Free Tilly by M.C. Beaton

her around two-inch inserts of white satin. The gown had also been designed to cover an 1880s bustle, and there was an agonizing search of the attics before the right undergarment was found.
    Despite Tilly’s protests, white enamel makeup, complete with two circles of rouge, one on either cheek, was considered de rigueur for a bride.
    Tilly was poked and pushed and turned and pinned and painted and frizzed and finallydrowned in Parma Violets, a perfume that always made her sneeze.
    The seamstress, the lady’s maid, and a bevy of other female servants who had been dragged in to help finally ceased their efforts and stood in a circle, staring at Tilly in satisfaction.
    They had turned Tilly into a fashion plate—but a fashion plate of the 1880s, not the present early 1900s. Not a hair was out of place. The creamy folds of old lace were swept into a large bustle at the back. A little coronet of artificial white flowers held a short veil of fine and priceless Valenciennes lace. A huge bouquet in a silver filigree holder was put into her white-gloved hands and she was propelled toward the door. Between the old-fashioned dress and the enameled mask of her makeup, Tilly looked like a pretty but lifeless waxwork from Madame Tussauds.
    But to Mrs. Plumb and the colonel and all the servants lined up at the foot of the stairs, Tilly looked perfect. Compliments were showered on her, all of which Tilly accepted with gruff gratitude.
    But as Tilly walked up the aisle, the marquess’s relatives let out gasps of delighted shock and dismay. What a fright the awful girl looked! How clumsily she walked with thosegreat mannish strides! The marquess gave his bride a warm smile. He had wanted to shock his relatives and dear Tilly was doing just that,
splendidly
.
    All Tilly’s doubts and fears were swept away the minute the marquess bent to kiss her. His lips were cool and firm, her own, warm and naively passionate.
    She walked down the aisle on his arm, oblivious of the hard stares, deaf to the spiteful comments. The “Wedding March” boomed triumphantly from the organ loft and the bells in the Norman tower crashed and clanged their joyous message to the world.
    The Honorable Matilda Burningham had made it.
    She had captured the best-looking man in London.
    She was a marchioness.
    “I feel like Cinderella,” said the Marchioness of Heppleford shyly.
    No response from her husband.
    Tilly sighed and looked out of the window of the carriage to where the great pile of Chennington lay with its medieval spires and battlements standing up against a purple-black sky. The sun was dying behind thethunder-laden clouds in fiery splendor, gilding the gray stone of Chennington with a strange light.
    In the calm before the storm, the park through which they were driving seemed extra green, the heavy old trees standing motionless in the sultry heat.
    A white swan bent its long neck to study its reflection in an ornamental lake beside the drive, and the weeping willows seemed to twine branches with their mirror counterparts in the flat black water. A marble rotunda gleamed white on its grassy hillock.
    The marquess shifted uneasily in the carriage. What a farce of a wedding! That terrible butler, Jumbles, murdering the names of the guests with gay abandon (and the marquess was sure it was neither age nor eccentricity on the part of the butler but hell-inspired mischief that had prompted him to announce the acid Duchess of Dereham as “the Dutchman of Drearie”), and Tilly, chattering and romping like a schoolgirl.
    He had promised the delicious Cora that he would be back in her arms by tomorrow at the latest. He would catch the Channel steamer from Southampton this evening, he decided. It was his wedding night, but then, this was not a normal wedding and Tilly wassuch a strange girl, she would probably find nothing amiss.
    The staff of Chennington was lined up in the great hall under the moldering banners of dead and gone Hepplefords to greet the young