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  “I’m not surprised that you find yourself at a loss for words,” said Miss Adelaide with a self-congratulatory smile. “It is a marvelous piece of good fortune. I know you are a considerable heiress and would naturally expect to contract a good marriage, but you are fortunate indeed to have achieved a brilliant one.”

  “Yes,” agreed Sara numbly.

  “There will be no time to send out invitations, but perhaps that is best. The unprecedented haste with which the whole is to be accomplished nearly takes my breath away.” Miss Adelaide’s disapproval was clear. “The death of the Countess would certainly postpone the wedding for as much as a year, but I would have thought such delay a small price to pay for the respect due a peeress. Nevertheless, I have been instructed to see that you are suitably provided with a wedding dress, every necessity to sustain life outside this school, and delivered to the chapel at St. George’s, all within seven days. It is not an easy thing, but it shall be done.” Sara didn’t doubt it; Miss Adelaide never made promises she couldn’t keep.

  Miss Adelaide suddenly stared hard at Sara. “You don’t object, do you? I am aware that Lord Carlisle’s reputation is not spotless, but most young men are a little wild before they settle down.”

  “No, I don’t object,” Sara managed to mumble.

  “Naturally you will be relieved of your duties at once. The dressmakers will be here within the hour to begin measuring you for your bride clothes and as many dresses as can reasonably be got ready in the time allotted. Is there anything else you need?” Sara stared back at her unable to think at all.

  “I can see that you are wholly overcome by your good fortune,” said Miss Adelaide with her grimace of a smile. “Perhaps a period of quiet reflection would help you become more accustomed to the prospect of someday becoming a countess.”

  I’ll never get used to it, Sara muttered to herself as she hurried back to her room, her thoughts whirling out of control. She was going to marry Gavin! It seemed totally unbelievable, yet Miss Adelaide had told her so, and Miss Adelaide was never wrong.

  “Did you know?” Sara asked Betty, when she found the maid dragging out trunks and valises and emptying drawers of all her belongings.

  “No, Miss. Such tidings is not for the likes of me, but it couldn’t be happening to a nicer young lady.”

  “But to marry Gavin!” Sara exclaimed, clasping her hands to her bosom, spinning about with a crazy smile on her face, and falling on the bed with such force that two of Betty’s neat piles bounced onto the floor.

  “I don’t think I recall your mentioning the young gentleman before,” said Betty, calmly picking up the clothes and placing them away from Sara.

  “I’ve dreamed about him, ever since I saw him showing off for the coachman without knowing I was riding inside the coach. He was furious when he found out I’d told his parents,” she said with a reminiscent laugh. “How was I to know he had taken a horse he was strictly forbidden to ride, had ridden over land claimed by a rival clan, and should have been with his tutor making up work he had failed to complete during the last term?” Sara laughed once again. “He probably never thinks of me without grinding his teeth.” She stopped suddenly and sat up with an arrested expression. “I wonder if he ever does think of me?” she mused aloud. “He was forever calling me a scarecrow. I used to be quite painfully thin,” she explained.

  “Well, you aren’t now,” Betty stated emphatically. “Many’s the time I’ve heard the girls, aye, and the teachers too, remark that you are too well filled out! If there were any young men about, some pretty nasty things would be said behind your back, or I’m no judge.”

  “Well, I was skinny then,” said Sara, as she bounded up from the bed and ran over to the mirror to study her figure. She gazed at herself quite critically, taking notice of her full breasts, slim waist, and rounded hips. “Do you really think I’m well formed?” she asked.

  “If the young gentlemen could see you right now, there’d be a line clear around the corner.”

  “N o, there wouldn’t,” Sara said, unable to hide a smile of satisfaction. “Miss Adelaide would lock the doors and call the constable. Besides, no man can admire a girl with freckles.”

  “You don’t have freckles,” argued Betty.

  “Yes, I do,” insisted Sara, pulling her over to the mirror and pointing to a spot on her creamy white skin. “See, a freckle.”

  “It’s nothing you’d notice,” declared Betty, who thought Sara the most beautiful girl at Miss Rachel’s Seminary. “One look at your face and hair, and there’s not a man alive who would notice an old freckle, even if you had one, which you don’t.”

  “But I have sandy hair. And it’s full of curls,” lamented Sara, who had frequently bemoaned the fact that her magnificent head of hair wasn’t stick-straight and didn’t have more strength of color. “I look washed out and faded. How could anyone possibly admire me after seeing Symantha Eckkles?” Miss Eckkles was the resident femme fatale, pure white skin and flaming red hair; if Sara could have looked like anybody she wished, she would have been Symantha Eckkles.

  “Ten to one he won’t set eyes on Miss High-and-Mighty Eckkles,” concluded Betty, who was not in the least fond of that imperious boarder. “And it wouldn’t make any difference if he does, because he’ll be married to you.”

  “But he won’t love me.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Betty. “I’ll wager there’re not two men in a hundred who could look on your face and not fall in love with it.”

  “Not as long as it’s covered with freckles.”

