When the Duke Returns(2)
“The silver with diamonds,” she said decisively.
Lucille would have paled, but her maquillage didn’t allow for such extravagancies of emotion. “Oh, Your Grace,” she said, clasping her hands like a heroine about to be thrown from the parapet, “if you won’t wear the yellow, at least choose a gown that has some claim to modesty!”
“No,” Isidore said, her mind made up. “Do you know what His Grace’s note says to me, Lucille?”
“Of course not, Your Grace.” Lucille was carefully displacing the pile of glowing silk and satin, looking for Isidore’s most scandalous costume, the one she rarely wore after its first airing resulted in an impromptu duel between two besotted Frenchmen, fought on the cobbles in front of Versailles.
“It says,” Isidore said, snatching up the piece of stationery that had arrived a few hours before: “I discover I have some missing property. And he added a cryptic comment that seemingly announces his imminent arrival: Tonight.”
Lucille looked up, blinking. “What?”
“My husband appears to think I’m a missing trunk. Perhaps he considers it too much work to travel from London to recover me from Lord Strange’s party. Perhaps he expected that I would be waiting on the pier for his boat to come in. Perhaps he thinks I’ve been there for years, tears dripping down my face as I waited for his return!”
Lucille had a hard-headed French turn of mind, so she ignored the edge in Isidore’s voice. She straightened with a gorgeous swath of pale silver silk, glittering with small diamonds. “Will you desire diamonds in your hair as well?” she inquired.
This particular dress fit so closely that Isidore could wear only the smallest corset, designed to plump her breasts and narrow her waist. The gown was sewn by a dressmaker to Queen Marie Antoinette, and it presupposed that its owner would grace the mirrored halls of Versailles—a far cry from the smoky corridors of Strange’s residence. Not to mention the fact that she would be rubbing shoulders with everyone from dukes to jugglers. Still…
“Yes,” she said. “I may lose a few diamonds by the end of the evening. But I want my husband to understand that I am no stray trunk that he can simply throw into his carriage and transport to London.”
Lucille laughed at that, and began to nimbly lace the proper corset. Isidore stared in the mirror, wondering just what the Duke of Cosway expected his wife to look like. She looked nothing like a pale English rose, given her generous curves and dark hair.
It rankled that Cosway had spent years jaunting around foreign lands, while she waited for him to return. Had he even thought of her in the past ten years? Had he ever wondered what had become of the twelve-year-old girl who married him by proxy?
She had a strong feeling that to Cosway she truly was nothing more than a piece of forgotten property. It made her feel slightly crazed: that she had spent so many years wondering what sort of man she’d married, while he wandered around looking for the source of the Nile, never giving her a second thought.
“Lip color,” she said to Lucille. “And I’ll wear the diamond-heeled shoes as well.”
“La Grande Toilette,” Lucille said, and then laughed, a Frenchwoman’s sudden laugh. “The duke won’t know what happened to him!”
“Precisely,” Isidore said with satisfaction. “I had it wrong, Lucille. Eve isn’t the right model. I should be thinking about Cleopatra.”
Lucille was wrestling with Isidore’s panniers and just mumbled something.
“Cleopatra sailed down the Nile in a ship plated in gold,” Isidore said dreamily. “Mark Antony took one look at her and lost his heart in a moment. And it wasn’t because she looked like a modest wife.”
Lucille straightened up. “Modest will not be the word that comes to the duke’s mind when he sees you in this gown.”
“Excellent,” Isidore said, smiling at herself as Lucille dropped a shimmering veil of silver over her head. The bodice fitted as if it were sewn to her body which, in fact, it had been. The fittings had been tedious, but worth every minute. At the waist the silk pulled back in soft billowing folds, revealing an underskirt of blue watered silk. One might not immediately notice the tiny diamonds sewn all over her bodice and skirts, but they made the gown luminescent. It was a gown that turned its wearer into a queen.
Queen Cleopatra, to be exact.
But all the diamonds in the world couldn’t stop the cold fear that gripped Isidore’s heart when she descended the stairs some time later. She was going to meet her husband. For the first time.
What if he were ugly? Well, he was certain to be weather-beaten, at the very least. Likely there wasn’t good hygiene in Africa, Isidore told herself. Cosway might be missing some teeth. He might be missing an eye! He might be—