At least she could be less contrary than her husband himself. On their wedding day, he’d made little effort to encourage a friendship between her and the ladies of the family, treating them every bit as rudely as he had her. Now that they’d spoken, she found Caroline to be quite charming and just as eager to accept her friendship as she was to offer it.
Neither was it hard to gain the approval of the younger sisters. On their shopping trip, the three girls occupying the carriage seat opposite her were lovely and well mannered, so she told them so. In response, they giggled. Judging by their behaviour at the wedding, it was their answer of choice for many situations.
‘Do not be tiresome, girls. If your incessant chatter gives me a megrim I will take you home immediately.’ Caroline, Viscountess Linholm, might have experience with the girls, but she had far less patience.
The eldest of the three was barely fourteen. George remembered the age well and how hard it was to balance the desire to be a grown up with the fact that ladylike behaviour was boring. When the novelty of hair ribbons and bonbons wore off, George did a thing she had always wished someone would do for her.
She took them to a pet store. There she bought them a shiny black bird that the store owner assured them could be trained to speak. It already had a vocabulary of some sort, though as far as George knew, it was mostly gibberish. After some discussion, it was decided that he would be named Pootah, after one of the sounds he kept repeating.
Once they had the bird to occupy them, they did not mind being sent home so the ladies could continue to shop. As the carriage rolled down the street and away from her, George saw them passing the cage back and forth between them, offering Pootah bits of biscuit and trying to coax him into saying hello.
‘Now that those annoying children are gone, the real fun can begin,’ Caroline said, taking George gently by the shoulders and casting a sidelong look down at her day dress. ‘The first thing we must do is to get you to my modiste.’ Though she smiled as she said it and was nowhere near as critical as Marietta, it was plain that she found fault with George’s clothing.
George glanced down at it herself to see if there was something obviously wrong. ‘I hardly think it necessary. I bought a new wardrobe at the beginning of the Season.’
‘For your come-out,’ Caroline replied with a shake of her head. ‘Those dresses were all well and good for a green virgin. But you are married now.’
And the dresses still suited her. She was almost as green and definitely as virginal as she had been a couple of days ago. The few kisses she’d exchanged with Mr Challenger so far put her on par with some of the other girls she had befriended who had been able to dodge their chaperones long enough to experiment with such things.
If her husband did not want the world to see her as an innocent, she had best not look like one. ‘I am married,’ George admitted cautiously. ‘But I do not know if Mr Challenger wishes for me to spend all of his money at the dressmaker.’
‘How else would he want you to spend it?’ Caroline replied. ‘And even if you are right about his opinion, you must not take Frederick’s word as law. The whole family knows that he is a miser and a fussbudget. If he is allowed to, he will see you in rags and think it good value.’
But he was her husband, at least for the month, and George felt required to defend him, though she had no real desire to do so. ‘He has been most generous with me thus far. And I would hardly call him a fussbudget.’ Stick in the mud? Joyless authoritarian? There were any number of more accurate phrases, none of which she desired to share with Caroline on their first meeting.
‘All the same, you cannot go out with him in the modest attire of a girl. You are a lady now. People will expect elegance.’
This was a conundrum. For when she looked at the Viscountess’s wardrobe she could not say that she actually liked it. It was expensive, of course. And veryau courant. Marietta had often said, with guarded admiration, that the woman never wore the same gown more than once. Even so, George doubted that many of the styles she had seen so far would suit her. She did not wish to wear a cap in the house just because she was married. She certainly did not want one like the starched organza confection favoured by Caroline when she’d called upon her. Nor did she want ballgowns that were cut so low one was in danger of falling out of them if one sneezed.
But perhaps it was not about what she wanted at all. It was clear that Mr Challenger did not like her as she was. She had said she would not change. If she could dress the part of a good wife when they were together, she might not have to alter anything else about herself.
The choice of gowns had been one of the chief battles between her and Marietta. If her new sister-in-law did not like her clothing either, maybe it was time to admit that she might be wrong on the subject. ‘Perhaps I do need some help choosing a fashion that suits me,’ George said hesitantly. ‘We are attending a ball this evening hosted by Frederick’s friend, the Duke of Westmoor. I do want to look my best for it and would be most happy for you to advise me.’
‘Excellent!’ the woman responded, clapping her hands in approval. ‘You will not be sorry that you have put yourself in my hands.
* * *
This proved false almost immediately.
It was four in the afternoon, well past the time George liked to be sitting down to tea. And yet the Viscountess was still calling for more silks.
‘The stripes next. With tassels of gold,’ Caroline announced, helping herself to the sweetmeats displayed on the gold ormolu table in the corner of the fitting room. The dressmaker’s assistant scurried for the back room to get more fabric.
George’s stomach growled in response. She lowered her arms for a moment to shake the numbness from them and received a disapproving sniff from the modiste who was trying to adjust the armhole of the sample gown so it might be possible to dance without ripping out a seam.
Caroline’s choices so far had been less outrageous than she’d feared. The current dress—a grass-green silk with gold-embroidered hem—was quite pretty, though shockingly low-cut. But if she stood for stripes and tassels, she would end up looking like the ottoman Caroline was perched on. ‘Do we not have enough gowns already?’ she asked.
‘For evening, perhaps,’ the Viscountess said. ‘But what of days and mornings? And you have no fans or gloves as yet.’
George had a drawer full of white gloves that would go with the dresses she had bought and nearly as many fans. Since her plan was to leave London as soon as she was able, her current day clothes would do nicely. They were well made, comfortable, and never seen by neighbours in the country.
Today, she must find another method to dissuade her new friend that did not display her disappointing lack of interest in fashion plates. She blinked and smiled sweetly at the Viscountess. ‘If we buy everything today, we will have nothing to shop for next week.’
‘How true,’ the Viscountess agreed. ‘Perhaps the rest of the wardrobe can wait.’
‘Wonderful.’ George replied. ‘And now, we can go for tea.’
‘But tea shops are so stuffy. Fit only for girls and old ladies,’ Caroline said. ‘I would prefer something more filling. A meal at Steven’s Hotel would do nicely.’
