“If Madame Rocque can have one made up so quickly, I might wear it to Lady Hamilton’s ball,” Helene said.
“That’s not for two weeks! Believe me, Madame Rocque will make you a gown with two days’ notice at most, given what just occurred in her own establishment.”
“But I’m working on a new waltz and it’s going well. I don’t want to lose my direction with this sort of foolishness.” Helene rose and stood before the mirror again. “Do you truly think that I must discard my corset?”
“Absolutely.”
“What will I do with my hair?”
“Why don’t you wear it down?”
“It’s dreadfully unfashionable,” Helene said dubiously. She pulled a number of pins from her hair and undid her braids. When she was finished, she was surrounded by a shimmering curtain of hair falling, waterfall-like, to the top of her legs.
“Goodness,” Esme said faintly. “It certainly is long, isn’t it?”
“Braids make it a manageable length.”
“It’s exquisite.”
“Rees loved it,” Helene said, narrowing her eyes. “I do believe it was the only thing he liked about me. He—” She stopped. “I’ll cut it off.”
“Cut it off?” Esme was astounded. Helene’s great woven mound of braids was an integral part of her regal, calm character.
Helene nodded. “All of it.” She drew her hands through sleek masses that fell like cornsilk. “Now.”
“What?”
“Madame Rocque must have a pair of scissors,” Helene said. She flung the door open. Madame had left a girl in the hallway. “Fetch a pair of scissors!” she commanded, and the girl fled.
“No!” Esme gasped. “You cannot do such a thing without forethought. We’ll send a footman to request that Monsieur Olivier attend you this afternoon. Helene!”
Helene grabbed the shears from the girl.
“You!” Esme said, waving at the maid, who was standing, mouth agape, staring at the beautiful woman about to chop off her hair. “Send about to Monsieur Olivier, Number Twelve, Bond Street. Beg him to come here immediately, with kindest compliments of Lady Bonnington. Tell him we have a challenge for him. Did you get that?”
The young girl fled.
Even as Esme turned back to Helene, the first great sheaf of hair fell to the ground. And Helene was already hacking off another chunk.
“Oh lord,” Esme moaned. “You never do anything by half measures, do you?”
“Why should I?” Helene said. She didn’t look like a Danish queen now, remote and icy cold, but more like a belligerent English dairymaid. “Why should I keep all this hair? Do you know, it just occurred to me that I haven’t cut it in the past because of some misguided sentiment leading back to Rees’s fondness for my hair? Rees, who dragged his inamorata home so that he could have his way with her in the middle of the day? Rees? The hell with Rees!”
“Helene!” Esme gasped. She was quite certain that she had just heard the very first profanity ever to leave Helene’s mouth.
“And the same to all of them!” Helene said gleefully, wielding her shears. “I don’t care what men think of my hair, do I? All I want is their participation. Their cooperation!” She sliced off the last hank of hair and threw it to the ground. “There! What do you think?”
Helene’s hair stuck out around her shoulders like the stubble from cornstalks left on a harvest field. She was shaking her head and grinning like a fool. “Oh, Esme, it’s wonderful not to feel all that weight on my head. I had no idea! I would have done this years ago.” A moment later she pulled Madame Rocque’s gown over her head and began unlacing her corset. The corset hit the floor, followed by her chemise, and the gown went back over her head.
A mere ten minutes later, a sharp knock sounded on the door and Monsieur Olivier trotted into the room. He was small and round and very French. His own hair was pomaded and brushed in such a fashion that it rose straight from his forehead like the curl of a wave.
“Where is zee challenge?” he said, but his voice died as he caught sight of Helene.
To Esme’s mind, if anyone could repair what Helene had just done to her hair, it would be Maurice Olivier.
He moved toward Helene, delicately kicking a sheaf of hair away with the toe of his boot. “I gather you committed this outrage yourself, my lady?”
Helene tossed her head and the chopped ends of her hair flew about her shoulders. “If you’re going to be impudent about my hair, Monsieur Olivier, I shall summon another stylist.”
