They couldn’t, could they? Dear God, what if they could? What if everyone knew he had used his tongue on her and said such wicked things?
Wicked things she’d liked far, far too much.
She cleared her throat, feeling suddenly dizzied. “Pomona green is a favorite of mine, Madame.”
“An evening gown in green, then,” Madame decreed, “and a ball gown in celestial blue.”
“Both would be lovely on you,” Hattie agreed, smiling. “A few others as well, Madame, in whatever you think would be best for Lady Torrington.”
“How many ball gowns and evening gowns does one woman need?” Elizabeth wondered aloud.
Hattie chuckled, the sound infectious. “As many as she can have, my dear.”
“An excellent answer, Your Grace,” offered Madame slyly.
“Certainly, I’ll not be attending so many balls, however,” she countered, realizing she hadn’t truly thought about what the rest of her marriage to the viscount would entail.
Thetonand all its glittering fêtes and wagging tongues and condescending, judgmental stares. She swallowed hard against the dread bursting open like a seed within her. She had never been accepted, not truly, in that world. Five failed Seasons of misery as a wallflower no one wanted haunted her as proof.
“Of course you shall,” Hattie said brightly. “Torrington will want to have you on his arm, and not just at the ball he is hosting in your honor.”
A ball. In her honor?
Trepidation joined the dread as she swayed, prompting the seamstress at her feet to give her chemise hem a chiding tug so that she remained still.
“I knew nothing of a ball in my honor,” she said weakly.
“It will be the event of the Season,” Hattie reassured her warmly. “And if you require any help, you have me, of course. You’re family now.”
Family.
Somehow, that lone, precious word and all the inherent meaning it possessed banished the doubts and fears rising within her and filled her instead with gratitude. Elizabeth blinked the sting of impending tears from her eyes and sniffed.
“Thank you, Hattie,” she managed softly without weeping.
She hadn’t had a family since her parents had died when she’d been a girl. And the notion of finally finding one now—she, the spinster governess no one had wanted—filled her heart so full that she swore it could burst.
“You needn’t thank me, my dear.” Hattie reached out, giving her hand a sisterly squeeze. “That is what sisters are for.”
* * *
“My God, you’ve gone mad.”Torrie issued his pronouncement as he stared at the assortment of wood and canvas which Monty had proudly invited him to view at Hamilton House.
“One has to have been sane in the first place to go mad,” his friend quipped, utterly unaffected by Torrie’s grim assessment of his wood-and-canvas device.
A device that rather resembled a bird.
Or perhaps a bat.
“What do you think of it?” Monty asked, grinning proudly like the lunatic he was.
A reluctant chuckle tore from him, for he would never be surprised at the antics of his old friend. “This isn’t a flying machine like the one you intended to fly from the turrets of Castle Clare, is it?”
Monty jolted as if Torrie had landed a blow, his spine going stiff. “You remember my flying machine story?”
He laughed again. “How could anyone forget? Who else would be enough of a Bedlamite to think he could actually fly from the turrets of a bloody castle as if…”
His words trailed away as he realized what he was saying in the same moment that his friend’s astonished expression occurred to him.
