Emma set aside the chemise she had been mending and cocked her head to look me over. I probably seemed awfully desperate for a person clearly in no mortal peril.
“Of course. What is it you need?” she said, getting to her feet and brushing out her apron. Ready for duty. I was going to have to insist that my brother increase her wages after this.
Not able to bear meeting Emma’s eyes, I appraised her shoes as I mumbled my specific request.
“I want to look pretty. The ball tonight… I want to go, and I…”
“Have someone to impress?” she guessed, picking up my sentence where I left it.
My cheeks burned, more than answering the question. I did not dare to open my mouth, afraid I wouldn’t be cautious enough and would accidentally reveal far too many of my secrets. If I confirmed Emma’s suspicions, she would ask me who it was, and Kitty’s name could not pass my lips.
“Sorry, it’s not my place,” Emma said, once it was clear her teasing hadn’t been received as she’d hoped. She cleared her throat and offered a smile. “If there was ever an occasion to wear that new pink dress of yours, I would think trying to catch a man’s eye would be it.”
I knew exactly the one she meant. It had been a farewell gift when I left London, and I had yet to find a chance to wearit. A coral dress finished with a gauzy top layer embroidered with tiny cream flowers, it was more elegant than anything I would ever willingly choose myself, but I wanted Kitty to think of me as elegant. While I treasured our clandestine meetings by candlelight, there was something horribly appealing in the idea of taking her breath away when she saw me. A threadbare coat and an old chemise were not going to do that.
“Yes,” I said decisively. “That one, please. And will you do my hair? And just a little rouge, perhaps?”
“What would Mr. Darcy say about that?” Emma said with a laugh.
I was far more worried about what he would say if he knew for whom I was wearing it. His affection for Elizabeth’s sisters seemed unlikely to hold up if he knew anything of the thoughts running through my head. His affection for me was something I did not want to question, but all I could see was the thin line of his lips as we stood on the steps of Pemberley, watching the carriage that took Frances as far as Lambton before abandoning her to her fate.
“I will bear all responsibility,” I insisted. “You needn’t worry about getting in any kind of trouble with my brother. I will happily tell him I did it all alone, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“I’m only teasing you. I’d be glad to help. Perhaps we will see you prosperously settled soon enough.”
Kitty was certainly not the suitor she had in mind, but Emma’s words still filled me with warmth. The thought ofKitty left me more content than the notion of any other match ever had.
Emma stepped back to appraise her handiwork, frowning for a second before adding another hairpin to the elaborate style she’d arranged from my curls. She still wasn’t satisfied, considering me again before riffling around in one of the drawers at my dressing table. Triumphant, she pulled out a large feather, fluffy and soft pink.
“No,” I said with a laugh, needing to draw a line somewhere. “I am walking down the stairs of my own house, not being presented at court.”
“Don’t you have a man to impress?” Emma asked, running the feather under my jaw to tickle my neck.
Suppressing giggles, I pushed it away. I wanted to impress Kitty, but I did not want to become someone else entirely. Piles of feathers and gems were too much. I shook my head, making my decision clear, and breathed a sigh of relief when Emma returned the feather to its drawer.
“All right, if you’re against feathers, then I think you’re ready,” she declared grandly, reaching for the cloth she had hung over the mirror.
I had not been allowed to see my slow transformation from subdued hermit to semireluctant debutante. Emma insisted on the element of surprise, so I would see what “he” saw for the first time. When she whipped the covering away, I didn’t recognise myself. My hair had been wrangled into ringletsand pulled into a complicated bun, tendrils of curls falling to frame my face. Emma’s own recipe of rouge stained my cheeks and my lips with the subtlest flush, like I had been paid an unexpected compliment. The dress had been made for me by a master dressmaker in London, and the skill of the craftsmanship was solely responsible for how well it suited me. I scrambled out of my chair so I could shift the skirts beneath my hands, imagining how gracefully they would move if I danced. I felt beautiful and so far from Georgiana Darcy that I almost believed Kitty might think me beautiful, too.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Emma. “I don’t know how you did it.”
“Made you shine?” she asked. “You do that all on your own. You just hide it well.”
There was a smile at the corner of her lips that betrayed her teasing, and I feigned offence, clutching at my chest as if I was aghast at the suggestion.
“Are you ready to go down? Guests have started arriving, so you can make an entrance.”
“I don’t want to make an entrance,” I protested.
Emma laughed. “Dressed like that, how could you not?”
I pulled a face at her but let her make final adjustments to my dress and hair before she deemed me acceptable to show my face in front of good company. She offered to fetch Darcy to escort me into the ball, but I requested Elizabeth instead, hoping my sister-in-law would be less likely to pass judgement on my change in appearance.
I don’t know why I even had the thought. The secondElizabeth stepped into the room, she stopped, her eyes going wide as she took in the dress and the hair and the rouge. Her lips spread into a grin, and she took both my hands, squeezing.
“You are more handsome than anyone down in that ballroom,” she said, deadly sincere. “Just how many hearts are you planning to break?”
I shook my head, not able to meet her eyes. It was a level of praise I’d never heard spoken so earnestly, not to me.
