The Wedding Trap

by Tracy Anne Warren

  She had not won the battle, Eliza realized, but at least she had scored a minor point, thanks to Violet.

  Greenleaf sniffed. “As you wish, your Grace.”

  Freed of its restraints, her heavy hair swung over her shoulders and down her back to her waist. She knew how it must appear, hanging straight and uninspiring as a mud-colored cape. Staring at her shoes this time, she struggled against the vulnerability that left her feeling naked and exposed. A woman’s unbound hair was a private matter, she had always thought, an intimacy to be shared only with her lady’s maid, her bosom female friends and, one day, if fate was willing, her husband. Yet here she stood with her hair revealed to all—or revealed at least to the trio currently gathered in the drawing room for the occasion.

  From beneath her lashes she peeked up at Kit and found him staring, an unreadable expression on his normally open, winsome face. Hurriedly she glanced away, her heart thrumming like a plucked violin string.

  Then Mr. Greenleaf stuck his hands in her hair again.

  “Thick as a horse’s tail,” the hairdresser proclaimed, gathering her tresses inside his fists before letting the skeins gradually slide free. “Soft, but manageable with the proper applications and techniques. Hmm, yes, this might be most interesting, inspiring even, like da Vinci given a blank canvas upon which to create.”

  He walked around her, then reached out and scooped her hair forward, draping it so the locks cascaded over her black-clad shoulders and breasts. “Up. Chin up, please. Shoulders back, spine straight so that I may properly observe you, otherwise I shall be unable to achieve a thing.”

  He marched several paces across the drawing room then spun to face her.

  “Up, I said.” He sighed. “Please, Miss Hammond, I must have your cooperation.”

  Cooperation, was it? All the little tyrant seemed to want so far was obedience. Then again, wasn’t that what her aunt had also always wanted? Unquestioning compliance in all matters both large and small. Perhaps that, as much as her present circumstances, was the reason for her wish to resist, and her ultimate decision not to do so. Long ago she had learned the futility of open defiance, taught beneath the painful slap of her aunt’s hard palm against her cheek.

  With his commands scraping along her nerves like a claw, she raised her chin.

  One fist planted on his hip, another raised to his mouth, Greenleaf raked her with his eyes. Abruptly, he tossed up a hand and waggled his fingers in the air. “Yes, I have it. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it immediately. We shall cut!”

  “Cut!” Eliza gasped, and took an instinctive step away, her hands flying to her head.

  “Cut Miss Hammond’s hair?” Kit stepped between her and the hairdresser, his dark brows furrowed. “I don’t know, seems rather extreme, don’t you think?”

  “Sometimes brilliance requires extreme measures.”

  Violet inserted herself into the conversation. “Yes, but even I know short hair is no longer the fashion these days. Perhaps some compromise could be made.”

  “Compromise?” The older man gave an imperious sniff. “The Great Greenleaf does not compromise. And once I am done, short hair will be the fashion, mark my words.”

  “Yes, but if she does not want you to cut her hair, then—” Kit said.

  “I thought I made myself clear from the outset, my lord,” Greenleaf interrupted. “I am an artist and must be allowed free reign. If you and the others insist upon interfering, there is no point in continuing today’s gathering. I shall leave and you may hire some other coiffeur. A talentless hack who will no doubt bow and scrape and do precisely as you suggest, giving you what you believe you want with far from satisfactory results. Now, I bid you adieu—”

  “Go ahead and cut it,” Eliza said.

  Three pairs of eyes flew toward her.

  “Your pardon?” Kit asked.

  Eliza raised her voice to be clearly heard. “I said cut it.” Mayhap Greenleaf was right, she thought. Mayhap in this situation boldness and daring were precisely what was needed most of all. She’d come this far, she decided. Why let fear convince her to toss her opportunities away? “Mr. Greenleaf seems convinced my hair will look better than it does now and if he is as good as he claims—”

  “It is not a claim. I am that good,” the little man declared, his slight chest puffed out like the boldest pigeon in the park.

  “Then I put myself in your hands. Pray do not disappoint me.”

