Page 1 of The Unlovable Lady

Chapter One

“Oh, mind the lace!”

Rosalind hurried down the last of the stairs, for she had seen from the turn of the landing that the third trunk had been packed wrong. The lid had not seated properly, and a corner of gray silk had been pinched in the join, where someone had folded in haste and pressed down harder than sense allowed.

It was Cassandra’s evening gown, the good one with the Brussels lace at the hem, and it would crease quite to ruin between here and London if it was left as it lay. Setting her hand to the lid, Rosalind opened the trunk and lifted the gown out.

“Lay the tissue between the folds,” she said gently to the housemaid kneeling beside the trunk. “If it is packed without, it will wrinkle and will not hang right when it comes out. Here, like so. Do you see?”

“Yes, my lady.” The girl flushed as she reached for the paper. “I am sorry, my lady. I did not think of the tissue.”

“There is no harm done, for we have caught it in time.” Rosalind shook the gown free of its bad creases and laid it back in proper order, her fingers knowing the work without her thought, as they had known the work of this house for eleven years. “Mrs. Pascoe, who was housekeeper here when I was a girl, taught me that a gown is packed in paper or it is not packed at all. You will remember it next time, will you not?”

“I will, my lady.” The maid bobbed and, gathering a little courage, asked, “Shall I do the same for the gowns in the fourth trunk?”

“If you please.”

The hall around them was in a fine state of disorder, since the whole household was to remove to Town that very morning. Trunks stood half-strapped along the wall, a footman went by with a hatbox wedged under his arm, and a maid hurried past with linen enough for three beds.

Rosalind ran her eye over it all briskly, making her list as she went. Phoebe’s workbox, which she would fret for the whole road to London if it were left behind, was safe in the second trunk, at least.

“Has the plate chest a second strap?” she asked the footman as he passed. “It will want one, for the plate is heavy and the roads are bad.”

“Not yet, my lady. I shall fetch one directly.”

“Thank you. And the warming pans are still in the still-room, unless I am much mistaken. Tell Hodges, if you please, for the rooms in Town will be cold tomorrow night without them.”

He nodded and went.

Mrs. Pascoe had shown her the still-room shelves years ago, standing her on a stool until she had them by heart. The stool was long gone, and Mrs. Pascoe with it.

Rosalind had never minded the work. There was comfort in knowing what needed to be done and seeing it done properly. Mrs. Pascoe had taught her that too, in the hard winter after her mother died, when she had sent Rosalind out with the elderflower to the Coombe children rather than let her sit grieving in the dark of the morning-room.

“Lady Rosalind is so very capable about all this,” said a voice behind her. “I declare we should be quite lost without her management. One scarcely knows how a house removes at all without someone to count the warming pans.”

Rosalind’s heart sank, for she knew that particular sweetness very well indeed.

Selina, Countess of Marbury, stood in the doorway of the morning-room with her gloves already on, dressed for the carriage and dressed beautifully, her traveling pelisse a deep claret chosen to flatter. Her smile was in place, as it always was, though it did not reach her eyes, which moved slowly over the disordered hall and over Rosalind standing in the middle of it with another woman’s gown across her arms.

“It is no trouble,” Rosalind said, laying the lace gown down. “I only saw that it needed doing.”

“Of course you did.” Selina came a step into the hall, drawing on her second glove. “You always do. It is a gift, my dear, to see what needs doing and never to mind being the one to do it. I have said so to Lord Marbury a hundred times. Have I not said so, Cassandra?”

“You have, Mama.” Cassandra had come to the morning-room door behind her mother, leaning in the frame of it with the ease of a girl who had never once carried her own gown down a stair. “Though I am sure Lady Rosalind would not have it any other way. Some people are made for the front of a room, and some for the running of it. There is no shame in either, is there?”

The words stung, for all their pretty wrapping, and heat rose in Rosalind’s cheeks. Yet she did not answer the barb. Instead she rose, smoothed her skirts, and let the silence stand a moment longer than was comfortable, so that Cassandra’s words hung in the cold hall by themselves.

“The gray silk is set right again,” she said at last. “It will travel without harm now.”

Behind Cassandra, half in shadow, Phoebe had appeared, saying nothing, her hands folded before her and her gaze fixed on the floor. Once, only once, her chin lifted a fraction, as though some small word had risen in her and got as far as her mouth, but then she glanced at her mother’s back and let it sink again.

Rosalind saw it. Phoebe’s small kindnesses rarely survived her mother’s notice, and Rosalind had learned not to depend upon them.

“Now.” Selina drew a small breath, like a woman arriving at the comfortable business of the day. “There is the matter of the Season, my dear, and I think it best we are plain about it, you and I, since we are both sensible women and neither of us likes a fuss.”

A knot tightened in Rosalind’s stomach. What was coming?

“The expense of a London Season is not a small thing,” Selina went on, her voice all warm good sense, the voice of an aunt explaining why a child may not have a second cake. “There are two girls to dress and bring out and present, the house in Grosvenor Street to open, and the entertaining besides. It mounts, my dear, it mounts dreadfully! And then there is you. You are not a girl to be brought out, you know, for you are past all that and far too sensible to wish for it. It seemed wisest, given the cost of everything, that the girls be fitted first, and that you should be spared the worst of the crush.”