Baroness in Buckskin (7 page)

“Yes, I’m sure it was very fortunate, my coming along when I did,” Peter said thoughtfully. “And yet I wonder—”

Given Richard’s apparent indifference toward his chosen bride, it might have done him a great deal of good to have seen her as Peter had, emerging from the lake like a naiad, with water streaming from her hair and over her bare shoulders. The picture she presented might have gone a long way toward shaking Richard out of his apathy; certainly the image was one Peter would not easily forget.

“Yes?” Jane prompted. “What do you wonder?”

He shook his head, dismissing the thought, if not the image. “Nothing really, only—Cousin Jane, do you think—does it occur to you that perhaps Richard is making a mistake?”

She sighed. “Yes, frequently! And never more so than last night, when he mistook his chosen bride for a serving girl. But you know what he is, Peter. He sees his duty clear, and he would not go back on his word, were she ten times more ineligible.” She smiled rather wistfully. “It is one of his more admirable qualities, even though it does make one occasionally long to box his ears.”

“Do you think they can be happy together?”

“I suppose it depends upon how willing they are to adjust their expectations of one another. I have reason to believe that Susannah may not be as hopeless a case as Richard seems to fear, for as I pointed out to him, she is already accustomed to running a household, albeit a very different one.”

“Yes, and she certainly came the great lady when she believed him to be deliberately insulting her, did she not?” Peter agreed, grinning at the memory. “I confess, for that one brief moment I had no difficulty at all in seeing her as Lady Ramsay.”

“Yes, indeed! So I think we must try to be charitable, and mark the bath incident down to ignorance. And, as the best antidote to ignorance is instruction, I shall take her over the house as soon as may be arranged, and explain to her what will be her duties as the next Lady Ramsay. I had hoped to take her to my dressmaker this afternoon, but I suppose that must wait until tomorrow.”

Peter’s brow puckered in a thoughtful frown. “I am sure you know best, Cousin Jane, but won’t it take several days to have dresses made up?”

“Oh, yes—days, if not weeks.”

“In that case, would you not do better to let the dressmaking visit stand, and postpone the tour of the house until tomorrow?”

“I suppose so,” Jane agreed somewhat reluctantly. With a hint of a smile, she added, “We shall only hope that our American cousin will stay out of the lake in the meantime.”

With this Parthian shot, she left the room, determined to seek out Susannah before her baser self could compose a compelling argument as to why delaying Susannah’s transformation into a young lady of fashion would be the wisest course of action.

* * *

Susannah, for her part, remained in her room only until her hair had dried sufficiently to tie it back with a ribbon (from which, no doubt, it would soon escape) before making her way downstairs to the drawing room—this chamber being, with the exceptions of the dining room and her own bedchamber, the only room of the house with which she was acquainted.

Having reached her destination and congratulated herself for finding it without assistance, she entered the room only to find Lord Ramsay there before her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled. “I had not thought—I did not mean to interrupt, my lord.”

He laid aside his newspaper and rose to greet her. “Nonsense! In fact, I am pleased to see you, Cousin Susannah.” He cleared his throat. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

“No apology is necessary, Lord Ramsay,” she said, inclining her head with a formality that matched his own.

“I beg to differ. In any case, I hope you will indulge me by accepting it, and by calling me Richard or, if that seems too familiar on such short acquaintance, Cousin Richard.” He smiled fleetingly, and she was surprised to discover that his smile was surprisingly sweet. “I assure you, however formal our English ways must appear to you, we do draw the line at requiring a woman to call her husband by his title.”

Her answering smile was somewhat tentative. “Very well—Cousin Richard.”

“Peter tells me you are fond of riding. I hope you will allow me to show you about the property tomorrow. I would propose this afternoon for the excursion, but Jane tells me she intends to take you to her dressmaker immediately after luncheon. It would be a very odd female, I believe, who would prefer an hour in the saddle to one spent shopping for frills and furbelows.”

“Really?” Susannah regarded him with mild curiosity. “Why?”

“My dear cousin,” he said, exasperated, “surely you cannot expect me to explain to you the peculiar joy which members of your sex seem to find in debating the virtues of silk over satin, or finding the perfect shade of ribbon to match one’s new gown!”

