He shook his head. “The cost need not concern you. I will cover any expenditure.”
“No, you will not!” exclaimed Susannah, much shocked. “I may be an American, but even in America we know better than to let a man buy clothing, or—or anything of an intimate nature—for a woman who is not his wife!”
“Not yet his wife,” he amended. “Let me remind you that in addition to being your betrothed, I am also your cousin. No matter how distant the blood tie, I am still the head of your family, and no one will think it in the least unusual for me to see that you are properly outfitted. Indeed, it would be thought very shabby of me to do otherwise.”
Susannah was not at all certain whether to trust him on this but, having no other choice in the matter, elected to let the matter drop until she might put the question to her cousin Jane. In truth, she found Cousin Jane’s quiet elegance rather intimidating. Seated beside her in the carriage, Susannah felt decidedly frumpy, never suspecting that Jane had chosen her own rather sober carriage dress in order to diminish, as much as possible, the difference in her own attire and that of her American cousin.
“I hope you will find this enjoyable,” Jane said brightly, as they set out. “I well remember when the Dowager Lady Ramsay—Richard’s mother, that is—engaged me as her companion, and brought me to Madame Lavert to be outfitted. I was quite poor, you know, and had little besides the clothes on my back. I felt like Cinderella!”
Susannah returned a mechanical smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere. “Miss Hawthorne—”
“Cousin Jane,” corrected that lady.
“Cousin Jane, then, my lord—that is, Cousin Richard intends to pay for any clothing I buy. Is that—well, is it quite proper?”
“I assure you, Richard would not offer to do such a thing if there were anything untoward in it. He is very aware of his position, you know—as well as yours—and would do nothing that might expose you to scandal or censure. You may be easy on that head.”
In fact, it had been Lord Ramsay who had insisted that the ladies take the closed carriage for the short drive to the village, thus denying the villages the opportunity to gawk at the future Lady Ramsay before he was ready to present her to them. Still, the sight of the baronial carriage, its door emblazoned with the family crest, was enough to evoke inquisitive glances from the villagers, whose curiosity was rewarded by a glimpse of unruly red curls and a retroussé nose pressed to the glass.
The village of Lower Nettleby was fortunate in its dressmaker, for Madame Lavert, having fled Paris at the height of the Terror after losing most of her noble clients to the guillotine, had been left with so violent a dislike for large cities that she had eschewed London and settled instead in this rural corner of Hampshire. A birdlike little woman with a sharp chin and a pointed nose, she now enjoyed the patronage of a limited yet lucrative clientele. Upon being introduced to Susannah, she fingered that young lady’s coarse skirts and unfashionable cotton bodice while declaiming in voluble French, the only words of which Susannah understood were “l’Américaine gauche.”
At the end of this tirade, she addressed Susannah with a flurry of hand gestures, directing her to the small room at the rear of the shop, where she might disrobe. After allowing her new client sufficient time for this operation, she descended upon her with a dressmaker’s tape, with which (it seemed to Susannah) she measured every part of her body which she might conceivably wish to cover with clothing. Having made careful note of these calculations, she at last stepped back and informed Susannah that she might put her clothes back on, although the tone of her voice and the Gallic twist of her lip suggested her own doubts as to why anyone would wish to do so.
After Susannah dressed (wondering, as Lord Ramsay had, why any female should find such an ordeal enjoyable), she joined her cousin and the dressmaker in the main room of the shop where, to her surprise, she heard the little Frenchwoman praising her, albeit with compliments of the left-handed variety.
“La petite Américaine, she has not mademoiselle’s own elegance of form, but she is, what do you say, pleasingly proportioned, and round in all the right places. Oui, I can make something of her. Not a beauty, non, but an Original—something out of the common way. But—” She wagged a finger in front of Jane’s nose. “You must do something about the hair, oui? Else all my travail, he is for naught.”
“Yes, we will certainly have Miss Ramsay’s hair coiffed,” Jane promised. “I had thought to send for Miss Williams—”
“Bah! That for Miss Williams!” exclaimed Madame Lavert, snapping her fingers at the mention of Jane’s own hairdresser.”