“That would be your downfall,” Olivier remarked, prowling about her for all the world like a stout tiger, who has cornered a pullet. “I am the only man in London who may—may—be able to recapture your natural beauty, my lady.”
“What do you think of your gown now, Madame?” Helene demanded.
Everyone looked. Madame Rocque’s creation was made of rose-colored silk, so delicate that it fell to the ground like a stream of water. It was formed of two layers, drawn tight under the breasts with silver ribbons. Halfway to Helene’s knee the upper layer of silk was caught back by small clusters of embroidered roses. It had a fairly high neck, trim around the neck of a slightly darker color and short sleeves. In all…unexceptionable. Appropriate for a debutante, really. Except…except…
Except it was almost transparent.
Where two layers clung together, one could see nothing other than the outline of Helene’s body, which was revealed to be slender but not angular. She had curves: her waist curved in, and her breasts curved out. The thin silk of Madame Rocque’s gown hugged each of those curves in a way that revealed them to be deliciously rounded.
And then where only the underskirt was revealed, below her knees, one could see everything: Helene’s delicate ankles, the garter holding up her stockings, the delicate shape of her knees.
Esme blinked. She suddenly felt fleshy and over-plump.
“I gather zat we are considering something of a major reconstruction, are we, Madame?” Olivier asked.
Helene laughed. “Something along those lines.”
“Never fear,” he said, clashing his scissors. “I am the only man in London who is up to zis challenge! Now, if you would have a seat.”
Helene sat down. She was feeling a little bit daunted. She had spent so many hours—nay, years!—of her life tending to her hair: washing it, combing it, drying it endlessly before the fire. And in two seconds, it was gone. Truly, Rees was right when he said that she had a monstrous temper. More and more hair was flying to the floor. Helene tried not to look. She concentrated on the gloriously weightless feeling of her head.
“What are you thinking of doing, Monsieur Olivier?” Esme asked.
“We must be daring,” he announced. “It is zee only way. Courage!”
“How daring?” Helene asked, feeling a qualm.
“Very daring! It is zee only way to recover your beauty. More audacious than Lady Caroline Lamb ever dared to be.”
Esme giggled. “Really, Monsieur Olivier! Didn’t that young woman chop off hair from…another place and send it to Byron?”
Helene looked at her, scandalized, but Monsieur Olivier just chuckled. “An indiscreet young woman, but she did have acceptable hair. It’s been all of five years since I gave her that short hair, and now I’m tired of making frizzled ringlets, day in and day out. With luck you will start a rage, Lady Godwin, and I can shear off hundreds of tired curls in the next few weeks.”
Helene tried not to look at the mirror. More and more of her hair flew from the scissors. An hour later, Helene didn’t know whether to faint or applaud. Her hair was short now. Truly short. It clung sleekly to her head until her jawbone, where little wispy curls softened the angles of her cheekbones and emphasized her eyes.
“Oh, Helene,” Esme said in an awed voice.
“Zhee looks spectacular!” Monsieur Olivier said in a smug voice. “Only I could have done this for you, Madame! You see, I have given you zee appeal.”
“Appeal?” Helene said, still sta
ring at herself.
“You look utterly delicious,” Esme put in. “You are going to turn heads with a vengeance!”
“As long as I can turn one head, that’s enough,” Helene said, staring at herself. In truth, she looked like another woman: a bold, impudent, sensual sprite of a person.
“He will be yours!” Monsieur Olivier kissed the tips of his fingers. “Believe me, Madame, zere is no man in London who will not be at your knees!”
“Good,” Helene whispered. “I hope they all are.”
“Rees as well?” Esme said with an eyebrow raised.
“Only so that I can spurn him,” Helene said firmly. “But yes, Rees as well!”
Six
With the Wave of a Wand
Hyde Park
“And then she said what?” Rees’s friend Darby was utterly fascinated by the debacle of the dressing room.
“Lina announced, loudly, that I must wish to return home because I was overcome with desire at the sight of her in that gown, and had to have my way with her,” Rees said gloomily. “Which is rubbish. I haven’t been to her room in weeks. Months perhaps.” Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time.
