. Just wait until we get you into this riding outfit. The color should make your eyes a richer green.”
“I can’t keep accepting clothes from the Duchess.”
“Oh, this one doesn’t belong to the Duchess. It’s mine. She wanted to lend you one that would have made you look bilious, yards of apricot velvet and dull as dirt. No, this one will suit you perfectly. I don’t ride, but dear Sampson likes to see me prepared for every occasion. Every once in a while, to please him, I sit atop one of the earl’s horses and pose. It does please Sampson no end. I am his Delilah, you know.”
When Jessie stepped out of her bedchamber twenty minutes later, Maggie’s riding outfit on her back and a pair of the Duchess’s boots on her feet, there was that tall, handsome gentleman waiting for her again. He smiled at her.
“Very fetching,” he said, and proffered her his arm.
“Do you really think so, sir?”
“Another week of hearing the truth of things and you’ll have the self-confidence of his lordship. No, perhaps that isn’t all that healthy a thing. I will think about it. Now, let me escort you to breakfast.”
Jessie walked happily beside him. She was certain he must be some famous personage and he’d simply found it amusing to befriend her. He left her at the breakfast-room door.