smiling. “What good taste you have, Mama,” he said, and then, when he was back in front of Frannie, added, “You look splendid.”
“Thank you.” Though his words were praise, his voice was curiously flat. She hardly felt flattered. Perhaps he did not really think she looked splendid. Perhaps there was something about the gown he disliked.
Sebastian apologized for interrupting them, bowed, and left, not looking back at Frannie once. Mrs. Arundell smiled at her, though. “I am so glad he stopped in!” She went toward the door. “Until dinner, dearest!” She stopped and turned back to level a mischievous grin at her. “I can hardly countenance waiting for you to be thus unveiled at the Christmas ball!”
After she’d gone, her last words hung in Frannie’s mind as heavy as the tolling of a death knell. “Unveiled at the Christmas ball.” For Sir Hugo’s benefit, no doubt! And suddenly, an idea formed that gave her hope.
After Madame had carefully packed away the gown in papers, the headdress in a huge bandbox, curtseyed her goodbye and gone, Frannie took the bandbox and withdrew the delicate headdress. She found scissors, took a lacy shawl from her wardrobe, and cut a good piece of it. Now she would execute her idea.
She stayed in her room, sewing piece after piece of the lace onto various bonnets, all her simpler headwear such as wide ribbon bandeaus, and her only tiara.
There will have to be an unveiling indeed, she decided, if Sir Hugo was to be graced with a single, unobstructed glimpse of her face. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Charles Fanshawe, with his wife and daughter, eventually stopped for the night at a country inn. Mrs. Fanshawe had cajoled him into making the stop, claiming it was too much for her poor soul to be expected to return home, they’d travelled too far to make the journey back that day, and if her husband had any sensibility at all for a poor woman’s nerves and constitution, they must stop.
After a substantial inn supper, Mr. Fanshawe thought himself entitled to peace. But his wife, as it were, began a new campaign against his having it. Instructing the inn keeper to keep her husband supplied with a steady infusion of his best ale, she reasoned upon him thus: He must reveal the identity of the benefactor of the trust, first of all. For as yet he had kept this personage’s name strictly to himself, and a body had a right to know. Secondly, they must find this man and prevail upon him to include their daughter in some disbursement of funds, for hadn’t they kept his secret all these years? Mr. Fanshawe must see that he had been monstrously abused otherwise; he had been keeper of the trust and should rightly be rewarded for his discretion, his honesty, his help.
Mr. Fanshawe resigned himself to a long evening during which his wife would relieve herself of every complaint concerning the business that she could devise. He listened with a disinterested air, but focused instead on enjoying the ale, which was excellent. Sometime during the third pint, however, his wife’s petitions began to sound sensible. He had done the man a great service, hadn’t he? He’d been silent for nigh two decades about the business when he might have gadded it about, even to the newspapers. The newspapers, he could not deny, were always amenable to printing a scandal.
Was not a secret trust fund scandalous? A secret marriage and runaway bride? Mr. Fanshawe began to feel the injustice of his position. Why, he had ought to have received some small stipend for his extraordinary discretion in the affair, if not solely for his keeping of the papers. He had guarded the secret, not even leaking His Lordship’s name to his own family. He was a paragon of virtue! The name of the solicitors was another well-guarded secret which he had kept. Was he not shamefully abused to have gone without reward until now? Surely he must see that it was time to contact the family and set the case to rights. He had hobbled the business altogether, but now he could seek redress.
“He must see his way to rewarding your efforts,” his wife said reasonably. “What man, once he knows how you safeguarded his wife and childʼs welfare could fail to see as much!”
“Indeed, indeed!” cried her husband, sitting back in his chair. Why, he was the victim of monstrous ill-usage by his sister, for she had put