  “You don’t have freckles, and your hair’s a lovely strawberry blonde color,” reiterated Betty. “From what Miss Adelaide says, this Lord Carlisle of yours is a great sportsman. I should think he’d be better pleased to find you’ve got a good seat in the saddle, than hair the precise color of flame. Besides, one look at your face, and he wouldn’t give a fig if your hair was sandy and full of kinks. You have that good healthy look of the outdoors.”

  “He’s looking for a wife, not a saddle horse,” Sara declared disgustedly; nevertheless, she was pleased with Betty’s compliment. Meribel Raymond had been an acknowledged beauty. She had bequeathed her high cheekbones, full lips, and slightly turned-up nose to her daughter, but Sara would have been the first to admit these features didn’t look quite the same on her. She turned away and picked up her best dress which Betty had laid out to pack.

  “I know this is the only face I’m ever going to have, but I shall insist upon more handsome clothes once I’m married,” she announced, throwing the offending garment down in disgust. “All this grey and black makes me look positively haggard. I want vermillion red and emerald green and the deepest purple.”

  “Well, you won’t get purple, for it’s reserved for royalty,” remarked the ever-practical Betty, “but I don’t see any reason you can’t have any other colors you fancy. In the meantime, I have to clear away this mess and get ready for the dressmakers. You can tell them about your Vermillion reds and emerald greens, but the color you’d best be concerned with is pearl white. That is, unless you propose to get married in the dress you’ve got on.”

  “I want the most beautiful wedding dress that was ever made,” rhapsodized Sara. “I want yards of lace, a train as long as the aisle, and a veil that reaches to the floor.”

  “Considering the time they have to cut and sew, you’ll be lucky if it looks like a dress,” Betty remarked prosaically. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why rich people are always in a hurry. What’s the use of having money if you’re forever rushing about like poor folks?”

  “Miss Adelaide says the Countess is very sick. The wedding would be put off a year if she died.”

  “Then again, there’s no point in letting your young man run loose any longer than you have to. If he’s half as wonderful as you believe, every female in London will be after him, and that includes the ones that already got husbands.”

  “I still can’t believe I’m going to be
gone from this place in just seven days,” Sara said. Her gaze narrowed and became more intent. “It’s just like a prison, and my visits to Estameer only made it seem worse. It was really beautiful there, and everyone was so nice,” she continued with a touch of melancholy. “The Countess spoiled me wonderfully, but I’ve always longed for someplace I could belong, not just visit. And I’m tired of everybody always planning my life and telling me what to do. Just think,” she added with a sudden eagerness, “I’ll soon have my own house with my own servants and my own money. I’ll be the one to decide when it’s time for dinner or whether I go out and who I’ll see.” Suddenly Sara’s face fell ludicrously. “I’ve never been taught how to run a house. I won’t know what to do,” she exclaimed, turning to Betty. “You’ll have to come help me.”

  “Lordy, Miss, you won’t be wanting a beanpole like me in your fancy house. You ought to have a French maid to pick out pretty dresses for you, show you the latest ways to fix your hair, and teach you things that will please your Lord.”

  “Are there special ways to please a man?” Sara asked innocently.

  “Lawks, Miss, don’t you know anything?”

  “I’ve hardly seen a man since Daddy died. Not unless you count Aggie Peterson’s brother, and I don’t want to know how to please him.”

  “But you must have learned something from your father.”

  “Like teasing him, and sitting on his lap, and demanding kisses?”

  “Lord have mercy! I guess I’ll have to go with you. There’s no telling what kind of a fix you’d get into, unless somebody’s there to keep an eye on you. You have no more sense of how to go on in the world than a baby.”

  “I do have sense,” insisted Sara, stung. “It’s just that I don’t know much about men.” Her brow creased, and then cleared almost at once. “Oh well, they can’t be so very different from women,” she said with a smile, dismissing her worries.

  Betty could only stare.

  “We’re going to have a wonderful time together,” Sara continued.

  “The first thing you’ve got to learn is that I’m your maid, not your friend,” Betty said, recovering quickly. “It’s not proper for you to be talking to me like you are now.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll have lots of grand friends to talk to. And you can talk to your husband when he’s home.”

  “But you’re my friend.”

  ‘That may be,” conceded Betty, “but it still doesn’t change the way nobs are supposed to act. And you’re going to have to make up your mind to like those fancy society folks. It’s them you’ll be seeing at parties and inviting to your balls. It’s them, and your husband, you’ll be studying to get along with, if you expect to have a happy life.”

  “I don’t know much about how to behave in fashionable society,” Sara admitted, as resolute as she was downcast, “but I won’t be dictated to. People have been telling me what to do all my life, and I’m tired of it.”

  “Suppose your husband tells you what to do?” asked Betty.

  “He won’t,” Sara replied instantly, but the proud face of Gavin intruded on her memory, and she was quite certain he would consider Betty an unsuitable maid and an unfit companion. Suddenly Sara realized that she knew very little about her future husband, and she ardently wished the Countess’s illness had not ended her visits to Estameer. She wanted to marry Gavin, but she realized there were many important questions she couldn’t answer, and that frightened her.

  “I will engage a maid to choose my dresses and fix my hair if I have to,” Sara stated firmly, “but I must have someone I can depend on.”

