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“I should have searched for you and your family as soon as word arose of the détenus coming home. But after Natalie died, I could scarcely bring myself to do more than stare out at the garden and wander the house like a wraith. I just couldn’t—”
“Say no more, please,” Eve put in. “I know how destitute I felt after Papa died. I daresay it is even harder to lose a child than a parent. You have no reason to apologize, trust me.”
The viscountess smiled at her. “As a girl, you were always sweet and generous, my dear, and you’re even more so as a grown woman. I cannot say how much your being here has lifted my spirits.”
Eve could only blush and say, “I’m glad I could help.”
They entered the dining room and took their places, with Noel at the head of the table and his mother at the foot, while Eve and her stepmother sat on one side and Jimmy on the other. As the servants served the soup, talk returned to the auction.
“What questions do you have for me?” the viscountess asked Eve, whom she’d seated next to her.
“The most important one is, when is this charity auction?”
“On Christmas Eve.”
“That’s a week from now!” Eve nearly choked on her first spoonful of soup, which would have been a shame since it was the most heavenly chestnut soup she’d tasted in some years. “I can’t complete a piece fit for such a competition in a week.”
“Could you do it if you could embroider somewhere away from the dyeworks?” Noel asked. “You could come here and bring James with you. He and I could work to improve his … er … manners enough for him to meet the queen, and you could embroider in better light, without the dyes provoking your cough.”
The thought of spending every day in Noel’s company, trying not to yearn for his attentions, struck her with panic. “But Maman needs me to—”
“As long as Her Ladyship will make sure you are properly chaperoned,” her stepmother said, with a quick glance at Noel, “I see no issue. Besides, it might be better if you and Jimmy were not home, anyway, so I could finish sewing the rest of Mrs. Beckford’s order. You are a help to me, of course, but you cannot help when you have embroidery to do, and Jimmy …”
“Is a hindrance?” Noel quipped. When Jimmy began to scowl, Noel added, “I’m just guessing.”
“I did not say that,” Maman retorted, eyes twinkling. She ate some soup. “Not exactly, anyway.”
Jimmy was wolfing down his own soup, but still managed to halt long enough to grumble, “I help sometimes.”
“Of course you do, mon ange,” Maman said soothingly. “I didn’t say otherwise, did I?”
Eve had to bite her lip hard to keep from laughing.
“Then that’s settled,” the viscountess said. “Eve and James will come here every day. I will help Eve with her submission in whatever ways I am allowed, and Noel will help James learn to be a proper gentleman.”
“What do you mean by ways you are allowed?” Eve asked.
“I’m not permitted to so much as show you a stitch, my dear. It is against the rules. The submission must be fully yours. But I can fetch you thread or tea or anything else you require.”
The idea of a viscountess fetching her things really made Eve want to laugh. “If I’m here, won’t people assume you’re giving me the wrong sort of help?”
Lady Cokesbury sniffed. “They’d better not assume such a thing. I’ve been part of this endeavor since Her Majesty first started it. Why, Natalie submitted something in the year before she fell sick. She didn’t win, of course, but no one questioned her right to submit a piece, even though she was my daughter. The committee does recognize that women, not just gentlemen, have honor, too.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because I quite agree,” Eve said.
At that moment, the footmen brought in the next course, a lamb ragout, along with fried potatoes, and Maman nearly swooned. “A ragoût d’agneau? Lady Cokesbury, you have just made this French woman very happy.”
“I asked my French cook what you might most miss from France, and he suggested this.”
“Cor,” Jimmy said, “there’s more than the soup?!!” He tore into his serving of ragout as if he hadn’t had a good meal in a month. Which was actually close to the truth.
Her stepmother stopped eating at once. “James, you must slow down! It is rude to shovel food into your mouth like that.”
“Pish,” the viscountess said, “you should have seen Noel eat at that age. One time I found him in the kitchen late at night with a roast chicken that he’d reduced to a carcass all by himself.”
“Good God, Mother,” Noel said, “must you tell all my secrets?”
Eve couldn’t resist teasing him. “Is that what you meant when you told me, ‘a boy of that age doesn’t know what to do with himself’?”
