this opportunity.’
‘Fellingham is an ass,’ Gareth retorted, pushing his plate away and reaching for the toast. ‘Bored? I have estates to run, a speech to write for the House, that damned orphans’ charity Maude nagged me into chairing…’
‘You enjoy it, you know you do. If you did not, why did you invite them all down to Hetherington in the summer and teach the boys to play cricket?’
Gareth grimaced. ‘Smashed half the glass in the succession houses, young hellions.’
‘So did you when you and Sebastian were boys,’ Lady Dereham retorted. ‘You don’t fool me, Gareth Morant—you are working hard for those orphans, and you enjoy it. But being busy does not preclude becoming jaded; this will do you a power of good.’
‘We are doing this to rescue Maude from an impossible situation, not me from the ennui of my duties. Ah, Jordan, Lady Sebastian wishes to have a message delivered.’ The butler bowed his way out with instructions to deliver the hairdresser on Lady Sebastian’s doorstep in an hour equipped with sufficient tools of his trade to create a transformation. What if he is not free? Jessica wondered, then smiled at her naïvety. Not free for a Grand Duchess, the sister-in-law of a duke?
Jessica sat, eating her breakfast in the unobtrusively quiet manner life as a paid dependent in numerous households had taught her, and watched with the focus she would have applied to learning a new instrument.
She watched the unselfconscious grace and command of the two women, she listened to the freedom with which they conversed and the lightness with which they teased Gareth. And she allowed her eyes to feast on their clothes, on carriage dresses in the very latest stare, crafted from fabrics of quiet luxury, trimmed with exquisite detail. She looked longingly at the smart gloves, tossed carelessly to one side, the thickness of the grosgrain bonnet ribbons, the pretty clasps on the reticules. How could she even learn to treat such luxury with nonchalance, let alone seduce men to her side while she did it?
‘What name will you be using?’ Lady Dereham asked, cutting across her increasingly alarming thoughts.
‘Name?’ On top of everything else she had to lose her identity as well, it seemed. Her mind went blank.
‘Francesca Carleton,’ Gareth said. Three women looked at him in enquiry. He shrugged. ‘It just came to me.’
‘Well…’ Lady Sebastian got to her feet, gathering up her possessions ‘…in that case it is time for Mrs Carleton to come with us.’ She paused on the threshold, waiting while Gareth came round the table to open the door for her. ‘Be prepared for a surprise, Gareth.’ As she looked at Jessica her eyes twinkled in a smile of pure naughtiness. ‘We are going to have so much fun.’
Jessica sat in the closed carriage and tried not to look anxious under the combined scrutiny of the ladies opposite.
‘How on earth did you become entangled in this madcap scheme?’ Lady Dereham enquired, in much the same tone as she might have used to enquire whether Jessica had enjoyed a concert.
‘Lord Standon rescued me from a brothel.’ Lady Sebastian opened her mouth, then closed it again without speaking. It seemed there was something that would shake their sang froid after all. ‘I am a governess.’
‘I rather thought you might be.’ Lady Dereham nodded.
‘I was kidnapped when I arrived on the stage and taken to the brothel.’ She shivered—repeating the story did not make it any less horrible. ‘Gareth—Lord Standon—rescued me. Before anything too awful happened,’ she added hastily. She did not feel up to explaining that she had careered down the corridor stark naked, observed two orgies and had escaped slung over Gareth’s shoulder while wearing Lord Fellingham’s pantaloons.
‘What was Gareth doing in such a place?’ Lady Sebastian enquired, interested. ‘No, do not tell me, I can imagine.’
‘Nothing, actually.’ Jessica felt bound to defend him. ‘He was accompanying Lord Fellingham and Lord Rotherham, but he was rather cross and bored by it, I think.’
‘But how did you go from your rescue—for which we must be profoundly grateful—to this?’ Lady Dereham was looking understandably puzzled. You did not know Gareth before, did you?’
‘Like all the men of your family, Bel dear, Gareth is nothing if not ingenious.’ Lady Sebastian’s smile was one of pleasurable reminiscence. Jessica remembered the circumstances of the Grand Duchess’s unconventional romance. ‘I presume Miss Gifford is unknown in London, is presently unemployed and, being a young lady of intelligence and integrity, is a much safer partner in this deception than one of her frailer sisters.’
Jessica nodded. ‘You are quite right, Lady Sebastian. Gareth, er…Lord—’
‘Call him Gareth,’ Lady Dereham interjected. ‘And I am Bel and this is Eva. We are all going to become very good friends before this is out, I should imagine.’
Jessica cast a dubious glance at the Grand Duchess, who smiled her wicked smile again. ‘Eva,’ she confirmed. ‘Now, you were saying, Jessica?’
‘Gareth is concerned that Lady Maude is not implicated in this, in case it goes wrong, and he was also anxious not to involve anyone who might be less than discreet.’
‘And what is to become of you when this is all over?’ Bel enquired. ‘I imagine that reverting to being a governess again—unless in the Scottish Highlands—might be somewhat dangerous.’
‘I receive a cottage and a pension.’ Jessica braced herself for some critical comment about such largesse, but none came.
‘Very reasonable,’ was all Bel said. ‘You will enjoy that better than being at the beck and call of some demanding employer and their obnoxious brats, I dare say.’
‘Not all brats are obnoxious,’ Eva remarked. ‘My son, naturally, is an angel.’ Somehow, if he took after his mother, Jessica doubted it. ‘As will yours be, I am sure,’ she added with a sly sideways and downwards glance at Lady Dereham’s waistline.
‘Eva! How did you know?’ Bel laid one hand protectively over her flat stomach.
‘When I saw Reynard last night he was looking stunned—I recognise the symptoms of a man coming to terms with incipient fatherhood—and you are looking a trifle pale.’ Eva smiled, ‘However, I suspect mine will be born first.’
‘You, too? Eva, how wonderful!’ The two embraced while Jessica sat in tactful silence through a confusing exchange about what Freddie would make of it, how insufferably smug Jack was, dates and something about sea air that made Bel blush.
‘Jessica, I am sorry.’ Eva turned to her, her cheeks flushed, her expression apologetic. ‘We are neglecting you.’
‘Not at all. May I offer my congratulations to you both?’
‘Thank you. Oh, look, we’re here. Borrow this and use the veil.’ Eva whipped off her bonnet and placed it on Jessica’s head.
The door was opened, the steps let down and Jessica found herself in a wide hallway, confronting a man whom she supposed from his clothing must be the butler. With his brawny frame and broken nose he appeared to have been recruited from the prize-fighting ring. Perhaps the Grand Duchess employed him as a bodyguard as well.
‘Grimstone, is his lordship at home?’
‘No, my lady. I understand Lord Sebastian is at his club.’
‘Excellent. This is Miss Gifford, Grimstone. You have not set eyes on her, nor have you ever heard of her.’
The butler gazed at a point somewhere over Jessica’s head without a flicker of expression. ‘Monsieur Antoine is in your dressing room, my lady.’
Jessica regarded the room