“She has always done quite well with my hair—” Jane protested.
“But yes, with your hair. My kitchen maid could style your hair, and she is half blind. But Mademoiselle Ramsay’s hair—” Taking one of the escaped curls between her thumb and forefinger, she pulled it straight and then released it. She frowned as it sprang back into its original corkscrew shape. “Mademoiselle Ramsay’s hair requires something different, oui? You must send for my nephew, Claude Lavert.”
“Send for him? Where is he?”
“He is in London, where he has a shop in Piccadilly.”
Susannah, tired of being spoken of as if she were not there, clasped both hands to her offensive curls. “London? I cannot possibly go all the way to London for a haircut!”
Madame Lavert turned to regard Susannah as if she had only that moment remembered her presence. “Go to London?” she echoed. “But of course you must not go to London! My nephew must wait upon you at Ramsay Hall.”
“It seems a lot of trouble—” protested Susannah, only to be silenced by a look from Jane.
“Thank you for the recommendation, Madame. I will certainly speak to Lord Ramsay on the subject. Now we should like to see fashion plates and fabric samples, if you please.”
“Mais oui! A moment, s’il vous plaît.” She darted behind the counter, and when she returned, her arms were laden with books. She set the pile on the table with a thud, and removed the first volume from the top of the pile. “First we will look at the dresses, oui?”
And what dresses they were! Susannah, who had never at any time in her life owned more than two changes of clothing, was quite overwhelmed with the variety of garments that Madame Lavert and Cousin Jane considered necessary for a lady’s wardrobe. There were morning gowns and afternoon gowns for day wear, with long sleeves and high necklines; dinner gowns and evening dresses with tiny puffed sleeves and abbreviated bodices that displayed shocking expanses of bosom; and cloaks, spencers, and pelisses for out-of-doors, trimmed in braid and fastened with frogs.
Here, however, Susannah was moved to protest. “I don’t need a coat. I already have one.”
Madame Lavert regarded the fringed buckskin monstrosity with a contemptuous curl of her lip. “This? You would prefer this over Madame Lavert’s genius? Better you should put it on the fire.”
“I won’t!” Susannah declared mulishly, hugging the garment about her as if fearful the little Frenchwoman might attempt to remove it by force. “It was my father’s.”
“Then of course you must keep it,” Jane agreed. “Still, you will want to take good care of it. If you had a cloak and perhaps a pelisse, you would not be obliged to expose your father’s coat to inclement weather.”
The dressmaker bristled at the suggestion that her own creations were more expendable than the contemptible buckskin garment, but a speaking look from Jane silenced any protest she might have been inclined to make. Susannah was forced to concede the wisdom of this argument, and the tense moment passed.
Next came the fabric samples. Madame Lavert placed a small looking glass before Susannah, and that rather bemused young lady stared dazedly at her own reflection as Madame draped folds of cloth across her chest from shoulder to shoulder, the better to study the effects of Pomona green silk as opposed to peach-colored satin. Susannah, noting with amazement the effects of these miraculous materials upon a face she had hitherto
considered quite ordinary, realized that this was the process to which Lord Ramsay had referred. She decided that it was really quite pleasurable, after all. As Madame Lavert gauged the effect of a celestial blue lutestring, Susannah decided she enjoyed it very much indeed.
“I—I should like something pink, if you please,” whispered Susannah, finding her voice at last.
“Pink?” echoed Jane in some consternation. “My dear cousin, with your coloring, I don’t think—”
Madame Lavert took Susannah’s chin in her hand and studied her face intently. “Not rose, non. But the very palest hue—” She rummaged through the pile of fabrics, and finally unearthed the one she sought. She arranged it across Susannah’s bosom and stepped back to gauge the effect. “Voilà!”
“Oh!” breathed Susannah, wide-eyed.
