A Heart Revealed (7 page)

“See there, Miss, it’s lovely. Look at how it draws out the color of your eyes.”

Amber looked at her reflection, the tears nearly dried though her eyes were still pink around the edges. The silk Suzanne had found was a soft gold, with shimmers of silver throughout. The maid did not build the turban high, but kept it close to Amber’s head. She finished by pushing a white and a green feather into the folds.

“Where did you find this?” Amber asked as she took note of exactly what Suzanne had said; the color
did
emphasize her eyes. Perhaps it
could
work.

“I feared we might need something of this sort and was able to find this at a shop. I thought it would look right nice with your silver gown.”

Amber straightened in her chair and felt heat rush up her chest as she more fully understood the implications of this change. “That is a ball gown. I had set aside the blue
robe
a la Russe
for tonight.” It was a beautiful gown of velvet, with cutaway sleeves, beading at the neck, and a ruffled collar in the back. It had come from the dressmaker just last week.

Suzanne frowned. “The blue won’t match the silk, and the collar would not look right.”

“Then why did you not procure a silk to match my gown?” Amber said, horrified by the turn of events. “I can’t wear a ball gown to the opera! Certainly not one I’ve been seen in before.”

“Has the Earl seen the silver gown?” Suzanne asked rather boldly. “Did he not return to town since you last wore it? Perhaps you could borrow Miss Darra’s gold mantle and wear your gold chains to disguise the look of it for those who might remember it.”

Amber pursed her lips, unhappy with the suggestion even as she realized the hour was too late for her to come up with a better solution. Suzanne had not stopped her work as they’d talked and was now using her fingers with a bit of pomade to shape into ringlets the hair left about Amber’s shoulders. There was no time to use papers to set the curl the way it ought to be, and Amber felt her spirits fall again as she accepted that this result would not look quite right either.

Her anxiety increasing, she snapped at Suzanne throughout the rest of the preparation and did not acknowledge her when she left the bedchamber some time later.

Amber went straight to Darra’s room where they argued over the golden mantle until Amber agreed that Darra could have use of the
robe a la Russe
. They were close enough in size that Darra’s slighter frame would allow the velvet to drape, elongating her figure even as it emphasized Amber’s curves.

“I don’t know why you are so insistent on wearing that wrap upon your head,” Darra said once she had committed to the trade. “It looks positively old-fashioned.” She narrowed her eyes, blue like their mother’s. “Perhaps you think that if
you
wear such a stuffy accessory all the other girls will do so as well, then you’ll laugh at the lot of them for following your lead.”

“Am I so horrible?” Amber said, more hurt than she expected to be by her sister’s accusation. “Do you think all I do is design ways to make myself superior?”

“Since our arrival in London, it is all I’ve seen from you,” Darra said, her tone as cutting as her words. They held one another’s eyes, and when Darra’s expression fell for a moment, Amber wondered if perhaps her sister sensed Amber’s unspoken hardship. How she longed to pour out her troubles to a compassionate ear and be assured that things were not so frightening as they seemed.

Instead, Darra lifted her chin, and her expression was at once hard and arrogant. “I shall look far better in your gown than you shall ever look in my mantle.” With that, she quit the room.

“I expect you are exactly right,” Amber said to the silence as she crossed to Darra’s wardrobe and removed the mantle, not allowing a second wave of tears to release themselves. She had to be at her very best tonight. With her condition growing worse by the day, she lived in fear that after having dismissed so much attention earlier in the season she might end up without a match at all.

Chapter 7

It took all of Amber’s energy to keep up the appearance of confidence and security throughout the opera. The Earl was complimentary of her dress and hair—sincerely, she felt—and attentive, which made it easier for her to laugh when she should laugh, pout when she should pout, and flatter him shamelessly. He responded as she hoped he would and asked her to ride out with him through Hyde Park the following afternoon in his barouche. It was the first time he had invited her on an outing.