  A long moment of silence descended, then a smile as wide as the English Channel creased his mouth. “Bravo! To work, then, to work. Where shall we set up? Certainly not here in this drawing room. Your bedchamber, perhaps?”

  “You may use my sitting room,” Violet stated in her most authoritative duchess voice.

  “Excellent.” The hairdresser clapped his hands twice and stalked toward the double doors. “My staff await me below. I shall send for them and we will begin anon.”

  Greenleaf departed, residual energy circulating in the room as if a whirlwind had just torn through.

  Violet crossed to Eliza, threaded a supportive arm around her waist. “Are you sure? You need not do this if you do not wish.”

  Eliza braved a look at Kit, met his green-gold gaze. “Is he as good as he says?”

  “The best, from everything I am given to understand. But every inch as temperamental as you have just witnessed. We can find another man, if you prefer, and I shall send Greenleaf on his way.”

  Eliza bit back a sigh, sorely tempted to give in to her trepidation and do that very thing. But hadn’t she agreed to this plan? Hadn’t she pledged herself to letting Kit help her? If this Greenleaf was a master at arranging hair, then she must take the risk and let him arrange.

  “I shall be fine,” she assured Kit and Violet with far more courage than she felt. “Besides, if it is dreadful I can always wear a wig while my own hair grows out,” she added with a wry smile.

  As the next three hours passed, Eliza began to wonder if she would indeed be forced to resort to such desperate measures.

  Expressly forbidden to look into a mirror, she had scant idea what the Great Greenleaf was doing to her hair. But what she couldn’t see she felt, often with a sense of escalating worry and horror. Even now a tinny aftertaste remained on her tongue from the lump of misery that had collected in her belly when the little man braided her long hair then retrieved a pair of shears from a nearby table.

  She’d felt the scissors clamp down like a voracious pair of jaws, heard them make a sawing noise before finally closing with a snick.

  Seconds later, her shorn braid landed in her lap like some just-skinned pelt, dark and every inch as dead.

  “A souvenir,” he’d cackled with heartless glee.

  She’d clutched it, stroking the soft plait as she fought back tears. But she had only a few seconds to mourn before he and his minions had set to work, vigorously scrubbing her hair with soap, rinsing it clean with fresh, warm water. After that, they had proceeded to slather her locks with one odd-smelling concoction after another, wrapping her hair in towels and rinsing in between. She didn’t know what they were using but imagined she caught whiffs of blackberry, coffee and something that reminded her of dried autumn leaves and bread mold.

  All the while, Greenleaf directed his staff around the room like a field marshal, ordering them hither and yon with precise, well-drilled movements. The series of decoctions at last complete, he draped a towel over her shoulders then worked her hair free of tangles using a fine-toothed ivory comb.

  She assumed the ordeal was coming to an end, when he surprised her yet again by calling for the scissors—new ones this time, gleaming silver and wickedly sharp.

  In a flurry of movement, he clipped and snipped, moving around her as if possessed, angling her head this way and that, pausing to stare as he drew bits of her hair through his fingertips, measuring and judging. She was starting to get drowsy by the time he stopped and roused her with a loud grunt of satisfaction. Clapping his hands, he call
ed for the curling tongs.

  She feared being singed by the heated metal rods but he worked with confident precision, her hair drying and curling all at once around her head. Handing the last nearly cold curling tong to his assistant, he reached for a pair of filigreed gold clips and placed them just behind her ears. He tugged at a pair of locks that drooped over her forehead and made one last inspection.

  With a grand flourish, he swept the towel from around her shoulders. “Et voilà! Perfection.”

  One of his helpers rushed forward, a large mirror at the ready.

  Eliza gazed into it and felt her mouth drop open as she stared in astonishment at her reflection.

  Kit snuggled deeper into his drawing room chair and tried to sleep. And to think he could even now be enjoying a jolly fine time with his cronies in Hampstead, watching fighters fight, betting and smoking and admiring the pretty demireps who came to such events on the arms of their latest protectors.

