She bathed. She dressed, Mags lacing the stays for her.
“Keep them as loose as possible.”
“Aye, my lady.”
Mags arranged Helen’s hair, fussing that she did not know the styles of London.
“’Tis fine, I’m sure, Mags. Dinnae worry.”
Another delivery, two boxes. One small, one not-so-small. And an unsealed note in a hand she recognized from the letter Jack Pike had left her at the castle. The letter she had read a thousand times and the postscript she had read a million times:PS I meant what I said about kissing you.
This note said:
Not a gift, a loan. My mother’s. Good luck.
J. Pike
PS (turn this over)
Her heart was in her throat, beating wildly. She turned the note over.
The other, well, it’s just been sitting on my dressing table. You hold on to it for me. It belongs with the Countess of Kinmarloch, not Jack Pike.
The not-so-small box held her dirk and its sheath.
The small box contained a sapphire necklace and two hair combs encrusted with the same jewels.
Mags then had to take Helen’s hair all down again so as to nest the combs in her curls, despite Helen’s protests she didn’t need them, she didn’t want them.
“Yer nae going to wear Mr. Pike’s jewelry?”
“He willnae know.”
“Please, my lady. Let me put the pretty combs in yer hair.”
She could at least make Mags happy in this. She sat in the chair and Mags brushed and repinned and coiled her hair and then coaxed Helen to put the necklace on.
“Do ye want to see yerself in the mirror, my lady?”
She looked at herself in the mirror for Mags’ sake. She swallowed. “Thank ye. Ye did a wonderful job. I am a real countess.”
“Aye, my lady.”
She was the same Helen. The same face. The same body. The same ugly. In a way, she looked worse because the clothes and the jewelry were so fine.
She was pacing the drawing room when Phineas Edge, the Earl of Burchester, came for her. It was night, now. The earl was kind and praised her dress and hair. He was courtly both to Mags and to Duncan who had put on the full kilt to welcome him.
Mags hugged her goodbye. “Good luck, my lady.”
“Aye. Good luck, my lady,” Duncan echoed.
Jack’s friend with the silver hair chuckled. “Lady Kinmarloch doesn’t need luck. She is enchanting.”
The earl held out his arm. Helen now saw he was dressed in clothes identical to the ones Jack had been wearing her first night in London, the night he had come to these rooms and told her he wanted her.
Jack must have been at a ball himself that night, in those satin breeches and dancing shoes and elegant tailcoat. He had been at a ball in the London Season, a ball meant to introduce gentlemen and ladies to each other so there might be courtship and eventually, marriage.
He had told her just yesterday he was not looking for a wife.
