eyes flicked between Gage and me. “And I see you’ve added your own touch to her costume, Mr. Gage. How clever.”
“Why, whatever do you mean, Your Grace? I see nothing untoward here,” Gage replied with a practiced smirk.
She straightened as if recalling herself to the part she was supposed to be playing. “Oh, yes, quite right. I should be saying something appropriately waspish. Mind your hands, you hobbled malthorse, or I’ll beat you with a three-legged stool.”
From her Elizabethan garments and the biting lash of her tongue, I derived she was supposed to be a shrew. Perhaps one designed after Shakespeare’s own Katherine. Although the glitter of delight in her eyes belied the sting of the insult.
“Mother, I do believe you are enjoying this role,” her daughter declared as she came up behind her, threading her arm through hers. The younger beauty arched her eyebrows in gentle humor, before casting her glance over her shoulder toward the couple standing near the entrance to the ballroom. “Perhaps because it allows you to say the things you’ve been thinking, but haven’t dared to say aloud.”
Observing the duke, in what appeared to be a minstrel costume, leaning close to Mrs. Blanchard, a woman nearly half his age whom he claimed as his current mistress, I rather suspected she’d hit the nail on the head. Given the mistress’s costume, which included a rather excessively padded bustle and indicated her role as some sort of Nancy Pratt—a woman with a large bottom—I could only imagine what sort of slicing quip the duchess had allowed herself to make to them.
But the duchess tossed her head back playfully and demurred. “I haven’t the slightest notion what you mean. As usual, you’re running your gob again, Miss Prittle-Prattle.”
Her daughter smiled knowingly, and then turned to survey me and Gage from head to toe, her lips twitching. “When I suggested we add the role of nun to our mock court, I never suspected it would prove to be such a comical twist.”
Lady Eleanor, the Countess of Helmswick, was the duchess’s fifth child, and only daughter, and she had inherited her mother’s fine looks and lively manner. In truth, the only part of her appearance I could attribute to the man who was her father was her lustrous dark hair, for the duchess had once possessed the auburn hair she’d passed on to two of her sons. I gathered she was supposed to be some sort of chatterbox or gossip, and so she had elected to pile a tower of ringlets onto her head, which bounced and swayed as she moved, and draped strings of small, shiny sleigh bells around her waist and neck, which jingled merrily.
“Truth be told, I almost struck the idea from the list because I did not want to hear one of the other ladies complain about having to wear a habit all evening,” she confided. “But now I’m very glad I didn’t.”
I smiled. “Well, if you should hear me complain, it will be because I am overwarm and not because my vanity is crushed.”
“Dear me,” she gasped. “I hadn’t thought of that. I felt as if I would burn up toward the end when I carried each of my children.”
“Please, don’t concern yourself,” I urged her. “If I grow heated, I’m sure a walk along the terrace will revive me.”
“Oh yes. Please make use of whatever space you need.”
“What of Helmswick?” Gage asked, glancing over her shoulder toward the rooms where the majority of the guests had assembled. “I don’t believe I’ve seen him yet.” He cast a dimpled grin down at her. “Does his costume complement yours, or is he playing some humdrum fellow?”
I might have imagined it, but I thought I detected a brief tightening in Lady Helmswick’s features. “I’m afraid he isn’t celebrating with us this evening. He was called away to Paris on business a few weeks ago. I’m sure he’ll be disappointed he didn’t return in time.” She glanced at her mother, who smiled in commiseration.
A few weeks. Then he’d missed Christmas, Boxing Day, and Hogmanay as well. And Lady Helmswick was here with their two young children rather than at her husband’s estate, somewhere in Haddington, if I recalled correctly.
Observing the mother and daughter’s united front, I couldn’t help but wonder if Lady Helmswick’s marriage was following the same pattern as her parents’. Was Helmswick truly away on business, or was he in the arms of his mistress?
Moving aside so that the duchess could greet another pair of guests,