Free An Affair of the Heart by Joan Smith Page B

both discomfited parties a whole day—Friday—to recover from the fiasco of the expedition to Needford.
     

Chapter Six
     
    On Tuesday evening Mrs. Wanderley had written to Lady Siderow regarding the arrival of the Marquis of Claymore at the Abbey, among other less important matters. As Lady Siderow’s usual gay round of activities was curtailed by the closing of the Season, her mama had her answer on Saturday morning. She wrote a good clear hand, and didn’t stoop to crossing her pages as her husband might frank her letters for her, saving the recipient the expense. “C’s arrival,” she wrote, “would be the result of his having been turned down by Miss G. It is one of the on dits of London that she had an offer from him. He even tried to get her to dash for the Border. What a hullabaloo that would have been! Well, he is free, Mama, and I wish Wanda luck, if that is what you have in mind. Keep a sharp eye, though, or your little girl might be fleeing off to Gretna Green—a high price to pay, even for the title of marchioness.” The epistle continued for two pages of lesser news, but it was only the part concerning Claymore that was conveyed to Wanda.
    “There will be none of this Gretna Green for you, milady,” her mother adjured strictly.
    “Pooh. He doesn’t even like me. He is still in love with Miss Golden, and only trying to forget her.”
    “That shows a streak of common sense that I find particularly pleasing. You will wear your white spangled gown to the assembly, love. And I think a more demure hair style might be better than that Meduse thing you wore the other night. Pulled back, with ringlets over your shoulder, and perhaps a rosebud entwined around the knot.If your papa were not such an old skint with his blooms, he might let us have one of his curst orchids for a corsage, but there is no point in asking him.”
    Wanda took some interest in this discussion, though it was not Claymore she was hoping to impress with her toilette. George would naturally be there too—with old redhead Langdon, like as not, wearing a pink gown.
    Receiving no parental help in the matter, Ellie decided to adopt Wanda’s Meduse hair style, and spent a miserable Saturday afternoon with her hair done up in papers. She selected a pale green Italian crepe gown that had been given her by Lady Tameson on her last visit, and while it fit like a glove, it was of a more daring décolletage than she normally chose. She was in some trepidation when she entered the Green Saloon, for she was not at all sure Mama would approve. But it was no such a thing.
    “Why Ellie!” her mother said, looking with pleasure at the fashionable picture her daughter presented. “How charming you look. Doesn’t she look nice, Wanda? The hair style suits you very well. I told you that washerwoman way you wore it was ugly. Only see what an improvement the papers have made. And the gown—Caroline’s old green, is it? Very dashing. Fits to a nicety, love. You ought to have some bit of jewelry with it. I’ll get my little pearls.”
    She intercepted the butler in the hall, and sent him to ask a maid to fetch her seed pearls. They were duly fastened around Ellie’s neck, and her outfit was ready. Even Wanda, Mrs. Wanderley thought in surprise, did not look so very much finer than Ellie when she was dolled up a bit. No problem with little Ellie, after all. Next Season she would do very well for herself. Another title—not a doubt of it. How Marie Homberly would writhe in envy.
    There was no question of Adam leaving his flowers long enough to accompany them. He was in the process of crossing an epidendrum with his cattleya, and must remain on the premises, like a midwife at a cross-birth. Abel, however, was more than happy to oblige them, and at an hour deemed suitably late to make a grande entrance, Mrs. Wanderley shepherded her charges in, and had the exquisite pleasure of seeing every female eye in the room turn green.
    A veritable rush of