“ ‘Oh,’ indeed,” agreed Jane, noting with mixed emotions the creamy ivory of the girl’s skin and the fiery highlights in her hair. “Madame, Miss Ramsay will need the other dresses first, but you must certainly use this to make up her gown for the ball.”
“B-Ball?” All Susannah’s pleasure evaporated, leaving in its place a cold lump of dread.
“Has his lordship not told you? How very like him! Of course there will be a ball to introduce you formally to the neighborhood gentry.” Seeing panic writ large upon her cousin’s expressive countenance, she hastened to reassure her. “It will not be for several weeks yet. By that time, I daresay you shall feel as if you have lived here all your life.”
Jane next inquired of Madame as to undergarments, which proved to be petticoats, shifts, stays, and even the new pantalettes, all made of lawn and batiste of so fine a weave as to be almost transparent. As disturbing as it was to think of her remote cousin Richard seeing her in such intimate apparel (much less out of it), still more terrifying to Susannah’s mind was the prospect of the ball at which she, clad in a cloud of palest pink gauze, would demonstrate her ignorance to the world.
“Miss Hawthorne—” she began, once they had left the dressmaker’s shop and were safely ensconced in the closed carriage.
“Cousin Jane,” that lady reminded her, smiling.
“Cousin Jane, then, about this ball—must I—that is, will I be expected to dance?”
“My dear Cousin Susannah, you will be the guest of honour! It would look very odd if, after the betrothal is announced, you and Richard did not dance together.”
“It would look even odder if we did,” Susannah muttered miserably.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I can’t dance,” she said with the guilty air of one confessing to the most heinous of crimes. “I’ve never learned how.”
“I see,” said Jane, momentarily daunted. “I confess, it had never occurred to me that—but I can see that dancing masters must have been in short supply on the American frontier. Well then, we shall just have to teach you.”
“Surely you cannot mean to send to London for a dancing master as well as a hairdresser!”
“No, for as it is the height of the Season, I doubt we could persuade one to leave London at a time when their services are bound to be in demand. But we could teach you, Richard and I, with Aunt Amelia providing music on the pianoforte.”
“Surely Lord Ramsay—that is, Cousin Richard—must have better things to do than to—to prance around the ballroom giving dancing lessons!”
Jane’s lips twitched at the idea of Lord Ramsay “prancing” anywhere, but she merely said, “If he cannot spare us an hour or two in the afternoon, we shall enlist Peter’s help instead.”
Susannah, somewhat mollified, nodded in agreement. If it occurred to her to wonder why this suggestion should be so much more acceptable than Jane’s first proposal, she gave no outward sign.
Chapter 7
Here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN,
The School for Scandal
As the first of Susannah’s new gowns would not be ready for several days, Jane determined to alter one of her own dresses to fit her cousin. The selection of a suitable dress proved to be quite a challenge, since Susannah was (as Madame Lavert had noted) both shorter and curvier than her English counterpart. She finally settled on a simple lilac gown of figured muslin with a drawstring fastening beneath the bosom which might be adjusted to accommodate Susannah’s somewhat rounder form. The length, too, could be shortened by the simple expedient of removing the flounce adorning the hem.
Susannah, much moved by this gesture, protested her unworthiness of such a sacrifice, but seeing that Jane would not be gainsaid, at least determined to spare her the labour by performing the necessary alterations herself.
“Oh, can you sew?” Jane asked, heartened by this hint of hidden talents on Susannah’s part.
“Not like you do,” the younger girl confessed, glancing wistfully at Jane’s embroidery in its tambour frame. “That is, I’ve never done fine needlework, but someone had to darn the stockings and sew the loose buttons on Papa’s shirts and, well, that someone was me.”
“Excellent!” pronounced Jane. “My sewing basket should contain everything you require, but if you cannot find some article you need, you have only to ask.”
Susannah promised to do so, and then set to work—the end result being that, when the family assembled for luncheon, she was very creditably gowned, even if her hair was its usual unruly self.
Peter, upon seeing his erstwhile charge’s borrowed plumes, was moved to exclaim, “Very nice, Cousin Susannah. Does she not look well, Richard?”
