“Thewrongp-people may go hang if they do not like Agnes as she is, Mother,” he said. “And I will take Agnes to Bond Street m-myself tomorrow. The best dressmakers are to be found there.”
“Andyouknow exactly who they are, I suppose?” his mother said. “And you know all the latest fashions and the newest fabrics and trims, I suppose? Really, Flavian, you must leave such things to me. You cannot want your viscountess to look a frump.”
“I do not believe that would be p-possible,” he said, leaning to one side so that a footman could refill his wineglass.
“And now you are being quite deliberately foolish, Flavian.”
It was time to intervene. Agnes was beginning to feel like an inanimate object over which mother and son were wrangling.
“I would be veryhappy,” she said, “to go to Bond Street or anywhere else reputable dressmakers may be found. Perhaps you willbothaccompany me there tomorrow. I would appreciate your escort, Flavian, and I am sure your mother would too. And I will certainly appreciate your advice and expertise, ma’am.”
Flavian pursed his lips and raised his glass in a silent toast to her. His mother sighed.
“You had better call meMother, Agnes, since I am your mama-in-law,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, then. We will go to Madame Martin’s. She dresses at least one duchess that I know of.”
Flavian’s eyes—what could be seen of them beneath his eyelids—gleamed, but he refrained from commenting. He must have recognized a compromise when he heard one.
“I shall look forward to it, Mother,” Agnes said.
She was going to have to be presented at court, the dowager went on to say, and to society, of course, since she was an unknown. They were going to have to put on a grand ball at Arnott House early in the Season, but before that she must take her daughter-in-law to call upon all the best families. And after the ball there must be frequent appearances at all the most fashionable parties and soirees and breakfasts and concerts, as well as visits to the theater and the opera house and Vauxhall. There must be walks and drives in the parks, most notably Hyde Park during the fashionable hour in the afternoon.
“You will certainly not wish anyone to suspect you are hiding your viscountess away because she is not up to the position,” she said to Flavian.
He considered, crossing his knife and fork over his roast beef and picking up his wineglass by the stem. “I am not sure, Mother,” he finally said, “that I would wish to c-control anyone’s suspicions. People m-may believe what they wish with my blessing, even an asinine thing like that.”
She tutted.
“The trouble with you, Flavian,” she said sharply, “is that you have never cared. You do not care about either your responsibilities or the pain you cause others. But you can no longer honorably avoid caring about either. You have made an impulsive marriage to Agnes, who is a gentlewoman by birth but without any connection to the beau monde or any experience whatsoever of the sort of society into which she has married. Youmustcare, for her sake even if not for mine or Marianne’s. Or your own.”
His expression was mocking as he cut into his beef again.
“Ah, but I do care, Mother,” he said. “I always have.”
“We came to London immediately after our nuptials, Mother,” Agnes said, “so that I might learn something of what my new status will demand of me. New clothes, I understand, are the mere beginning. And though I was upset earlier to discover that you had come here too before having a chance to learn of our marriage and accustom yourself to the knowledge, now I am glad you are here. For in many ways my mother-in-law and, I hope, my sister-in-law can do far more to help me fit into my new life than Flavian alone can do. I am perfectly willing to do all that is proper and necessary.”
She hoped she did not sound obsequious. She was actually perfectly sincere. She really had not given enough thought before her marriage to the fact that, as well as being Flavian’s wife, she was also going to be hisviscountess. Though in truth, of course, she had not given enough thought toanything.
Flavian smiled at her with sleepy eyes. The dowager gave her a hard look, in which there were perhaps the stirrings of approval.
And life became a whirlwind, something so far beyond Agnes’s experiences that she might as well have been snatched away into a different universe.
She spent much of her first morning and all the afternoon at the Bond Street salon of Madame Martin—pronounced the French way, though Agnes suspected the petite modiste, with her eloquently waving hands and heavy accent, had been born and bred no more than a few miles from her shop. There Agnes was fitted for a dizzying array of garments for every occasion under the sun. And there she was shown book after book of fashion plates, bolt after bolt of cloth, and so many different trims and buttons and ribbons and sashes that she ended up feeling rather like a sponge long since saturated with water.
Flavian escorted her there, but it was his mother who stayed the whole time while he wandered off after ten minutes or so to destinations unknown and did not reappear for more than five hours.Five.And even then they were not quite ready to go with him. It was his mother who suggested and advised and had her own way more and more as the hours ticked by, even though it was soon obvious that her tastes differed in some significant ways from her daughter-in-law’s. But how could Agnes fight against the combined expertise of a lady who had moved all her life in the world of thetonand of one of London’s leading modistes, who was not shy about proclaiming the fact that she dressedtwoduchesses?
It was all very bewildering and rather depressing when perhaps it ought to have been exciting. Or perhaps it was merely exhausting.
Agnes gave up thinking of the money that was being lavished upon her, especially when, on the second day, she and her mother-in-law and Marianne began a round of other shops on Bond Street and Oxford Street in search of bonnets and fans, reticules and parasols, stockings and undergarments, perfumes and colognes and vinaigrettes, slippers and boots, and goodness knew what else, all of them deemed the very barest of necessities for a lady of quality.
For that was what she now, was by the simple fact that Flavian had married her. But if she was a ladyof qualitynow, she asked herself ruefully, what had she been before her second marriage? Didof qualityhave an opposite? It would be very lowering if it did.
On that second day, after she had returned home exhausted and dispirited, the butler informed her that three candidates for the position of her personal maid were in the housekeeper’s parlor awaiting her pleasure. For once in her life Agnes understood that she was going to need a maid, and she had also quickly learned that Pamela, the chambermaid who had been assigned to her temporarily, had neither the aptitude nor the ambition for the promotion. But must she see the candidatesnow? She probably must, if she did not want someone else choosing for her.
“Let them come to me one at a time in the morning room, Mr. Biggs,” she said, handing him her bonnet and gloves, and feeling thankful that her mother-in-law had stopped off at Marianne’s house to see her grandchildren. Agnes had professed herself too weary to accompany her.
She decided against the first candidate. The woman came highly recommended by Lady Somebody-or-other, a friend of the dowager’s, but she addressed Agnes asmadamin tones of such superior condescension that Agnes felt diminished to half her size. And she rejected the second, who sniffed wetly throughout her interview and spoke in a nasal monotone, but denied having a cold when asked—she even looked rather surprised at the question.
The third candidate, a thin, rather scrawny-looking girl sent by an agency, told Agnes her name was Madeline.