“Why on earth not?” Darby asked, startled.
They were walking in the woody part of Hyde Park, where one never saw the fashionable sort of gentlemen. Rees kicked a trailing strand of faded wild roses to the side but didn’t answer.
Darby stopped and chose a coral bud to put in his buttonhole. He was wearing a morning costume of bronze broadcloth. The rosebud looked strawberry-pink against his chest, perhaps just a shade pinker than he would have desired.
“I don’t know,” Rees said. Darby wasn’t looking at him, just shaking back his deep lace cuffs and examining all the rosebuds on the bush, so Rees knew he was burning with curiosity. You couldn’t be friends since you were both in short coats without being able to read each other’s minds. “The prospect simply isn’t appealing anymore. I’d move her out, but I need her voice to help me with this opera.”
“Appealing? Just when does making love to a woman with a body like Lina’s lose appeal?”
“I must be getting old,” Rees said, kicking a stick off the path. It hit a mulberry tree that dropped a glossy spray of water over them.
“For Christ’s sake, Rees,” Darby said, examining his shoulders to see whether the water had left stains. “Why we can’t take a civilized promenade around the duck pond, I’ll never know.”
“I like it here. At least we don’t meet any simpering matrons.” They walked on.
“How’s Henrietta?” Rees asked, after a bit. He liked Darby’s wife immensely. In fact, now that he thought about it, his disinclination to knock on Lina’s door had started around the time that Darby found Henrietta. Not that he desired Henrietta for himself, not that. He just wanted…he wanted the fire that burned between Henrietta and Darby.
Sure enough, a smile curled on his friend’s lips. “She is being very cool to me at the moment.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a dandified fool,” Darby said, without any sign of regret. “I wouldn’t pick up Johnney after he’d been sick all over his crib and was wailing.”
Rees gave an involuntary shudder. “Why on earth would she wish you to do such a thing?”
“The nursemaid had her half-day,” Darby explained. “You know Henrietta dislikes allowing the servants to care for the children. So she was bathing the girls and we heard Johnney being sick. So I went to have a look, but of course I didn’t pick him up, not while I was wearing velvet. I was just taking off my coat when she came running in, acting as if a few screams from the lad would be mortal.”
Rees couldn’t think what to say to that. He’d rather slay himself than pick up a child covered with vomit. “Doesn’t Johnney seem to cast up his accounts rather frequently?” he inquired, more to be polite than anything else.
“Too much,” Darby said. “He’s seven months now. He’ll never get married at this rate.”
“Fortunate for him.”
“So have you seen your wife since your near encounter in Madame Rocque’s establishment?”
“No. But I gather I’ll see her tonight.”
“Don’t tell me that you are venturing into polite society?” Darby asked, greatly entertained.
“Lady Hamilton’s ball.”
“Why are you going there? Debutante sort of affair, isn’t it? We’ve declined.”
“Because that wretched friend of Helene’s, the one who married Sebastian Bonnington, wrote me a note and said that my wife intends to go to the ball specifically in order to acquire an heir, and that if I wish to join in the competition, I should make an appearance.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. A chestnut tree dropped cream-colored petals on their hair and Darby didn’t even notice. “What?”
“You heard me. Helene told me she wanted a child, but I had no idea that she would go to such lengths.”
“She told you that she wanted a child? What did you say?”
“I told her that she ought to resign herself to the truth of the matter, which is that our marriage is not going to produce offspring,” Rees said irritably. “It never occurred to me that Helene would decide I had given her carte blanche to put a cuckoo in my nest! This is Helene we’re talking about here. From the way she’s harped at me over the years, you’d think reputation was the most important thing in the world.”
“My God,” Darby said slowly. “She must have a crack in the upper story.”
“She had that years ago.”
“But she’ll be ruined!”
“I can only think that she doesn’t care about her reputation anymore.” Rees kicked a rock across the path. “Perhaps I should have shown her more consideration. I would have divorced her, if she had made a convincing case for it.”
