Free Edith Layton by How to Seduce a Bride

and her maid were staring at her with identical expressions of wonder. But the gown now looked wrong to her, theatrical and overdone compared to what they wore: the maid in her simple gray frock, Helena in one of her usual modest, high-necked lavender day dresses. The maid looked dazed, and so did Helena. But her new companion, Daisy thought, also looked a little wistful. She realized why. She’d spent too many years wanting what she couldn’t have not to know what she was seeing.
    Daisy shook her head to clear it. Then, to make her audience laugh, she overdid it, shaking her head like a puppy coming out of the water. She grinned. “Too right! Trust you to put your finger on it. It’s too magnificent! I can’t wear this tonight. I don’t know if I ever can, unless I’m invited to a coronation—as the queen. I’ll wrap it in tissue and put it away until I do have a reasonto wear it, some very special occasion. Tonight I’ll wear a gown I had made up before I came here. It’s rose-colored, too, and very pretty, actually, and I have a gold paisley shawl to make it livelier. But this?”
    She raised her arms and held them straight out from her shoulders. “I’m afraid to move in this! I feel like a frog in a silk purse, mucking it up just by letting my skin touch it. I don’t want to get it dirty or damp, I don’t know how to live in it! The viscount was right: It isn’t for me, no matter how it’s dressed up or down. And you know what?” She snapped her fingers. “ That for the viscount’s taste! I have to live my life as well as be fashionable. We’ll go back tomorrow and pick out some simple gowns that I can wear without worrying.”
    “But you’ve already ordered some,” Helena pointed out.
    “Well, so I have, but we also have to get something else. You need new gowns, too!” She saw her companion’s face grow still and added quickly, “Not that there’s anything wrong with what you wear, but if I’m to look splendid—and every gown Madame Bertrand makes is splendid—then you must, too. I’m paying for it,” she went on, raising a hand. “Think of them as uniforms. Well, a fine thing if I go wafting in prinked to my ears, and let you look plain. I’ll look like a terrible vain creature, trying to keep you from being noticed, because you’re very pretty, you know.”
    Helena laughed. “How could anyone look at anyone but you? With your face and hair? No one sees any other female when you’re in the room. And anyway,” she added more quietly, “a companion isn’t supposed to look dashing.”
    “Why not?” Daisy asked, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t you look well? Please don’t argue.” She raised her arms again. “But please help me out of this beautiful thing right now, because I’m afraid to take a step in it!”
     
    Daisy was afraid to step into the earl’s house that evening, too, but she wouldn’t let anyone know it. She wore a fine gown, if not a spectacular one. Her hair was drawn up in a cluster of curls, a simple cameo that she’d bought the other day hung on a spiderweb-thin chain at the base of her throat; her slippers were new, too. From her new underthings to the new cape on her back, there was nothing to be ashamed of.
    “You hesitate?” Helena asked her.
    “Well, I don’t know who’ll be here,” Daisy whispered. She smiled. “Expect the worst and get the best,” she said with false bravado. She raised her head and the hem of her cape, and walked into the earl’s front hall, Helena Masters a respectful two steps back. Geoff had been in Port Jackson. He knew how she’d lived. She doubted he’d ask any of Tanner’s friends here. Geoff Sauvage had been a popular fellow, with asmile for everyone, but he and his boys had been close to the nicest people there. Not one of Tanner’s cronies had been that.
    Even so, apart from a few female friends, there was no one Daisy yearned to see, and a lot more she hoped never to