“A ride through Hyde Park tomorrow sounds lovely, though I must be returned home by three o’clock,” Amber said to Lord Sunther with a coy grin and a pat of her fan against his arm. “I need sufficient time to ready myself for the evening party at the Whiteacres. Will you be attending, do you think? It promises to be a delightful event with the very highest of company.” She had already procured the morning gossip that confirmed he’d been included on the guest list. Amber had to resist touching the turban or trying to make it more comfortable. It felt odd to have such a confining piece on her head, and it itched terribly.

“If I know you shall be there, I will make certain to accept the invitation that arrived just tonight,” he said, smiling at her. He was not particularly handsome with too thin a face and ears that could not be disguised even with his longish hair combed into a Brutus style. But he was attentive and kind. Was he kind enough to accept her situation if she hid it from him until they married? Would he be the type of man to make the best of it?

Such thoughts threatened to ruin her resolve to act her part and so Amber set them aside and complimented him on the superior view of the stage afforded them by the rented box. He seemed to take great delight in her compliments, and she determined to consider what other aspects of his person and interests she could expound upon during their carriage ride tomorrow. She could wear a bonnet, which would be a relief to her nerves.

When the Sterlington party returned to the town house on Park Street near midnight, Amber felt as though she could think freely for the first time all evening. The night had been a success, but the effort to maintain her role of carefree and confident debutante was exhausting. She knew that if the society she worked so hard to impress knew the truth, they would want nothing of her at all. Though she wanted to believe that Lord Sunther would not dismiss her should they marry and then he learn of her secret, he would have to come to terms with her deception as well as her condition eventually. It would be easier if she had no qualms regarding her behavior—such as had been the case when she saw herself as whole and desirable. Now she knew she was offering less than she was leading Lord Sunther to believe, and the realization of how poorly she was using him did not sit well with her.

Suzanne was waiting in Amber’s bedchamber as she always was, and assisted Amber with the removal of Darra’s mantle, which she draped over the bench at the end of Amber’s bed while asking about the evening.

“It was bearable but only just,” Amber said tersely, not hesitating to take her mood out on her maid. She settled herself on the stool before her vanity and looked at Suzanne in the mirror. “This
silk
, as you call it, is as coarse as burlap. It itched the whole evening through.”

Suzanne made no comment as she began unwrapping the turban from Amber’s head. Amber closed her eyes, enjoying the release of pressure and wished it could take other tensions with it. If the Earl had been in town for some weeks, she could countenance pushing for a proposal on their ride tomorrow. As he had only been in town for three days, however, and this would be their first ride together, it was far too forward and might work against her by creating a wariness in him. She needed more time for him to fall in love with her and offer her a sincere proposal.

“Oh, Miss,” she heard Suzanne said, her voice heavy. Amber blinked her eyes open and looked first at Suzanne’s wide-eyed expression reflected in the mirror before looking at herself. Her gasp was audible as she gingerly lifted a hand to the front left portion of her head which had no hair at all. The patch above her ear that she had noted earlier in the evening had expanded, like wine spilled on a rug. The pale skin was smooth beneath her touch: warm, and completely . . . bald.

It can’t be
, she said in her mind. She placed her hand over the offending portion as though to hide it and turned in her seat to see full clumps of hair at Suzanne’s feet. She looked at the portion of silk still in Suzanne’s hands and could see several stands of her hair woven into it as well.

“I was simply trying to brush out the tangles,” Suzanne said. “I do not know what—”

“You put the silk on too tight,” she accused her maid as her ears filled with a rushing sound. This
had
to be Suzanne’s fault, never mind that Helen had been collecting Amber’s fallen hair prior to Suzanne’s arrival. The maid
had
to bear responsibility. “You hate me, you have always hated me, and you are determined to ruin me!”

“Miss,” Suzanne said, sounding shocked as she took a step back, “I have naught but helped you all this time. I have—”

“You have rendered me an atrocity!” Amber yelled back, her rage overflowing her ability to reason. “Until you came, all was as it should be. Your attention to me has changed everything. Were you sent from the household of a rival? Have you conspired with a suitor whose attentions I have thwarted?”

