How to Be a Proper Lady

by Katharine Ashe

  “Ah, yes. We did take the journey at an unusually speedy clip. Our mutual friend here is a punishing fellow, with very little regard for the wishes of anybody else, let alone a lady.” Mr. Yale spoke in his perpetually amused tone. “Beastly, s’truth.”

  She met his gaze and something other than sardonic teasing colored it. Then, with clear intention, he slipped it across the chamber to Jin.

  “There you are!” Serena swept into the parlor wearing a wide smile and a gown of sea blue muslin trimmed in lace. She grasped Viola’s hand and peered at her damp sleeve. “What have you been doing, Mr. Yale? Throwing tea at my sister? You knave.”

  “I like the medieval ring of that.” He grinned, narrowing his gray eyes. “Miss Carlyle, if I claim the role of knave, would you consider playing the part of the damsel in distress? You might reform me, you know, and then your sister will look upon me with greater mercy.”

  She wished she could smile, but it would not come. “Mr. Yale did not spill the tea, Ser. I did, of course.”

  “It doesn’t matter in the least who did it, but you mustn’t be made to wear it for a moment longer. Come, darling.” She drew Viola from her chair. “You will change, then we will take our breakfast on the terrace. It has the view of the sea and the breeze is lovely this morning so we shan’t be overly warm.” She tucked Viola’s damp arm against her side. “Jinan, Mr. Button tells me you have ordered your horse brought around already. Must you leave so soon? At least remain until Alex returns from London.”

  Jin bowed. “I regret, my lady, that I have business to attend to in town.”

  Viola’s heart clenched. He sounded so English. And so strangely formal.

  “Always business,” Mr. Yale murmured, “despite vows and pronouncements.”

  “I beg your pardon, Yale. I do not recall making any pronouncements.”

  “You noticeably fail to include ‘vows’ in that denial.”

  “That I do. But you are no doubt boring the ladies with this line of speech. Lady Savege, if you please, convey to your husband that I shall return when I am able, and look forward to it.”

  “Excellent.” Serena squeezed Viola’s hand. “Shall we go then?”

  Viola nodded. He was looking directly at her. That he said he would return meant little; he could intend a sennight’s absence or a year’s.

  This was good-bye.

  She made her tongue form words. “Have a safe journey,” she only managed.

  He bowed now, but said nothing, his bearing quite still. Tears gathered thick at the back of her throat. She dragged her gaze away and went with Serena.

  “Ser,” she said when they were ascending the steps to the upper story. “I would like a new gown. Perhaps a few gowns. Is there a shop nearby at which I might purchase some?”

  “But of course. Whatever you wish. But I won’t hear of you going to a shop. We will have the modiste in from Avesbury. She makes the loveliest frocks in Devonshire. It will be great fun dressing you up as I used to do when we were children. You never did care much what clothing you wore so long as you could run about comfortably in it.”

  Viola took a deep breath. “And I should like you to teach me how to be a proper lady.”

  Serena’s brow knotted. “But, Vi, you already are a-”

  “No, I am obviously not. If I ever even learned the things a lady must know I have forgotten all of it.” She set her shoulders. “But I should like to learn how to be one and try it out before I decide whether it will suit me.”

  “Whether it will suit you?” Serena’s voice hitched. “Are you planning to return to America then? Soon?”

  Viola grabbed both her hands. “No. No. I don’t know for certain. Really. Though I do wish to remain here with you. But, you see I have left my entire life behind, my ship and crewmen and- But never mind that. Ser, you must teach me to be a lady. I promise I will be an apt pupil.” As she had learned to hoist a sail and rig a boat, she would learn this. Fifteen years ago throwing herself into mastering sea craft had been the only way she’d borne the loss of her family and life at Glenhaven Hall and the knowledge of her mother’s death.

  Now she would throw herself into becoming a lady that Serena could be proud of, not one who slept on a couch, dressed like a man, and doused servants with tea. And in busying herself with this monumental task, she might occasionally forget the crystal blue gaze and devastating embrace of the beastly man to whom she had very foolishly given her whole heart.

