“You’re joking.”
“It will be amusing, but I’m not joking.”
“You think you can arrange for Miss Lexham to be presented at court?”
“Nothing could be simpler.”
“You’re mad.”
“It runs in the family.”
“Marchmont, you know the Queen is a stickler for propriety,” Adderwood said. “Miss Lexham has spent the last twelve years in what Her Majesty will regard as a dubious situation. One touching story in a grubby newspaper is not going to earn the lady an invitation to court.”
“A thousand pounds says I can obtain that invitation,” Marchmont said. “It says, furthermore, that Miss Lexham will make her curtsey to the Queen before the month is out.”
“Done,” said Adderwood.
Lexham House
Wednesday, 8 April
Zoe gave one last, dissatisfied glance at her reflection in the dressing glass and turned to her maid. “Well, Jarvis?”
The maid ran her gaze over the carriage dress Dorothea had donated. It was pale yellow, trimmed in green.
“Very becoming, miss.”
“It’s last year’s style,” Zoe said. “Everyone will know. No fashionable woman wears green this year.”
And Marchmont was a leader of fashion. Not that he was likely to see what she was wearing.
Not that she wanted him about.
Still, she’d thought he’d be a little more involved in helping her into Society.
Everyone said they must wait until she was presented at court. This, they said, would settle everything.
He’d stopped by briefly on Thursday to tell Mama that he would arrange for the court presentation, but so far the invitation had not arrived. Meanwhile, her sisters were determined to civilize her, a process Zoe found extremely trying.
She had not been allowed out of Lexham House since the night she’d arrived. She’d practiced her English, learned dance steps, read books, and studied household management. She’d memorized fashion plates, as well as the names and activities of all the aristocrats to be found in the scandal sheets. Except for the dancing—which she loved—it had grown very boring—and if she had to spend another ten minutes with her sisters, somebody would die.
They would be here within the next hour, all four of them.
“I could sew on fresh trim, miss, and if I was to—”
“Never mind,” Zoe said, waving her hand. “It will do. Now you must go out and find a hackney.”
Jarvis’s eyes widened in horror. “Ahackney, miss?”
“Yes, we are going out.”
“We can’t, miss. Lady Lexham said His Grace would call for you and you might go out with him.”
“He hasn’t called,” said Zoe. “He hasn’t been here since Thursday, and then he spoke only to my mother.” She’d been with her sisters, learning the correct way to serve tea.
“You can’t go out alone, miss,” Jarvis said.
“I’m not going alone. You’re coming with me.”
