Her hair was a source of singular irritation.
It made her look too damnably adorable. In the patronising sense, the way kittens were adorable, or newborn puppies, or her particular vexation that outshone them all: dolls.
She looked like a life-size version of one of those pale, pretty, dainty, fragile porcelain things that little girls played with in the nurseries, all girls except Evie, for she’d set up her dolls on the fence to practise shooting with her bow and arrow. After she’d mastered archery, she moved on to pistols, and then, to her delight, found her true talent. Seeing the heads of the porcelain dolls smashed to a thousand pieces with a single shot filled her with endless satisfaction.
It scandalised the servants to no end.
Her brother Julius, lovable but entirely clueless as tohow she was really occupying her time, kept giving her those dolls long after she’d outgrown the doll-playing age. She received them graciously, with a pasted smile on her face. “Truly, Julius, you aremostkind.”
More victims for her shooting practice.
So, when she heard that man, the one who looked like he was hewn out of a massive block of granite and who stood several yards away observing her arrival, state with utter loathing that she resembled a cursed ‘china doll’, she was offended beyond measure.
And that was an understatement.
Evie was so livid, it brought tears of fury to her eyes.
Whathad she just heard? She, a china doll? A milk-and-water miss? She, the most level-headed, practical female in theton, who’d run her brother’s extensive, ducal household like clockwork since she was thirteen years old, personally checking the household books, lacking in practical common sense?
Simpering?
Sheneversimpered. Even if she wanted to, she had no idea how to simper.
How dare anyone imply that she did?
And out of the mouth of a rude, boorish stranger who clearly had no inkling of how to behave in a gentlemanly fashion himself. She had never been so insulted in her entire life.
She turned to her cavalier, who was looking up at her with moon-eyes, and thanked him prettily. The poor chap’s trousers were dripping from kneeling in the puddle, a chivalrous and entirely unnecessary act, for Evie had been preparing to leap across it, lifting her skirts. But then he’d so conveniently offered himself as a stepping-stoneand prostrated himself before her. It would have been rude of her not to accept such a sacrifice.
Truly, her ballroom gown was most inconvenient in a place like this. She’d changed in the carriage after the coachman had dislodged the wheel from the mud hole.
Her maid had carried the dress in a separate bag inside the coach, together with her other valuable items. Because of that, it had been spared the fate of her other clothes, which had bathed in the puddle.
Her companion, Clara, had changed into her ballroom gown as well, her best one, a beautiful green and gold one, complete with a train, and she looked truly regal in it.
“My,” Evie had joked, “one could easily mistake you for a noblewoman.” She’d preferred to wear her own white one simply because the hem had been shorter.
For even though Clara wasn’t splattered by the mud, the rain had come, and she was drenched to her skin within a minute, and she was already ill. It had been Clara’s suggestion, in fact, to change their clothes. At the time, Evie had thought it a capital idea.
For what else was she to do? Remain in her wet clothes and die of lung fever?
Wear nothing at all?
Surely the soldiers, who were milling about in the yard, would have liked that.
A snort escaped her. If she had emerged from the carriage in the same state as Venus rising from the foaming waves, they would have all fallen into a dead faint and she could’ve stepped with dry feet on their bodies until she reached the entrance to the inn.
Including that of granite man.
For a fleeting moment she wondered if he would have been as disdainful if she had. Then she dismissed the idea.
The men surrounded her, and with a pretty smile, she asked them to help Nellie and Clara out of the carriage as well, which they readily did.
At that moment, the rain resumed, accompanied by a loud clap of thunder.
One gentleman offered her his woollen greatcoat, which Evie gratefully accepted. In addition to warmth, it covered her ballroom gown entirely. She deemed it a good idea to cover her ballroom finery before she stepped into yonder inn, which looked somewhat seedy and run-down. “I shall return it to you anon,” she promised the young officer, who blushed a fiery red.
Then Evie entered the inn.
