She bent at the hips and cut her name across the paper in three swift, exacting strokes, leaving nothing behind but the thin, gleaming lines that made up her name.
Her maiden name. The one he was going to change.
He looked down at his name next to hers and marveled at the little lurch his stomach gave.
There it was, he thought.
His fate.
In ink.
PART II
THIS IS NOT A COURTSHIP
CHAPTER 6
Vix turned to the side, holding a hand at her abdomen to consider the shape of the skirt as it was being pinned in draping loops around the waist of the dress, tilting her head this way and that.
“Yes,” she said after a moment to the kneeling modiste, whose hands were full to brimming with aubergine tulle. “Yes, I think that will move prettily as I walk down the aisle.”
“It will,” agreed Rosalind Murphy from the little sofa near the mirror, her hands on her cheeks as she watched with wide, glittering eyes. “Oh, Vix, it’s going to look spectacular.”
Vix shot her a little smile over her shoulder, always heartened by the uninhibited enthusiasm of the little Scottish miss who had joined their coterie today on the trip to the Clerkenwell modiste.
It was the third fitting in the assembly of Vix’s bridal trousseau. No longer would she be limited to her governess’s wardrobe of starched lilac simplicity and high-necked forced modesty. In the corner was a stack of lush fabric in varying textures and shades of purple.
The purple she’d decided to keep. She couldn’t wait to thank Mrs. Tolliver someday for bringing to her attention how well it suited her.
Hannah was also on the sofa, flipping through a pile of fabrics in her lap. Their third companion, Mae Casper, had wandered off to observe the new delivery of dress forms, each laced up with different structures of feminine underpinning in a dazzling array of colors.
Mae was squinting at a whalebone corset, running her fingers over the needle-thin detailing of the stays.
“You like bones,” Vix said to the other woman, drawing her attention and a smirk, “don’t you? Can’t stay away from them. You’re supposed to be here looking at pretty things, not fantasizing about all the gore you’re missing out on at the clinic.”
Mae straightened up, running her gaze over Vix in her pinned and pinched dress-in-progress, and cocked her head to the side. “Who says I wasn’t thinking of buying?” she asked, lifting her dark brows. “A healer needs good corseting just as much as the next girl.”
Vix scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I think you were lamenting a lack of bones to break and wishing you were back in your house of horrors.”
“Perhaps I was,” Mae Casper answered, flashing her incisors. “Are you offering yours?”
Vix smiled back, her own teeth just as sharp. “Come and try.”
“Oh, please be nice,” Rosalind said softly, wringing her hands together, even though she knew very well that Vix and Mae wereperfectly fond of one another. After a fashion. “Vix is getting married.”
“Yes, she is,” Mae agreed with a chuckle, turning back to regard the corset again. “This is beautiful, isn’t it? I can’t wear this color, though. My skin won’t tolerate it.”
“It won’t?” Rosalind responded in a nervous little whisper.
“She means it doesn’t flatter her dark complexion, dearest,” Vix said soothingly to poor Rosalind, still only a few months out of her provincial Aberdeen into the wild world of London and all its exotic otherness. “Not that it harms her because she’s Black.”
“Oh, I didn’t … I didn’t think that …” Rosalind stammered.
“Leave her alone,” Mae said mildly, already bored with the display. “Maybe it would suit me in gold.”
“It would,” Hannah offered without looking up from her fabrics, then paused, pushing her finger into the pile like she was keeping her place in a penny novel and looking up at Vix thoughtfully. “Speaking of which, Thaddeus said you sent Mr. Aster to his tailor.”
“I did,” Vix said, blinking innocently. “There is none better, from what I can tell. My brother’s clothes are beautiful, and Ambrose must look perfect at his knighting.”
