stool of the dressing table. “Bath, Velma,” she said. She knew she sounded cross, but she couldn’t think of any way to explain.
Velma frowned, wrinkling her forehead beneath the band of her cap. Her lips parted, and she ran her tongue over her bad teeth. It was painful to watch her trying to think things through, and it gave Annis a pang of compunction.
“Velma, I’m sorry. I had a reason, but I can’t talk about it. Just run my bath, will you please? Unless Mrs. Frances needs it.”
“Mrs. Frances ain’t awake,” Velma said, on certain ground now. “She ain’t waked up at all, not like His Lordship.”
“Oh! Is the marquess awake?”
“Awake, but still in bed. If he had a fever, it’s broke.”
“Does Mrs. Frances have a fever?”
“Don’t know. I’m not going in that room, in case it’s that there influenza. That Frenchie says she’s probably going to die.” She went into the bathroom, and the taps squeaked as she started the bathwater.
Annis seized the opportunity to take the manikins from the pocket of her coat and hide them in her jewel case. By the time Velma came back she was untying her plait and brushing the kinks from her hair. Velma took the brush from her, and Annis gazed into the mirror as she brushed, thinking hard. If Frances died, should she say it was the influenza? Would Papa want her to bring her home or bury her here? If Frances didn’t die but continued as she was… What should she do then?
Lady Eleanor would know. She was the sort of woman who always knew what was best.
Annis took care in dressing, in hopes that perfect propriety now might erase the multiple signs of impropriety from the night before. She allowed Velma to do her hair in a Psyche knot, though it took extra time. The pink dress had irritated her at first, but now, when she wished to appear as an innocent young girl, she was glad of it. Its puffed sleeves and gored skirt accentuated her slenderness. Frances had deplored her meager bosom, but Annis suspected Lady Eleanor would envy it. She pinned a girlish pink ribbon to her hair, and over the embroidered neckline of the bodice, she wore her pearls with the moonstone in the center.
Before going in search of Lady Eleanor, Annis peeked into Frances’s bedroom. The only difference she could see in her stepmother was that Frances had closed her mouth, or her maid had done it for her. Antoinette still sat beside the bed, but she was drowsing, her chin on her chest. Annis let her sleep. She gazed at her stepmother and wondered if she, like James, would eventually waken.
But James’s manikin had not been destroyed. It was safe in her jewel case, next to the one meant to represent herself, while Frances’s manikin was irreparably broken. Harriet had lumped the shattered bits of it into her basket. Did that mean Frances was broken, too?
She had no answer. She withdrew in silence and closed the bedroom door.
At the suggestion of one of the footmen, Annis knocked lightly on the closed door of Lady Eleanor’s study and heard a peremptory, “Yes?”
Annis opened the door and stepped inside, but not too far, in case she wasn’t welcome. With a careful curtsy, she said, “Lady Eleanor, if I may, I’ve come seeking your advice.”
Lady Eleanor waved a hand to a chair opposite her. The tray holding the remains of her lunch was on her desk, and Annis could see she had eaten almost nothing. Her plump cheeks looked sallow, and her eyelids were swollen. She wore a loose-fitting gown with no corset beneath, and no jewelry at all.
“How is Lord Rosefield?” Annis asked as she sank into the upholstered armchair. “I’m told he’s awake, which is the most wonderful news.”
“Yes. He’s awake, but the doctor says he will need weeks of rest. Perhaps months.”
“Oh dear. He must have been very ill indeed.”
“No one seems to know what it was, but of course, Mrs. Allington has it, too, so we must assume it’s infectious. I feel terrible for her. I was so fearful—” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I could say I feared for the estate, and for the title. It would go to some cousin or other, someone I don’t even know, but I don’t care about that. I love my son very much. A ridiculous amount, actually. It’s something I don’t speak of often. I suppose, if I had had other children—”
She