  Instead he sat, a prisoner of his promise to Violet while they awaited the results of Miss Hammond’s haircut. Who would have imagined such a simple thing would take so long? He prayed the results would not be a disaster. Surely anything Greenleaf did would be an improvement, and Kit had been assured by a number of excellent sources that the imperious little man was extremely talented.

  Greenleaf had better be, for what he charged. If Kit weren’t a lord and above dabbling in such low professions as Trade, he might have considered taking up the craft himself for that kind of blunt.

  He must have sighed—again—though he hadn’t heard himself do so, since Violet suddenly peered up at him from the book she sat reading.

  “Shall I go and check on her again?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “They’ll only toss you out as they have done thrice already. Imagine having the nerve to eject a duchess. Prideful, secretive bunch they are.”

  “Yes, you are right and I’m sure your mother would not stand for such treatment, but there was nothing for me to do but watch and wait anyway. I only hope poor Eliza is all right in there.”

  “Of course she is all right. If they were actually torturing her, I think we would have heard the screams by now.”

  Violet shot him a chastening look though he could see the humor playing at the corners of her mouth.

  His own lips curved upward as he showed his teeth in unabashed amusement. “So, since I have been consigned to remain home for the evening, what is Chef preparing for supper?”

  Violet was just beginning to tell him when Greenleaf appeared, striding grandly into the room. “My lord. Your Grace. Behold my newest creation.”

  A woman glided into the room behind the hairdresser and for a long, pronounced moment Kit did not know who she was. He stood and stared, then stared some more. If not for the familiar dour black dress she had been wearing earlier in the day, he suspected he would not have recognized her at all, the change was so marked.

  Was this striking bit of femininity really Eliza Hammond?

  He nearly blurted out the rude question but restrained himself at the last second.

  Violet meanwhile leapt to her feet and rushed toward her friend. “Oh, just look at you! Your hair is precious, simply precious. Oh, I love it!”

  Touching a tentative hand to her new coiffure, Eliza shared a shy but obviously excited smile. “Do you really? It is so different, I am still trying to reconcile myself to the alteration.”

  “It is magnificent,” Violet cooed, “just as Mr. Greenleaf promised. What do you think, Kit? Do you not adore it?”

  All eyes turned upon him.

  “Yes,” he said, a strange tightness in his throat. “It is quite fetching.”

  “It is more than fetching. It is divine,” Violet said.

  And it was divine, Kit silently agreed. The miracle they had needed. Since, quite beyond hope, a simple haircut had succeeded in turning Eliza Hammond into someone she had never been before—a strikingly attractive woman.

  Where before there had been a sallow, almost grim cast to her complexion, there lay now a fresh, unexpected radiance. A gamine spark coaxed forth by the short curls that frothed and cavorted about her cheeks and forehead in a kind of wild, pagan dance. Gone was the heavy severity of her long, straight hair, as though cutting it had unleashed some great weight, freed her of an old confining burden.

  And the color. The color was purely breathtaking, lush as a crisp autumn day. Her hair shone with vibrant life, glorious hints of red peeking out from beneath a mix of warm chestnut and burnt umber. How had Greenleaf achieved such a marvel? More to the point, why did the result leave Kit wanting to thread his fingers through those impish curls to see if they were as silky and seductive as they appeared?

  In his mind’s eye, he saw himself doing that very thing. Crossing to Eliza and running his hands through that crazy, impulsive mass of hair, caressing her skull, making her turn and smile, then laugh up at him in a gleeful way he had never before seen her laugh. Her gray eyes sparkling only for him.

  Unnerved by the fantasy, he quickly drove it away.

  What nonsense, he thought, giving himself a mental shake.

  Obviously he must be in greater need of a woman than he imagined. But if he had such a reaction, just think how other men might respond.

  Perhaps Violet was right. Perhaps this scheme of hers was not such a hopeless case, after all. Attired in the proper clothes, Eliza would look quite presentable. More than presentable, in truth. And with the promise of a hefty fortune to be had in exchange for a wedding ring, he surely could find her a suitable bridegroom.