  “She is astoundingly pretty.” Yale spoke beneath his breath, staring at the empty doorway through which Lady Savege and Viola had disappeared. “Quite.”

  Jin caught the footman’s eye and gestured him from the room.

  The Welshman sighed affectedly. “Ah, we are not to chat about pretty girls, are we, but get right down to business. More’s the pity.” He settled back in his chair, a lean, dark portrait of elegant indolence. Jin knew better than to be fooled by this posture.

  “You will have ample opportunity to flirt with Miss Carlyle once I am gone.”

  “But it would be much more fun to flirt with her while you are still here. I like to see wealthy men suffer.”

  Jin didn’t bother denying it. Yale’s perception of others remained acute as always. It was one of the reasons he trusted the Welshman, and one of the pair of reasons he was leaving Savege Park so quickly. The other was less comfortable and had everything to do with his inability to be in the same room without wishing to touch her. But he could not touch her again, and he did not like his every thought spied upon.

  He had elsewhere to be. His other goal to achieve now that this one was settled.

  “Still in the suds, Wyn?”

  “Why else do you think I responded to your summons from across the ocean so swiftly? Hoping you’ll lend me a pony, don’t you know.”

  “I don’t, in fact. You have never before asked me for a pound.” He leaned back against the sideboard. “Constance wrote to me. She is concerned about you.”

  “Of course she is. She must be concerned about someone, and she hasn’t got Leam to worry over any longer. Colin, Lord Commander and Chief of All, doesn’t give a fretful woman anything to work with, and is in any case so busy teasing Lady Justice that he is perpetually cheerful. And you, of course, have been absent for so long the rest of us barely recall what you look like. So I suppose it must be me.”

  “Quite a speech.” Jin took up his coffee cup. The brew was cold now, but outside the day was already turning sultry and he would be warm enough on the road. The road that would take him away from Viola Carlyle, finally and permanently. “Constance is hardly a fretful woman. Does she have reason for her concern?”

  Yale swiveled to him, his eyes slightly narrowed and his usual half smile thin. “Can’t you determine that yourself, old friend?”

  “I haven’t got anyone following you, if that is what you are suggesting.”

  “Ah.” Yale nodded. “That must be a first.”

  “It was, of course, only that once that I set a trail upon you.”

  “And I suppose you will claim it was Leam who most concerned you on that occasion.”

  “I will. And it would be the truth.”

  Yale assessed him thoughtfully. “You never lie, do you, Jinan?”

  “Can I help you with anything, Wyn? Do you need money?”

  The Welshman tapped his fingertips on the gleaming tabletop. “Rather, I need a drink.”

  “Thus Constance’s letter to me.”

  The Welshman’s gaze flashed up. “Do you know, I have just had the most marvelous idea, Jinan. Constance needs a man to worry about, and you are a fellow who truly lives his life dangerously. Why don’t you marry her and get her off my back?”

  Jin lifted a brow.

  “No. Listen,” Yale persisted, the light of deviltry in his silver eyes. “An heiress wed to an adventuring Midas. The perfect pair. Then she could worry over you from now until kingdom come instead of me. Why not?”

  “Why not, indeed.”<
br />
  “What? Extraordinary beauty and an enormous dowry are insufficient enticements?” He crossed his arms in a pensive attitude. “I suppose a lady must also know how to captain a ship to be truly appealing to the Hawk of the Sea.”

  Jin pushed away from the sideboard and moved toward the door.

  Yale chuckled, then said more soberly, “Colin wants you and your ship in the Mediterranean. Malta, apparently.”

  He paused at the door. “Malta?”

  “I believe so, yes. Something about a plot to oust we Brits and some heiress or other who eloped and her parents disowned her but now she must be unearthed before she is caught in the crossfire. He’s asked me to go and wishes you to do the driving, as it were.”

  “I will let you know.” He went to the foyer, then onto the drive where his horse awaited him, his traveling pack strapped to its haunches. Without another glance at the house or the terrace where she might now be taking breakfast, Jin mounted and set off.

