Free Vice by Jane Feather Page A

damp curls.
    “Mr. Dennison was most particular, miss,” Bella said, twisting her work-roughened hands in her apron.
    “How I wear my hair is no business of his … or, indeed, anyone’s.” She tossed the towel to the floor and shook her head vigorously like a dog coming in from the rain. “There, now if I brush it carefully and use plenty of pins, I might be able to subdue it.”
    Bella, still looking very unhappy, handed her the new chemise and carefully unrolled the stockings. Juliana put them on and stepped into the underpetticoat. She glanced at herself in the cheval glass and decided that her wildly tangled ringlets resembled Medusa’s snakes. Maybe sheshould leave them just as they were—unbrushed and unpinned. It ought to be enough to cause even the Duke of Redmayne to have second thoughts.
    She glanced with distaste at the brocade stays Bella was holding but turned her back so the maid could lace her. She associated the restrictive garment with long, miserable days when Lady Forsett had decreed she should be laced as tightly as she could bear. It was supposed to have improved both her bearing and her conduct, but it had only made her more defiant.
    She stood with her hands at her nipped-in waist, watching in the glass as Bella tied the tapes of the wide whalebone hoop. Juliana had never before worn anything but the most modest frame. Now she took a step, watching the hoop sway around her hips. It felt very cumbersome, and the prospect of maneuvering herself on those impossibly high heels struck her as laughable.
    She stepped into the quilted overpetticoat, and Bella dropped the jade-green gown over her head, hooking it at the back. Juliana slipped the ruffled engageantes over her hands, pushing them up to her elbows, where they met the flounces sewn to the fitted sleeves of the gown. She slipped her feet into the shoes and took a hesitant step.
    Then she took another look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes widened in astonishment. Apart from her disordered hair, she didn’t look in the least like herself. The stays pushed up her breasts so that they swelled invitingly over the décolletage of her gown, and the wide, swaying hoop emphasized the smallness of her waist. The costume gave her figure an air of enticing maturity that she found thoroughly disconcerting, although she was aware of a pleasurable prickle of excitement beneath the disquiet.
    But did she look like a harlot? She put her head on one side and considered the question. The answer was definitely no. She looked like a woman of fashion. There was something indefinable about the gown that set it apart from Lady Forsett’s London imitations—a touch of elegance in the fit or the style that could not be imitated.
    “Oh, miss, ye look lovely,” Bella said, darting around her, twitching at ruffles, adjusting the opening of the gown over the petticoat. “Now, if ’n ye’d jest let me do yer ’air,” she added wistfully, picking up a green velvet ribbon that exactly matched the gown.
    “No, thank you, Bella. I’ll do it myself.” Juliana picked up the hairbrush from the dresser. She tugged it through the tangled curls until they fell in some semblance of order onto her shoulders, then twisted them into a knot on top of her head, thrusting pins into the flaming mass with reckless abandon. She felt like a hedgehog at the end, and wisps still escaped from the knot. She knew that within five minutes the whole thing would begin to tumble of its own volition and she’d be spending the evening adjusting pins in a desperate and finally futile attempt to keep it in place; but she stubbornly decided that she’d rather do that than obey the instructions of Richard Dennison or the duke.
    “Will ye wear the ribbon as a collarette, miss?” Bella was still holding the velvet ribbon. “It would set off the neck of the gown.”
    Juliana acquiesced, and the maid looked somewhat happier as she pinned the ribbon around Juliana’s throat. The deep green