Free Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James

critiquing poetry, either, but that depended on how recently she had torn apart one of his new poems.
    At this, the marquess’s face would fal into tragic lines, and he would begin to mutter about the serpent’s tooth that was his only child. And if she begged a new gown, he never said no, but he would only pay for Mrs. Parthnel in the vil age. “If we don’t employ her, child, who wil ?” One of Mrs. Parthnel ’s peculiarities was that she refused to line a sleeve in anything but white cotton duck, and due to sewing problems she routinely encountered, the white general y showed.
    Even so, the faces of Jemma’s French maids were almost comical in their dismay when they beheld Roberta. Her gown had once been styled à la française, but Mrs. Parthnel had cut out the floating back pleats and used tapes to draw up the sides around into a clumsy polonaise instead. When Roberta objected to the way the waist bunched as it encountered the new bustle, Mrs. Parthnel cut out the bodice and replaced it with one of melon-colored cotton.
    Apparently, Roberta’s sense that melon-colored cotton and burgundy silk were not a perfect match was correct, if the rather piercing screams of the French seamstresses could be taken as evidence.
    Two seconds later she was stripped to her chemise and Mrs. Parthnel ’s gown was thrown in the corner. “For the beggars,” Jemma’s femme de chambre, Brigitte, had explained. “None of us could wear such a thing.”
    There was a cheerful little chorus of French agreements from Jemma’s other two maids. Formal gown after gown was brought out, discussed at length, and ceremoniously carried back to Jemma’s dressing room, which Roberta could only imagine as crammed with satins and silks.
    Brigitte had explicit directions from the duchess herself. “She must look like a young lady of the utmost innocence,” she dictated. After a half hour or so of gowns trundling from the dressing room to Roberta’s chamber, it became clear that very few of Jemma’s gowns were designed to achieve an innocent air.
    The few that were tried on Roberta quickly lost their claims to innocence, though Roberta thought they were exquisite.
    Even catching a glimpse of herself wearing one of Jemma’s dazzling French gowns made her heart sing. She didn’t look like a drab country mouse anymore: she looked beautiful . Visions of the Duke of Vil iers on his knees spun dizzyingly through her mind.
    “You are too generous in the front,” Brigitte stated, dispel ing that dream.
    Roberta peered down at her chest. She had nothing compared to the naked centerpiece, after al .
    “Is excel ent!” Brigitte said hurriedly. “The men, they are most fond of bosoms. Many bosoms!”
    Since Brigitte likely didn’t mean that men preferred women with more than two breasts, Roberta took this as a compliment. Unfortunately, her “many bosoms” made many of Jemma’s gowns unacceptable. She overflowed the bodices in a fashion that Brigitte kept declaring sensuelle, rather than innocente .
    Suddenly Brigitte clapped her hands. “The white silk moiré!” she announced.
    There was a little flurry of conversation. One maid ventured the fact that Jemma had labeled the gown ennuyeuse .
    “Boring,” Brigitte announced, “is just what is needed.”

    “Oh, but—” Roberta said unhappily. This was ignored, as had been every other comment she ventured to make.
    It certainly was a lovely dress, embroidered with tiny sprays of flowers that looked as if they’d been scattered by the wind.
    It showed rather less of her breasts than the others, because the neckline was a V, and trimmed with a smal ruffle of white lace.
    The sleeves were tight and ended in a gorgeous fril . It was exquisite, but Roberta thought that Jemma was right. It was boring.
    She had no say in the matter; al the other dresses, luscious in deep crimson and striped green, were whisked away, and Brigitte got down to the serious business of altering the white gown to