“I hope this will suit you,” she said. “It was the only shade of pink in the shop, but it is a lovely shade, I think, deeper and more suited to your coloring than the other.”
Julianne unwound the ribbon, looked carelessly at it, and then tossed it onto the dressing table behind her.
“I believe I like the other better,” she said. “You took awfully long, Judith. I think you might have hurried when the errand was for your own cousin.”
“Perhaps, Cousin,” Horace said, “you might wear whichever ribbon Julianne decides not to wear. Ah, but how tactless of me. Pink does not suit your coloring, does it? Does anything?”
“Judith will doubtless be more comfortable remaining in her own room this evening,” Aunt Effingham said. “Let us compare these ribbons more carefully, dearest. You would not want to—”
Judith left the room and hurried to her own.
Was it true, then, that he was unlikely to propose marriage to Julianne, left to his own devices? And could Julianne and Aunt Effingham be so desperate to net him as a husband that they were prepared to use trickery, to trap him into an apparently compromising situation? Horace was right, she thought. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn was a gentleman and would offer marriage if he believed he had compromised a lady.
She had had personal proof of that herself.
Her heart was pounding by the time she had closed her door behind her. That he would marry Julianne of his own accord had been a hard enough prospect to bear. But that he should be tricked into it...
Judith had had a quiet dinner with her grandmother in the latter’s private sitting room, both of them being disinclined to dine with the houseguests. Then they went their separate ways to dress for the ball.
Judith was more nervous than she cared to admit. She had worn her cream and gold silk to a dozen assemblies at home. It had never been in the first stare of fashion or fussily adorned. And of course Mama and Papa had always been strict about modesty, especially with her. But at least it had always been an elegant garment that fit her well. She had always liked it, until Aunt Louisa’s maid had let panels into the sides of it and lined the neckline.
Judith had removed all the additions during the morning. She had restored the dress to its former self except that it had a new peach-colored sash of wide silk ribbon that her grandmother had given her a few days ago because she knew she would never use it herself and it suited Judith’s coloring so well. There was enough ribbon that the ends of it fluttered almost to the floor after it had been tied neatly at the front of the high waist.
There was no maid to help her dress. But she had rarely had the services of the one maid at the rectory, there being Mama and her other three sisters all with their demands on the girl’s limited time. Judith was accustomed to dressing her own hair, even for elegant occasions. She had had time to both wash and dry it. It had the healthy sheen of clean hair as she brushed it all back from her face, plaited it into two braids, and coiled and looped them into a pleasing design at the back of her head. She used a hand mirror to check it while she sat in front of her dressing table mirror.
The style looked elegant, she thought. Carefully, so as not to ruin the whole painstakingly constructed coiffure, she teased two long strands free at the sides and curled the brush about them. There was enough curl in her hair that they waved in soft tendrils over her ears. She teased out two more curls at her temples.
She did not put on a cap, not even the pretty lacy one she had always worn to assemblies or other evening gatherings.
I have never ever seen any woman whose beauty comes even close to matching yours .
She gazed at her image, standing up so that she could see herself full length. She tried to see herself through the eyes of a man who could speak those words in all honesty. She had trusted his honesty. He had meant what he said.
She was beautiful.
I am beautiful .
For the first time she could look at herself and believe that there must be some truth in the preposterous-seeming claim.
I am beautiful .
She whisked herself off to her grandmother’s room before she could lose her courage. She knocked lightly on the dressing room door and let herself in.
Her grandmother was still seated at her dressing table, Tillie behind her, fixing three tall plumes into her elaborately piled gray hair. She was wearing an evening gown of a deep ruby red, but it was completely outshone by all the heavy jewelry that sparkled and glittered at her neck and bosom, on both plump wrists, on every finger of both hands except the thumbs, and at her ears. There was even a large, ornate brooch pinned to her gown beneath one shoulder. On the dressing table was a jeweled lorgnette.
Two circles of rouge had been painted high on her cheeks.
But Judith was not given more than a moment or two in which to digest her grandmother’s appearance.
The old lady looked at her in the mirror, swiveled about on her stool with unusual agility while Tillie stifled an exclamation and scurried around with her, clutching the plumes, and clasped her hands together with a distinct metallic clink.
“Judith!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my dearest love, you look ... Tillie, what is the word I am looking for?”
“Beautiful?” Tillie suggested. “You do too, miss.”
“Not nearly adequate enough,” her mistress said, waving one hand dismissively. “Turn, turn, Judith, and let me have a good look at you.”
Judith laughed, held her arms out to the sides in a deliberate pose of elegance, and pirouetted slowly.
“Will I do?” she asked.
“Tillie,” her grandmother said, “my pearls. The long strand and the short, if you please. I never wear them, Judith, because at my age I need some glitter to distract the eye from my wrinkles and other sad attributes.” She laughed heartily. “But pearls will enhance your loveliness without competing with it.”
The pearls were not in the jewelry box but in a drawer. Tillie, having secured the plumes to her own satisfaction, produced them in a moment and held them up for inspection.
“They will look good on you, miss,” she said.
Judith’s grandmother got to her feet and gestured to the stool.
“Sit down, my love,” she said, “and Tillie will arrange the longer strand in your hair without disturbing it. I do like your braids in loops like that. When I was your age, I would have had rolls and curls and ringlets bouncing all over my head and not looked half as good. But I never was famous for my good taste. Your grandfather used to tease me about it and insist that he loved me just as I was.”
Ten minutes later Judith was wearing the shorter string of pearls about her neck and found that it was the perfect length for the modest scoop of her neckline. The longer strand was not very visible from the front, but Tillie showed her what the back now looked like, and when she moved her head Judith could feel the heavier swing of the pearls and hear them clinking against one another.
She smiled and then laughed.
Yes, she was. She really was. She was beautiful .
It did not matter that she would be the very least fashionable lady at the ball, that she would be outshone by every other guest. It simply did not matter. She was beautiful, and for the first time in her life she rejoiced in her own appearance.
Her grandmother, laughing too, picked up her lorgnette in one hand, and inclined her head, setting her plumes to nodding vigorously.
“Magnificent,” she said. “That is the word I was searching for. You look magnificent, my love.” She tapped Judith on the arm with the lorgnette. “Let us go down and capture the hearts of every man at the ball. I’ll take the old ones and you can have the young ones.”