“So you’re going to Lady Hamilton’s ball….” Darby said, clearly still in shock.
“Have to, don’t I? I’ve been thinking about it for two days, ever since I got the note from Esme Bonnington.”
“And that’s an odd thing,” Darby put in. “Why on earth did Esme let you know of Helene’s plans?”
Rees shrugged. “She didn’t explain herself. But I can’t let Helene bed just anyone and make the child into my heir. Tom is my heir, obviously, and while he seems to be rather slow in the marital department, presumably he’ll get around to producing a child at some point.”
“Yes, but—”
“I can’t allow her to give me a cuckoo. But if she’s that determined, I can”—he paused and considered his words for a moment—“be of assistance.”
“So you’ll—what are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell her that if she wants a child that much, she’ll have to take me. It’s unfortunate that the process is going to be about as much fun as going to a tooth-drawer.”
Darby blinked. “I didn’t know it was that bad between you.”
“In the bedchamber it was.”
It was Darby’s turn to stay silent. He couldn’t imagine being married to someone under those circumstances. They walked along, and Darby decided that he would go home and lure Henrietta into their chamber for a little dalliance. They were in danger of forgetting how fortunate they were.
“I must be cracked myself,” Rees suddenly said. “I’m actually thinking of trying to get her back in the house.”
Darby gaped. “Going respectable in your old age?”
“Hell, no. I need help with the opera,” Rees said grimly. “It’s garbage. I was thinking of trading my assistance in creating offspring for Helene’s help with the scores.”
“Are things that bad with the current piece?”
“Worse. It’s overdue by months, and I have nothing worth hearing. Nothing.”
“Helene will murder you if you put it so bluntly,” Darby said after a moment. “You’ll have to emphasize the fact you want your children under your own roof. But what will you do about Lina?”
&n
bsp; “She’s bored to death with me. I’ll give her an allowance so she needn’t take another lover. She has a quite prudish streak, and I dislike the idea that she might have to take on a curmudgeon like myself.”
One thing Rees hadn’t told Darby was that he was going to the ball as much for Helene’s sake as for his own. Who the hell would want to sleep with Helene? Likely she would be humiliated by discovering that gentlemen wanted a ripe little body and a come-hither manner when it came to dalliance. They didn’t want a stiff scarecrow with a pile of braids bigger than a halo, and a reputation to match. True, Helene somehow inveigled Fairfax-Lacy to follow her about last summer, but then he’d up and married another woman within a few weeks. That can’t have been easy for Helene.
It was almost amusing to realize that he was feeling both guilty and protective. Perhaps his wife’s reckless wish to destroy her own reputation was his fault. If they were still living in the same house, this child business likely would have worked itself out in the normal way, years ago. And estranged though they might be, Rees couldn’t stand the idea that his wife would be rebuffed at the ball. She was no Cinderella, after all, with a fairy godmother waiting in the wings.
He would just have to wave his own magic wand. He found himself grinning at that, and decided not to share the joke with Darby. They’d never been the kind of friends who sat around trading bawdy jokes and hawing with laughter. And it didn’t seem polite, not in reference to his own wife.
Seven
Undergarments Are Vastly Overrated
Helene wasn’t sure she could do it. It was one thing to stand half-naked in a small dressing room, with Esme, Monsieur Olivier, and Madame Rocque enthusiastically applauding. But it was quite another story to appear in public wearing a costume not much heavier than a nightrail. Although the bottom layer of rose silk was just slightly darker than the top, individually, each layer was transparent. Helene’s entire body was on display. The silk was so fine that it clung and then swirled, just barely concealing her most private areas.
The only saving grace of the whole situation was that her mother was paying a visit to friends in Bath. Helene could just imagine her reaction to Madame Rocque’s gown. She would have locked Helene in the wine cellar rather than let her be seen in such a state. This gown didn’t hide her lack of breasts; it put that lack on display for all to see. Color rose in Helene’s cheeks at the memory of the only person who had seen her unclothed, in her adult life. Her husband had laughed out loud the first time he saw her breasts.