  He had not lied. In London he had a bishop to meet and a small casket to purchase. He would put up in the rooms he kept in Piccadilly, pay a call on Colin Gray and an admiral or two, and pursue his goal of retrieving his mother’s box.

  But the pressure in his chest insisted otherwise. It said that now he rode nowhere, to no purpose, and with no aim. As the distance stretched between him and the woman from whom he must remove himself, for the first time in twenty years Jin felt like a man truly at sea.

  Chapter 20

  At first, recreating herself into a lady did prove quite a lot of fun. The modiste arrived, tossed about fashion plates, fabrics, and laces, and oohed and ahhed over Viola’s figure while clucking over the indelicate hue of her skin. Viola was then draped with tissue-thin silks, crisp taffetas, and light muslins, strapped with measuring tapes, poked with pins, and generally treated like a mannequin. Petticoats and shifts of the lightest fabrics were produced in abundance. Silly little coats called pelisses, punishing stays, fringed shawls, gloves in every color, and a panoply of bonnets followed.

  Viola found a paper and pen and scribbled the names of each garment so as to be able to recall them later. The activity of making the list, however, reminded her of those first months aboard ship when she had done the same, noting spars, lines, sails, and armaments until she had memorized the name of every single piece of wood, iron, hemp, and canvas aboard. And simply writing made her miss her ship’s diary, jotting down the day’s monotonous events each evening before turning in. With the memories swimming about, she could not fully enjoy the dressmaker’s antics. But Serena’s pleasure in the activity was patent, and Viola could not begrudge her happiness.

  When Mr. Yale peeked his head in the door to query about their progress, the dressmaker shooed him away. A lady’s boudoir was no place for a man, apparently. Viola wondered what Mrs. Hamper or Serena would think if she told them she had shared her “boudoir” with a man, eagerly.

  Viola slept again on the couch, vowing to make a try at the bed the following night. The sound of the sea swishing and cracking on the beach below comforted.

  A second day of fitting followed the first. Mrs. Hamper adjusted one of Serena’s muslin wraps on the spot, and Jane strapped the stays around Viola’s ribs with obvious relish and tied her into the confining garments. Viola submitted to having her hair yanked again, which her maid performed with gusto. By the morning of the third day she was able to descend to the breakfast parlor looking something like a lady who belonged at a house like Savege Park, if not feeling like one.

  Clothes, however, did not make the lady.

  “Which one do I use for the eggs?” she whispered to the man sitting beside her.

  Mr. Yale leaned over and replied in an equally hushed tone, “The egg spoon.”

  The room was empty save for Serena across the table and a footman standing to either side. Viola flickered a glance at the servants. They wore poker faces.

  She murmured, “Which one is the egg spoon?”

  “The diminutive one,” Mr. Yale supplied.

  “The two of you sound like perfect nincompoops,” Serena said. “What must George and Albert be thinking of you?”

  Mr. Yale pointed his forefinger at the smallest spoon, then settled back in his chair. “Why don’t we ask them? George, Albert, do you think Miss Carlyle and I are nincompoops? Now be honest. It is your mistress that you will offend by replying in the negative.”

  George furrowed his brow beneath a white wig. “Well, I don’t rightly know, sir.”

  “Noncommittal. Wise man. And you, Albert?”

  “Wyn, you must cease quizzing the servants.”

  “Albert?” Mr. Yale pressed.

  “It does seem odd, sir,” the younger footman replied earnestly, “that there be a spoon only for the likes of soft-boiled eggs, I always thought.”

  “Ah, do you see, my lady? Albert agrees with your sister and me. We in society use far too many spoons at breakfast.”

  “I would like to know which ones to use for what purposes,” Viola said firmly. “Last night at dinner I was completely confused. I think I may have used my soup spoon for the jelly, or perhaps the other way around.” She looked up as Serena lowered the paper.