“I’m afraid
someone
must, for I’ve never done either of those things. Nor have I ever shopped for—what did you say?—frills or furbelows. What exactly
is
a furbelow, anyway?”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m afraid you are asking the wrong person, my dear. You would do better to direct your questions to Jane.”

“There is one other thing, my lord—er, Cousin Richard. How much will all this cost? You know I am accounted a considerable heiress back home, but most of my assets are in land. I haven’t that much available as ready money.”

He shook his head. “The cost need not concern you. I will cover any expenditure.”

“No, you will not!” exclaimed Susannah, much shocked. “I may be an American, but even in America we know better than to let a man buy clothing, or—or anything of an intimate nature—for a woman who is not his wife!”

“Not
yet
his wife,” he amended. “Let me remind you that in addition to being your betrothed, I am also your cousin. No matter how distant the blood tie, I am still the head of your family, and no one will think it in the least unusual for me to see that you are properly outfitted. Indeed, it would be thought very shabby of me to do otherwise.”

Susannah was not at all certain whether to trust him on this but, having no other choice in the matter, elected to let the matter drop until she might put the question to her cousin Jane. In truth, she found Cousin Jane’s quiet elegance rather intimidating. Seated beside her in the carriage, Susannah felt decidedly frumpy, never suspecting that Jane had chosen her own rather sober carriage dress in order to diminish, as much as possible, the difference in her own attire and that of her American cousin.

“I hope you will find this enjoyable,” Jane said brightly, as they set out. “I well remember when the Dowager Lady Ramsay—Richard’s mother, that is—engaged me as her companion, and brought me to Madame Lavert to be outfitted. I was quite poor, you know, and had little besides the clothes on my back. I felt like Cinderella!”

Susannah returned a mechanical smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere. “Miss Hawthorne—”

“Cousin Jane,” corrected that lady.

“Cousin Jane, then, my lord—that is, Cousin Richard intends to pay for any clothing I buy. Is that—well, is it quite proper?”

“I assure you, Richard would not offer to do such a thing if there were anything untoward in it. He is very aware of his position, you know—as well as yours—and would do nothing that might expose you to scandal or censure. You may be easy on that head.”

In fact, it had been Lord Ramsay who had insisted that the ladies take the closed carriage for the short drive to the village, thus denying the villages the opportunity to gawk at the future Lady Ramsay before he was ready to present her to them. Still, the sight of the baronial carriage, its door emblazoned with the family crest, was enough to evoke inquisitive glances from the villagers, whose curiosity was rewarded by a glimpse of unruly red curls and a
retroussé
nose pressed to the glass.

The village of Lower Nettleby was fortunate in its dressmaker, for Madame Lavert, having fled Paris at the height of the Terror after losing most of her noble clients to the guillotine, had been left with so violent a dislike for large cities that she had eschewed London and settled instead in this rural corner of Hampshire. A birdlike little woman with a sharp chin and a pointed nose, she now enjoyed the patronage of a limited yet lucrative clientele. Upon being introduced to Susannah, she fingered that young lady’s coarse skirts and unfashionable cotton bodice while declaiming in voluble French, the only words of which Susannah understood were “
l’Américaine gauche
.”

At the end of this tirade, she addressed Susannah with a flurry of hand gestures, directing her to the small room at the rear of the shop, where she might disrobe. After allowing her new client sufficient time for this operation, she descended upon her with a dressmaker’s tape, with which (it seemed to Susannah) she measured every part of her body which she might conceivably wish to cover with clothing. Having made careful note of these calculations, she at last stepped back and informed Susannah that she might put her clothes back on, although the tone of her voice and the Gallic twist of her lip suggested her own doubts as to why anyone would wish to do so.

After Susannah dressed (wondering, as Lord Ramsay had, why any female should find such an ordeal enjoyable), she joined her cousin and the dressmaker in the main room of the shop where, to her surprise, she heard the little Frenchwoman praising her, albeit with compliments of the left-handed variety.