  “I was only a second maid when my last employer broke up household,” Betty protested. “They were never very fashionable. I don’t know anything about taking care of a countess.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about being one,” Sara responded. “And I don’t know anything about running a house, not even a small one. I expect the Earl would be terribly upset if things didn’t go just right. You have to come with me.”

  “Sure I will,” Betty consented cheerfully. “I don’t suppose Miss Adelaide wants me anyhow.”

  “Now I don’t feel nearly so nervous,” Sara said with a grateful smile.

  “Don’t you go telling yourself that you’re out of the woods yet,” Betty counseled her young mistress, already assuming her role as mentor. “I’ll do what I can, but there’s many a step between here and your coronet. You’re bound to have a few stumbles that’ll give you a skinned knee.”

  Sara had little opportunity to ponder Betty’s words during the remainder of that seemingly interminable day. She was almost immediately called into the reception room normally reserved for visitors. Miss Adelaide closed the doors against the curious, ordered Betty to fetch anything that was required, and then left Sara to the mercy of a stream of strangers who proceeded to poke, prod, and pommel her as heedlessly as if she were a straw-filled doll. Sara struggled to answer all the questions put to her, but long before the last person was ushered out the parlor, she had had numerous occasions to seek Betty’s advice.

  But now it was over until tomorrow, and as she snuggled down in her bed, there was a smile of pure happiness across her lips. It had been a wonderfully exciting day. She didn’t have to concern herself with china, linen, and silver—Gavin’s family would have more than enough, and then there was her mother’s which was being kept in storage—but the wedding dress was beginning to take shape, and she was all aquiver that such a wonderful creation would be made just for her.

  Sara had always known she was rich, but she had never felt rich until now. The other students went home during vacations where they could be pampered and spoiled, but Miss Adelaide treated all her girls like they were poor, and in the past eleven years, Sara had gradually forgotten what it was like to be the petted darling of her father and his household.

  Consequently, she had hardly known what to do when Miss Adelaide came to her room, just as Sara was preparing to go to bed, and set down an enormous box in front of her.

  “This was your mother’s jewelry,” she had said, opening the box so Sara could gaze at its contents. “It was given into my safekeeping when you came here. Until now you have had no need for anything more than a strand of pearls, but a married lady, especially a countess, will find a use for all these and more.”

  Sara was struck dumb by the number of jewels crammed into that box. “How can there be so much?” she asked without thinking. “Mama and Papa weren’t married very long.” A softened look came over Miss Adelaide’s face.

  “Your father never got over your mother’s death. He continued to buy fine pieces and put them away in this great box. There’s no telling how much would be here now, if he had lived to see this day.”

  Sara remembered the many hours her father had spent looking at the great portrait of her mother that hung in the library. That had been their sanctuary, a place where they could sit for hours, each alone with the other. She realized now that her father had spent those long hours with her mother and not with herself, and somehow she felt a little more lonely than before.

  Chapter 4

  Despite pain that grew more severe with every passing day, Georgiana Carlisle, Countess of Parkhaven, smiled bravely as her nurse placed extra pillows behind her back. She was about to receive a visit from her son, and she was determined he would not find her flat on her back.

  “Ye have no business putting yourself about for anyone as young and healthy as Master Gavin,” reproved Rose, the Countess’s nurse and personal servant for more than twenty years.

  “He should have come during the morning, when you were feeling stronger, but he had things to do,” sniffed Olivia Tate, the Countess’s equally long-term companion. “I’d own myself greatly surprised, if it was anything more pressing than a visit to his mistress or one of his horses.”

  “Don’t be forgetting yer medicine,” Rose said, handing the Countess a glass with a half-inch of liquid in the bottom. “Y
er tae have a goodly dose this time, or ye’ll not be able tae see anyone for the rest of the week.”

  Georgiana swallowed the bitter opiate without protest. She had swallowed so much in these last years, what difference could a little more make? Her malady, a Strange and inexplicable deterioration of the muscles, had come upon her after the birth of her only child, and it had been nearly fifteen years since she had been out of her bed for as much as three days in a row. The doctors were constantly at her to remain in London, where they could watch her more closely, but despite the considerable suffering as her condition worsened, Georgiana insisted upon returning to Scotland every summer.

  “Hand me my mirror, Olivia,” the Countess requested, straightening her cap. “I don’t want Gavin to know I haven’t been well.”

  “It’s about time he did,” Olivia said. “The very idea of him roistering about town, while you lie tied to that bed, is shameful.”

  “What would you have him do, come sit and hold my hand?” The Countess laughed. “That would soon ruin both our dispositions. I’ll not have my tiresome condition stand in his way. It’s not as though he could do anything to help me.”

  “He should be here,” Olivia insisted stubbornly.

  “I prefer that he be where he likes.”

  “Do you plan to keep him in the dark right up to the end?”

  “I don’t know,” Georgiana replied, unable to mask the pain of knowing that she was dying. “It depends on whether it will serve any purpose.” She wiped away a tear and forced the smile back on her face. “Now don’t either of you say anything to make me cry, while Gavin is here. I shall not forgive you if you do.”