  But then he looked again, watched her shuffle in place and clasp her hands in the folds of her skirts in bashful discomfort at being once more beneath the scrutiny of others. And they were but three people, and with the possible exception of Mr. Greenleaf, her friends.

  He caught himself in a sigh, realizing he had nearly forgotten the most difficult part of the task set before him.

  Her shyness.

  Her painful, abject, utterly withering shyness that left her all but paralyzed in moments when poise and boldness were essential for success. Her improved looks would help and help greatly but she needed to be able to do more than mutter a barely audible “Hello” then stare at her feet when she found herself in company.

  Still, this new hairstyle was a marked improvement. With the right instruction and encouragement from him, perhaps the goal could yet be achieved.

  At least that’s what he hoped. Lord, how he hoped.

  “Well now, miss, did I not tell you?” Greenleaf said. “A fair beauty you’ve become and in less than a day with my brilliant assistance. But you will need me to return on a regular basis from now on. Precisely four weeks from today I will be back to do everything anew. Such splendor must be maintained.”

  Eliza dipped her chin in a diffident nod. “Yes, sir. Four weeks from today.”

  “And not a single day more. Do not think of postponing our next appointment or you will find yourself suffering the most profound of regrets. Well, I am off, more amazing, splendorous feats to achieve.”

  Somehow the three of them managed to remain silent until the hairdresser was out of earshot, then they all began to laugh.

  Kit was wiping a tear from the corner of one eye a minute later when Adrian walked in. Tall and formidable, his brother possessed a commanding presence that instantly filled the room.

  “Do you know I just passed the most curious little fellow in the hallway,” Adrian remarked. “He was muttering something to himself about being bloody brilliant, your pardon, ladies, for repeating such language.”

  Adrian turned and smiled at Violet, then quite absently glanced at Eliza.

  He froze and stared, looking for a long instant as though he’d been smacked in the forehead by a cudgel. “Good God, Miss Hammond, whatever have you done to your hair!”

  Chapter Four

  “We shall have an afternoon dress in the primrose silk as well and another done in the dusty rose. Oh, and ridin
g habits, she must have riding habits. Three at least, one made of that divine Sardinian-blue figured merino, I believe. A second in that sweet forest green poplin and the last in the amaranthus gros de Naples.” Grinning like a child turned loose inside a confectioner’s shop, Jeannette Brantford O’Brien clapped her gloved hands together. “Oh, how darling they shall be, do you not agree, Miss Hammond?”

  Kit watched Eliza open her mouth to reply, but she didn’t get so much as a squeak past her lips before Violet’s twin rushed on, the countess mulling over the various trims and buttons available—the proprietress, Madame Thibodaux, all condescension and nodding agreement.

  From his spot on the modiste’s satin-covered, scroll-backed divan, Kit observed the proceedings, not the least bit surprised by the ongoing exchange—or lack thereof, in poor Eliza’s case—since Jeannette had barely let the other girl get in a word from the moment they entered the dressmaker’s shop. As for asking Eliza’s opinion, Jeannette had taken over the shopping expedition like a general laying siege to a citadel, Eliza no more than a raw recruit expected to learn and obey.

  As for himself, he was the superfluous male escort. Restraining a sigh, he reached for one of the pâté-topped toast points Madame Thibodaux’s assistant had offered not long after their arrival.

  Why did I ever agree to accompany the women this morning? he wondered as he ate the hors d’oeuvre. A man didn’t belong in a feminine bastion such as this. He raised his wineglass and drank, catching a fresh glimpse of Eliza’s face, her pallid cheeks smudged with raw color, and he remembered the reason. Remembered the anxious flash that had come into her eyes when she had realized Jeannette meant to accompany her to the modiste’s instead of Violet.

  Violet was laid low with a touch of stomach flu and regrettably confined to her bed. When Jeannette—who had arrived two days before, along with her husband, Darragh, their infant daughter, Caitlyn, and Darragh’s siblings Michael, Finn, Moira and Siobhan—heard Eliza’s shopping expedition was to be postponed, she had eagerly offered to help.