“
La petite Américaine
, she has not mademoiselle’s own elegance of form, but she is, what do you say, pleasingly proportioned, and round in all the right places.
Oui
, I can make something of her. Not a beauty,
non
, but an Original—something out of the common way. But—” She wagged a finger in front of Jane’s nose. “You must do something about the hair,
oui
? Else all my
travail
, he is for naught.”

“Yes, we will certainly have Miss Ramsay’s hair coiffed,” Jane promised. “I had thought to send for Miss Williams—”

“Bah!
That
for Miss Williams!” exclaimed Madame Lavert, snapping her fingers at the mention of Jane’s own hairdresser.”

“She has always done quite well with my hair—” Jane protested.

“But yes, with
your
hair. My kitchen maid could style your hair, and she is half blind. But Mademoiselle Ramsay’s hair—” Taking one of the escaped curls between her thumb and forefinger, she pulled it straight and then released it. She frowned as it sprang back into its original corkscrew shape. “Mademoiselle Ramsay’s hair requires something different,
oui
? You must send for my nephew, Claude Lavert.”

“Send for him? Where is he?”

“He is in London, where he has a shop in Piccadilly.”

Susannah, tired of being spoken of as if she were not there, clasped both hands to her offensive curls. “London? I cannot possibly go all the way to London for a haircut!”

Madame Lavert turned to regard Susannah as if she had only that moment remembered her presence. “Go to London?” she echoed. “But of course you must not go to London! My nephew must wait upon you at Ramsay Hall.”

“It seems a lot of trouble—” protested Susannah, only to be silenced by a look from Jane.

“Thank you for the recommendation, Madame. I will certainly speak to Lord Ramsay on the subject. Now we should like to see fashion plates and fabric samples, if you please.”

“
Mais oui!
A moment,
s’il vous plaît
.” She darted behind the counter, and when she returned, her arms were laden with books. She set the pile on the table with a thud, and removed the first volume from the top of the pile. “First we will look at the dresses,
oui
?”

And what dresses they were! Susannah, who had never at any time in her life owned more than two changes of clothing, was quite overwhelmed with the variety of garments that Madame Lavert and Cousin Jane considered necessary for a lady’s wardrobe. There were morning gowns and afternoon gowns for day wear, with long sleeves and high necklines; dinner gowns and evening dresses with tiny puffed sleeves and abbreviated bodices that displayed shocking expanses of bosom; and cloaks, spencers, and pelisses for out-of-doors, trimmed in braid and fastened with frogs.

Here, however, Susannah was moved to protest. “I don’t need a coat. I already have one.”

Madame Lavert regarded the fringed buckskin monstrosity with a contemptuous curl of her lip. “This? You would prefer
this
over Madame Lavert’s genius? Better you should put it on the fire.”

“I won’t!” Susannah declared mulishly, hugging the garment about her as if fearful the little Frenchwoman might attempt to remove it by force. “It was my father’s.”

“Then of course you must keep it,” Jane agreed. “Still, you will want to take good care of it. If you had a cloak and perhaps a pelisse, you would not be obliged to expose your father’s coat to inclement weather.”

The dressmaker bristled at the suggestion that her own creations were more expendable than the contemptible buckskin garment, but a speaking look from Jane silenced any protest she might have been inclined to make. Susannah was forced to concede the wisdom of this argument, and the tense moment passed.

Next came the fabric samples. Madame Lavert placed a small looking glass before Susannah, and that rather bemused young lady stared dazedly at her own reflection as Madame draped folds of cloth across her chest from shoulder to shoulder, the better to study the effects of Pomona green silk as opposed to peach-colored satin. Susannah, noting with amazement the effects of these miraculous materials upon a face she had hitherto considered quite ordinary, realized that this was the process to which Lord Ramsay had referred. She decided that it was really quite pleasurable, after all. As Madame Lavert gauged the effect of a celestial blue lutestring, Susannah decided she enjoyed it very much indeed.

“I—I should like something pink, if you please,” whispered Susannah, finding her voice at last.

“Pink?” echoed Jane in some consternation. “My dear cousin, with your coloring, I don’t think—”