Free With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense by Amanda DeWees

have suited me far better, with my olive complexion and dark hair. Elegantly fashioned high-heeled slippers and cunning boots instead of my clumsy, much-scuffed shoes… fine silk and cotton lawn chemises and petticoats instead of coarse homespun…
    I realized I had been staring into space for some minutes, and when I came to myself and found Atticus watching me I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. “I beg your pardon,” I said in mortification. “You must think me just as shallow as your society misses for losing my head so at the prospect of pretty clothes. I confess I have the weakness of my sex for adorning myself, and I have been unable to indulge that vice until now.”
    His chuckle was reassuring. “I think no less of you for having an eye for beauty. And every jewel deserves a fine setting. I believe the modistes will be able to guide you toward what is most suited to your new standing, but don’t let them bully you. A touch of originality will not come amiss. The future Lady Telford need not follow fashion blindly; she may set it.”
    Lady Telford. How astonishing to realize that this would be my role. Not that I would inhabit it longer than was strictly necessary before going into retirement in comfortable independence. But I wondered how my mother would have felt had she known what position I was being singled out for, and I swallowed hard. She might have been pleased by this windfall, and it struck me as terribly unjust that she would never know of it.
    My mother… an unresolved anxiety darted back into my head, routing sorrow. “What if your father recognizes me? And the servants? There must still be some remaining from my time there, and I’ll have been fixed in their memory because of the circumstances of my departure, I’ve no doubt.”
    “The solution is simple: you must purchase a wardrobe so fine as to dazzle them into gazing only at the clothes and not on your face. The tactical deployment of taffeta, aided by the strategic implementation of satin and ribbons.”
    “You are teasing me.”
    “A husband’s privilege, surely. But I mean no offense by it.” His merry expression grew thoughtful. “To be honest, I suspect that my father would have difficulty dredging up the memory of any servant’s face save his valet’s, and then only after strenuous thought. He shall have no reason to associate my new bride with anyone on his staff, especially when she is turned out like a woman of wealth and birth. I’m entirely serious about your providing yourself with all the appropriate adornments. I have a substantial line of credit, and I wish for you to avail yourself of it without hesitation.”
    “You are too kind,” I said awkwardly. I was not sufficiently accustomed to kindness to know how to accept it gracefully. “Oh, but there is one person who won’t be swayed by fine feathers. I shall need a maid—and if anyone is situated to know all of a lady’s secrets, it is her personal maid. How are we to prevent her from giving it out below stairs that her mistress’s marriage is no more than show?”
    This was clearly a new idea, and he frowned over it. “I’ll give the matter some thought. Have you no acquaintance we could hire, someone whose loyalty will be with you rather than the household?”
    I sifted through my small catalogue of acquaintance who might be suited to such a role. Perhaps one of the lesser handmaidens in the theater, or my landlady’s younger niece, might do—but could I rely on either’s silence and loyalty? I was not much given to close friendships, after having been so roundly snubbed by my own set at Gravesend and having held back from what seemed to me the dangerously unrestrained camaraderie of the theater, so the question was a perplexing one. As I considered it, Atlas’s voice broke in on my thoughts.
    “I must be off, I fear; now that you have so amiably consented to be mine, there is much I must attend to. A license, for a start.”
    “Of course,” I said,