  “We don’t care what spoon you use, Vi. Do we, Mr. Yale?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But I do. And when Lord Savege returns I’ll wager he will too. Could this be lesson number one?”

  Her sister smiled gently. “Viola-”

  “You said you would teach me how to be a lady, Ser. I am holding you to that.”

  “All right. If you wish.”

  “I wish.”

  “May I join in the project?” Mr. Yale speared a piece of bacon on his fork and peered at it curiously. “I am in desperate need of a refresher on the finer points of noble dining.”

  “Mr. Yale, I am quite serious about this.” Viola turned to him. “I don’t want to embarrass my sister or Lord Savege when we go into company.”

  He met her with a sincere regard. “And I, Miss Carlyle, am quite serious about assisting you. If it is a lady you wish to appear to society, then a lady you must and shall.”

  “Thank you,” she replied for the hundredth time in four days. Except to Jinan Seton. To the man who had insisted her family still wanted her and made her return to England to reunite with them. To the man who had suffered her silly wager and made love to her as she had never known it could be. Who had, simply by being himself, shown her that she would have made a great mistake in marrying Aidan.

  The man who had left her without even a word of good-bye.

  He deserved no thanks. He was a thorough blackguard. He’d said he did not take that which was not his by right, but he had stolen her heart. Just like a pirate. She owed him nothing. Not even a fond memory.

  Once Viola was suitably garbed (and remarkably uncomfortable), Serena and Mr. Yale set about instructing her in a young lady’s accomplishments: drawing, painting, singing, playing, and achieving a smattering of French and Italian. It swiftly became apparent that she must first learn more fundamental tasks.

  “I know how to walk. One puts one foot in front of the other.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Yale said, drawing her from a chair before the tea table to the center of the terrace. “But when one is a lady, one puts them in front of the other rather less resolutely than one has been accustomed to doing aboard ship. That is, if one wishes to glide across the floor like an angel.”

  “Ha!” Viola cracked a laugh. “An angel?”

  “Quite. As all will believe you are until they see you trip on your hem or hear you guffaw like that.”

  “I didn’t guffaw. Don’t ladies laugh?”

  “Of course they do,” Serena offered. “Only they are not supposed to do so with any gusto. A very silly rule if you ask me.”

  “It is indeed, but I did not invent it,” Mr. Yale commented. “I am merely acting as a conduit of the foolishness that is English high society.” He grasped Viola’s hand in his qu
ite comfortably strong fingers and stepped away. “Now, Miss Carlyle, if you will walk four paces allowing only two small inches between your forward heel and following toe, I will be gratified.”

  “Two inches?”

  “To commence.” His silvery eyes twinkled.

  “I must learn to walk heel to toe as though I were a girl in some Oriental king’s harem?”

  Serena cracked a laugh as loud as Viola’s guffaw.

  “Certainly not,” Mr. Yale assured. “We will commence with exaggeration and when that is achieved, relax our standards to suitability.”

  “I see.” She took a step.

  He shook his head. “That was at least six inches. And ladies do not mention Oriental harems.”

  “Or any harems at all, really.” Serena plied needle to embroidery board.

  “Two is ridiculous.” Viola stepped again.

  “That was five.”

  “Changing Maria’s nappies is a great deal more fun than this.”

  “Five again.”

  “Then here.” She hiked up her mass of frothy skirts and took the daintiest step imaginable.

  “Ah. Much better. And of course a lady must never lift her skirts above the instep.”

  “Is that true, Ser?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Viola ground her molars and stepped forward again.

  “She is a quick learner,” Mr. Yale murmured.

  “She always was,” Serena replied.

  “It is impressive.”

  “Truly.”

  Viola whistled. “I’m still here.”

  “And young ladies must never press themselves into a conversation into which they have not been invited. Or whistle.”

  “Young ladies sound like no fun at all.”

  “Most of them aren’t.”

  Viola made her way back to her chair in mincing steps. With a great sigh she threw herself down into it, scooped up a pastry from the tea tray, and popped it into her mouth, then chewed contentedly. At least the rewards for her hard work were delicious.