Amber paused for breath as Suzanne cowered near the bed, her head hung so that Amber could not see her face. Amber did not hear the creak of a door hinge until it was too late. She snapped her head to the side in time to see Darra and her mother standing in the doorway, horror on their faces.

They stared at Amber for what should have been a breath, though Amber could not draw air as she took in the wide eyes of the interlopers. Their expressions finally brought her to herself, and she let out a strangled cry. Raising her hands to her head, she desperately searched for a hiding place and saw the open door of the wardrobe.

She ran to the space created between the open door and the wall and sank to the ground. The realization that her secret was no longer a secret pounded her mind like a hammer against stone.

“Leave us,” she heard her mother snap a moment before the door to the bedchamber closed. There was silence, and Amber curled over herself, covering her ragged head with her arms, unable to catch her breath due to her corset and gown. She heard the wardrobe door close, revealing her to the room, and she pulled even tighter to the corner, wishing she could disappear completely.

“Show yourself to me,” her mother commanded.

Amber shook her head. She could not do it. She could not bear to have them see her.

“Darra,” she heard her mother say a moment before Lady Marchent grabbed one of Amber’s arms, pulling it away from Amber’s head. A moment later, the softer touch of Darra’s hand on Amber’s other arm pulled it away as well. She tried to fight them, aching for her corner even as she was drawn to her feet and forced into the center of the room. Knowing she could not prevent their inspection, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

For some time her mother and Darra were silent, until Amber controlled her emotion enough to drop her hands and lift her swollen eyes to meet those of her mother’s, which looked at her with both shock and disgust.

“You stupid girl,” her mother said, each word falling like hot coals at Amber’s feet. “What have you done to yourself?”

Chapter 8

Amber sent her regrets by messenger to Lord Sunther first thing the next morning, claiming she was ill and could not ride out with him. She spent the rest of the day in her bedchamber with one of her mother’s ugly mobcaps on her head. Her mother did not appear until the afternoon when she followed a maid who carried in a tea tray. Lady Marchent did not stay long and instead simply relayed that Dr. Hankins would attend her in the morning, until then the household had been told Amber was ill and Suzanne had been sworn to secrecy. Amber was hungry for some encouragement, some hope, but it was misplaced. Her mother left her to her own company after only a few minutes. Amber pressed her face into the pillow and cried alone.

Dr. Hankins came to Amber’s bedchamber at ten o’clock Monday morning. He wasn’t an old man, perhaps not quite her mother’s age, even, and she could not take her eyes off the powdered wig he wore, a reminder of the style of her mother’s time as a debutante in King George’s court.

The extreme fashion that included wigs and hairpieces was outmoded when the French Revolution drew sharp attention to the extravagance of the aristocracy. France was not so far away from England for English noblemen and noblewomen to avoid taking note.

Amber had heard tell and seen portraits of face paints and full stays, hoop skirts, and heavy brocade fabrics of vibrant color—the court dress required of each debutante when she was presented, but avoided in every other venue. Amber had often felt grateful to live in an age of greater discretion that, she felt, allowed a woman’s more natural charms to show through the pretense of earlier fashions.

Now, however, with her natural charms threatened she wished for a powdered wig to hide her truth and perhaps face paint that could further hide her fear.

“I shall need you to remove the cap,” Dr. Hankins said, sitting down on the foot bench after Amber sat on her dressing table stool.

At the doctor’s request, Amber raised a hand, carefully expanded the cap, and lifted it off her head, mindful of pulling on the hair she had left. Several strands of hair fluttered into her lap.

The doctor made no reaction, for which she was grateful, and stood to cross over to her. She closed her eyes in hopes it would lessen her humiliation as he touched her hair, lifted the remaining tresses and making noises such as “Hmm,” and “Ah.” He began pulling on certain sections, and Amber bit her lip, not in pain but in fear he would loosen the strands still connected. She’d been so gentle of them herself, though it hadn’t seemed to make a difference. Lady Marchent stood just inside the door, standing silent sentry of the exchange.