Page 31 of Better Than a Duke
With a sigh Edmund handed his own tack back to the groom. “This has been a good day,” he declared, skipping a little. “I don’t like staying at Grove House, but at least I’m close to Flintlock, and Becks is just next door.”
“Yes, we seem to have found some luck.” Iris ruffled his blond hair. “No galloping until you’ve had some lessons.”
“I won’t. I’m going to be a smashing rider. Do you think Flintlock can jump fences? Jumping would be sterling.”
“One thing at a time, Pickle.”
Tollins pulled open the front door as they reached it. “Mrs. Silbern,” he said crisply. “You are requested to dress for dinner and repair to the drawing room immediately. Master Edmund, you are to take dinner in your room with Mr. Fredericks.”
“Blast it all,” Edmund muttered.
“The drawing room? Do Lord and Lady Harold have guests?”
“Yes, Mrs. Silbern. I’m to say no more than you are to use all possible haste.”
That sounded ominous. If her former brother-in-law had decided she must give up her clothes and hatpins now, he was going to find his nose bloodied. Damn Reginald Silbern, Lord Bellamy, anyway. Assuming a smile, she sent Edmund off to his bedchamber and then found Polly already waiting in hers. “Who’s here?” she asked, turning around so the maid could unbutton the back of her dress.
“I have no idea. Tollins says he’s been told to keep his mouth shut. I did hear Lady Margaret yelling at the upstairs maid, Jenny, and telling her she had hands more fit to be a tanner.”
As Iris had been helping her aunt dress since Suzette’s retreat to Cornwall, it made sense that she wouldn’t have been terribly pleased to have only Jenny assisting her. Iris sighed. No doubt she’d hear about that later. A bit of complaining in exchange for a day spent watching Edmund be the happiest she’d ever seen him, a day where she could breathe and laugh and not worry about the cost of the ices or how they would afford a pony, though, was well worth it.
“No, not that one,” she said, as Polly pulled her fanciest gown, the violet silk with lace sleeves, from the wardrobe. “I wore it lastnight. Aside from that, it’s possibly a dinner with someone I have no wish to see. I don’t want to wear a ball gown to a fight.”
“I would hate to have to sew the beading back on if there were fisticuffs,” Polly said with a quick grin, returning the gown to its shelf and removing a simpler dark blue dress from its hiding place among her plainer gowns fit for walking, church, or a quiet evening at home.
“Yes, that one will do.”
“If you’re going to be accompanying Lady Margaret to parties this Season, you’re going to have to go shopping,” the lady’s maid commented as she brought the dress over to where Iris waited.
Keeping her maid—who also served as occasional cook, housekeeper, and watcher over Edmund when Iris absolutely had to be elsewhere—had been Iris’s one luxury. Not even a luxury, really, since Thomas had become even less reliable and more often absent when luck turned against him. Luck had deserted him entirely by the time he drank himself face down into the ditch running alongside the path to their cottage and drowned.
She shook herself. For the next few weeks, food, bed, and safety for Edmund were seen to. It gave her time to figure out how she meant to ask for a loan of money from her uncle, and how long it would take her to repay that loan once she had the deed to a boardinghouse or a renting cottage or whatever she chose to call it.
“I have three gowns suited for evenings amid the ton,” she said. “That is plenty. I’m not attempting to capture anyone’s attention. I’m doing my aunt a favor in exchange for a few weeks in London. And I will not expend all my funds on silk gowns I’ll never have occasion to wear again.”
The maid nodded. “I know, Mrs. Silbern. And I admire everything you’ve managed to accomplish. It’s only…” She trailed off.
“Only what?” Iris prompted.
“I wish you had time for a bit of fun for yourself,” Polly grumbled. “I remember you laughing before Mr. Silbern, bless his soul, had his troubles. You used to laugh a great deal.” The maid took a breath. “I apologize if I’ve spoken out of turn, but you’re a good, kind lady, ma’am. You deserve to be happy.”
“The idea of relying on no one but myself to see to our future makes me happy. It terrifies me, as well, but I’d rather have me seeing to it than not have any say at all.” And if her cheeks ached from an unfamiliar amount of laughing today and she still felt… rosy, but on the inside, she wasn’t going to admit that aloud.
“As you say, Mrs. Silbern.” The maid fixed Iris’s hair, putting the unruly light-colored mass into an acceptable and stylish bun with strategic wisps escaping. “There. You’ll do.”
“I do look nice. That’ll surprise whomever I end up punching. Thank you, Polly.”
The maid laughed. “Always pleased to lend a hand, Mrs. Silbern. Or a fist, if need be.”
Iris left Polly to turn down the bed, and she headed up the hallway. She did still laugh, but even she had realized that she’d become sharper and more cynical and sarcastic. Less worried about what anyone else thought of her, and more determined not to be ignored. When she reached Edmund’s bedchamber she paused, listening at the half-open door as her son told his tutor about his new pony. “And his name is Flintlock Biscuits.”
“I approve Flintlock,” Mr. Fredericks said in his slightly nasal voice. “A name as solid as a rock.”
“But what about Biscuits? That’s his last name.”
“Biscuits is fine, though it makes me wish on sweets to dine.”
“Oh, that’s cheating. You were meant to rhyme ‘Biscuits.’ Not ‘fine.’”
