Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S carlett was sanding a letter to Reverend Margrave early the next morning when Adelaide was announced. The task had left her feeling guilty and uncertain, even a little off-balance, but she rose from the escritoire, meeting her sister in the hall and forcing herself to greet her with cheer.

“Good morning,” Scarlett said as Adelaide approached with an armload of gowns and a maid in tow. She swept by the footman, who attempted to take the gowns from her and assist her, with a laugh. “First I was a maid, expected to trudge up the stairs at all hours of the day bearing buckets of water as big as myself. Now I have a maid, and everyone assumes that even the smallest parcel is beyond my strength!”

Scarlett laughed a little as she told John and the maid where they should take the gowns, then invited Adelaide to join her in the drawing room .

Adelaide uttered a soft imprecation as she took in the deserted drawing room. “I hope I have not come at an indecent hour?”

Scarlett laughed. “Even in the country, the Leightons do not take their breakfast until eleven. I scarcely know what to imagine here. Perhaps they do not eat breakfast at all and leave their beds just in time for dinner.”

“I hope they will not mind that I came,” Adelaide said, a worried crease appearing on her forehead. “It was a presumption, I am sure, but I could not wait to see you again, and our aunt wished me to bring you some gowns.”

“It takes a great deal to offend the Leightons,” Scarlett assured her. “Their generosity and good-heartedness are truly beyond compare.”

“They have been true friends to you, it seems, when you most needed it,” Adelaide said as she took a seat on the settee. A book was laid there; a book Scarlett had been reading. Adelaide picked it up almost absently and examined the title.

“I was only ever allowed to read Fordyce and Wesley and the Bible,” Scarlett hastened to explain. “There was truly nothing else in the house! So here, with so many choices before me?—”

“You began with the excessively naughty Fanny Hill,” Adelaide said with a grin. “Pray do not blush about it! I am your sister! Why should I care?”

Scarlett sank onto the settee beside her sister. “I still cannot quite accustom myself to all of this. How did you do it?”

“Not easily,” Adelaide replied, turning more serious. “I can laugh about it now—almost—but I confess I did quite despair of it all for a time.”

Gowns and scandalous reading were set aside then for above an hour as Adelaide related to Scarlett all that had happened to her since leaving the house where she had worked as a maid. “As dreadful as it was to be in service,” Adelaide told her, “there were times in those first months that I longed to go back. Indeed, I did go back, before I finally settled on this new life. I knew my place there and understood what was expected of me, and I had my dear friend Patty at my side to complain with.”

“Patty was also in service?”

Adelaide nodded. “Yes, we were both upstairs maids at High Brook. She had been there a time when I first hired on, and she was made to train me. I confess, I do still miss her. In any case, I am determined that you shall have an easier time of it than I did.”

“I daresay I already have, beginning with Lord and Lady Tipton.”

“Uncle and Aunt,” Adelaide said with a gentle smile. “It does take time, I know.”

“Time and…oh, I suppose until I have the reverend’s…permission does not seem quite the word?—”

“His understanding? ”

Scarlett shrugged. “Something of that sort. Until he knows at least. I am hardly any legal expert, but having adopted me, I cannot say what rights and privileges that gives him, particularly as he has put it about that I am eighteen, not twenty. Twenty-one is much further off from eighteen than it is twenty.”

“And in the meantime, we must determine how you are to be introduced,” Adelaide concluded. “Aunt Louisa and I spoke of it last night.”

“And what did you decide?”

“You are a Richmond,” Adelaide said, leaning forwards to emphasise her point. “There can be no denying it, and anyone who was not on Rotten Row yesterday has surely heard of it by now.”

“Who would care, really?” Scarlett asked, more than a little disconcerted to imagine people all over London discussing her, of all things. Surely she was not important enough to warrant such interest? But the Richmonds were important and by extension so was she.

“ Everyone cares,” Adelaide replied confidently. “In any case, Aunt Louisa does comprehend how unsettling all of this must be, particularly as you had no notion of the adoption until quite recently. Asking you to answer to a change in name as well!—it is too much for anyone, to be sure. But supposing you are the second sister?—”

“Which I might well be. It is not likely we will ever know.”

“—you would be?—”

“Miss Scarlett. ”

“So Miss Scarlett it shall be.”

Scarlett breathed a sigh of relief. “A perfect solution.”

“What is?” Bess entered the room. “Good morning, Miss Richmond. Will you stay for breakfast?”

“Thank you, yes,” Adelaide said. “But I must insist that you call me Adelaide. Did we not all decide just yesterday that we were to be dearest friends?”

Bess smiled at her. “We did indeed…Adelaide.”

“I shall go by the name Miss Scarlett tonight, avoiding the Richmond versus Margrave issue entirely.”

“No sense introducing you as Margrave when you might soon be Richmond,” Adelaide said. “And when two-thirds of London has already recognised her as a Richmond.”

“Or better yet,” Bess said slyly, “she might completely forgo being Miss Anything and become Lady Worthe.”

“Oh, Bess,” Scarlett protested at once.

“Would you like that?” Adelaide asked, eyes shining at her sister.

“Oh, well…one can never know a man’s heart, can they?” Scarlett stammered.

“I think I can guess pretty well,” Adelaide teased, “and clearly Bess thinks she can as well. I may not have known him long, but I shall assure you, I have never seen him behave so with another lady, and Kem tells me he never has either. Quite singular! Worthe is generally quite reserved, the type who never wants to give a lady false hope. ”

“He has certainly given Scarlett everything to hope for, and I for one shall think her mad if she does not want it,” Bess said with a giggle.

“I have never even imagined myself in love before,” Scarlett said quietly. “Not even with Timothy Barclay.”

“Timothy Barclay?” Adelaide asked.

“Farmer’s son,” Bess told her. “And handsome as the devil himself! Kind as anything, too, with these very deep blue eyes. All of us girls once spied on him and his friends at the swimming hole, and if Scarlett was not in love with him, I assure you the rest of us absolutely were.”

“I was not in love with him,” Scarlett insisted quietly. “Not him nor any of the other local boys around me. And yet…I just know. I am in l-love with Worthe. I am absolutely positive I could search the world over and never find another man who suited me like he does. When I am with him, I feel like…like we just understand one another.”

“And if the truth must be known, I think he is far handsomer than Timothy Barclay even,” Bess added, which made them all giggle. “I can hardly wait to watch the two of you dance tonight.”

“Which reminds me!” Adelaide leapt to her feet. “We have a great many gowns to try on!”