Lord Ramsay, seeing some expression of approval on his part was expected, bent a smile upon his betrothed, said, “Yes, much better,” and took his place at the head of the table. Seeing the scowl Jane directed at him, and quite misinterpreting its meaning, he added, “I need not ask whom to credit for the improvement, Susannah, for I detect the hand of our Cousin Jane at work. I hope you remembered to thank her for her kindness.”
“If you detected my hand at work, Richard, I fear your eyesight is failing,” put in Jane, with a smile for her American cousin. “In fact, it was Cousin Susannah’s needlework, not mine, that deserves the credit—while as for her thanking me, do not, I beg you, set her off again! It was only with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded her that she would in fact be doing me a service in relieving me of a gown that never flattered me above half.”
This last was quite untrue, as the gown in question had been delivered from Madame Lavert’s hands only a fortnight earlier, and had quickly become one of Jane’s favourites. Still, it was the only garment she owned which might have served the purpose, and so nothing could be gained by regrets on her part, or further expressions of gratitude on Susannah’s.
“My mistake,” Richard acknowledged with a nod, then turned his attention back to his betrothed. “So tell me, Susannah, what did you think of your first visit to a dressmaker’s shop?”
This conversational gambit was considerably more successful. Susannah’s expressive blue eyes lit with enthusiasm, and she launched into a description of the morning’s adventures that doubtlessly bored the gentlemen very much, but gave Richard the opportunity to observe, as Peter had already noticed, that Susannah Ramsay, when animated, was surprisingly attractive in spite of the unfortunate hair and freckles.
“Am I to understand, then, that you preferred this activity to riding after all?”
Susannah’s brow puckered as she considered the question. “No, I can’t say I preferred it, exactly, for they are two such different things are they not?”
“You relieve my mind,” Richard said. “While I hope to share some common amusements with my wife, I do draw the line at shopping together for ribbons and laces.”
Susannah blushed and giggled at the thought of the very masculine Lord Ramsay invading Madame Lavert’s decidedly feminine establishment. Jane, observing this promising reaction, pressed one hand to a heart that clenched painfully at the first sign of rapport between the lord of the manor and his c
hosen bride.
“Of course, Susannah has not yet had the pleasure of submitting her head to be coiffed,” Jane put in hastily, to cover her own anguish. “Madame Lavert urged me to have you send to London for her nephew, Monsieur Claude Lavert.”
“Then we must do so, by all means.” Richard’s ready agreement, though upon closer examination hardly flattering to Susannah, was graciousness itself.
“I hope he can be persuaded to leave London at the height of the Season,” fretted Jane.
“I can see that I must make it worth his while to tear himself away.” He turned to Peter. “Pay whatever he asks, and make it clear that I will cover the expense of his travel on the Royal Mail.”
Peter acknowledged this command with a nod and, as soon as he had finished luncheon, took himself off to the small, sunny room on the ground floor which served as his office in order to carry out these instructions. Richard soon excused himself as well, and Jane, left alone with Susannah, smiled at her across the table.
“If you have finished, Cousin Susannah, I had thought to show you about the house this afternoon, and to introduce you to its staff.”
Susannah, willing if not eager, consented to this plan, and the two ladies left the dining room and descended the stairs that led to the servants’ domain. Here she was introduced first to the housekeeper, Mrs. Meeks.
“Mrs. Meeks, you must know, is the head of all the female staff,” Jane explained. “You will consult with her once a week, and more frequently if there are unusual issues that need to be addressed—overnight guests who need to be accommodated, for instance, or the hiring of extra staff for large entertainments.”
“Like—like the betrothal ball?” asked Susannah.
“Aye, miss, like the betrothal ball.” The housekeeper beamed at her future mistress’s ready understanding. “But strictly speaking, you won’t be my Lady Ramsay yet, so you need not take a hand in the planning of it unless you’ve a liking to. The same goes for the wedding breakfast, as I’m sure Miss Hawthorne will agree.”
Baroness in Buckskin Page 6