Page 30 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

Lady Augusta stood behind her at the glass with a pin between her lips, her gloved fingers moving with brisk, pitiless competence through the curl at Ellen’s temple. She loosened it by a fraction, frowned at the result, and drew it back again.

“If I am to be disfigured,” Ellen said quietly, watching the pin flash near her ear, “I should prefer the blame to fall upon someone more deserving than the milliner.”

Augusta removed the pin from her mouth. “That is the first spirited thing you have said all evening, and I shall reward it by preserving both your ears.”

“You are very kind, my lady.”

“I am many things. Kindness is the least useful of them tonight.”

Ellen tried to smile, because Augusta plainly expected some answer, and because smiling gave her face employment while the stranger in the mirror continued looking back at her. The gown was the color of deep water, rich enough to shame every candle in the room. The housekeeper had chosen it, the duke had paid for it, and Ellen could not look at the silk without reckoning what it would have done for the Middleton household in a hard winter.

Perhaps two winters.

The thought must have shown, because Augusta’s hands stilled upon her shoulders.

“Do not look at the gown as if it has committed a crime,” Augusta said.

“It has cost a great deal.”

“Most good armor does.”

“It does not feel like armor.”

“That is because you are accustomed to making armor out of pride and old gloves. Silk is merely a more expensive version.”

Ellen lowered her eyes to the dark gleam of the skirts. “It feels like a costume for a part I do not know how to play.”

“You know how to stand upright, how to answer without babbling, and how to look through a rude person as if the wallpaper behind him were of greater consequence. That is nearly the whole of society.”

“Nearly?”

“The remainder is knowing when to leave a room before someone mistakes cruelty for wit.”

Ellen drew in a careful breath. “Then I shall hope Your Ladyship does not leave me.”

Augusta’s expression softened in the mirror, though her voice remained dry. “There. You will do. You will more than do, which is the trouble. A plain duchess is forgiven. A handsome one is studied.”

Ellen looked up despite herself. “Handsome?”

“Do not fish. It is vulgar.”

“I was not fishing. I was startled.”

“Then recover quickly.” Augusta adjusted the curl one last time, then tapped a finger beneath Ellen’s chin. “Chin up. They will look at you like a horse at Tattersall’s tonight, every last one of them, and you will let them. You will give them nothing back except your own good opinion of yourself.”

Ellen met her own eyes in the glass and found very little there she trusted. “I have very little of that left to give, my lady.”

“Then you must allow me to lend you some of mine,” Augusta replied without hesitation. “I find myself with a great deal to spare.”

Ellen’s laugh came softly and unexpectedly. “I believe you do.”

“I have cultivated it for sixty years. A woman must have a hobby.”

The sound of a door below reached them, followed by the muted shift of a household preparing itself around a duke’s departure. Ellen’s brief amusement faded. Augusta saw that too, of course. Augusta saw everything.

“Your husband will be waiting,” she said.

“Yes.”