Once Upon a Wallflower

“All right, then. If you are certain.”

“Absolutely. As I said, I truly need a friend just now. I do not have a single one of my friends here to help me through my wedding.”

Nan’s smile returned, though it seemed strained now. “Well, Miss Mira, I may not know much about being a lady’s maid, but I know plenty about being a friend. And I have seen a few of them through weddings, too. So we’ll get through this one together, Miss Mira. That we will.”

Miss Mira, indeed. Mira supposed it was the best she could hope for. And Nan seemed even better than she had hoped for, a warm and generous young woman to stand by her side during the trying week to come.

Chapter Six

Despite her fatigue from the trip and the exquisite comfort of the thick down mattress, Mira tossed and turned most of the night. A nagging idea was teasing at the edge of her mind. Something was amiss, some element of the equation did not add up, but she just could not place her finger on exactly what it was.

As she lay awake in the luxurious warmth of the bed, she tried to puzzle it all out, but to no avail. Of course, she realized that her powers of logic were not at their peak. Every time she would try to review what little she knew about Olivia Linworth’s death, memories of Nicholas’s embrace would intrude.

She was certain that, if Nan had not arrived when she did, Nicholas would have kissed her. Kissed her, Mira Fitzhenry. And despite the impropriety of it all, she discovered that she was deeply disappointed they had been interrupted. Perhaps she had more of a taste for adventure than she thought.

When the morning light began streaming through the gaps between the curtains, Mira gave up on sleep and rose to dress. She chose her gown carefully, with the hopes of making a better impression on her hosts. After much consideration, she settled on a pale blue sprigged muslin with long sleeves that flared from a point just above her wrist into soft folds of lace with a modest neck edged with darker blue ribbon. Madame Dupree had said the color set off her eyes.

Nan was nowhere in sight, so Mira pinned a lace-edged cap to her hair herself and ventured out to attempt to find the dining room. After one dead-end and three wrong turns, she succeeded.

Lady Blackwell, Lady Marleston, and Lady Phoebe were clustered at one end of the long cherry table. Lady Blackwell’s rigid posture and pinched expression suggested that her disposition had not improved overnight. She really was a beautiful woman, though she looked as though life had taken a toll on her. Her blond hair, showing only a few threads of silver, was scraped back from her face, and the fine white powder she used on her complexion made her look brittle, as though she were made of porcelain. And even her careful cosmetics could not conceal the dark circles beneath her eyes and the lines of tension around her mouth.

Lady Blackwell’s elegant austerity stood in sharp contrast to Lady Marleston’s overblown exuberance. Lady Marleston was a plump woman, the soft flesh of her breasts and arms swelling from the confines of her startling green dress like warm yeast dough. She was leaning forward over her plate of baked eggs and kidneys, gesticulating grandly as she recounted some story to Lady Blackwell.

As quietly as she could, Mira crept to the sideboard, where a bored looking maid held her plate while she chose her breakfast. The Ellerbys apparently preferred fortifying foods. In addition to the eggs and kidneys, the breakfast consisted of sardines with mustard sauce, cold veal pies, and beef tongue with horseradish sauce.

As exhausted and nervous as she was, Mira could not trust her stomach with such rich and spicy foods, so she selected two rolls and a dollop of strawberry preserves. She took a seat next to Lady Phoebe, who was sullenly pushing slices of tongue around her plate.

Lady Blackwell greeted her with reserved civility. “Good morning, Miss Fitzhenry. I trust you were comfortable last night?”

“Oh, yes, my lady, I was quite comfortable. And the room is beautiful.”

A cat-in-the-cream smile spread across Lady Blackwell’s face. “Ah yes. ‘The Aviary.’ You must thank Nicholas. He is the one who insisted that you should have that room. It belonged to his mother.” She uttered the word like a curse. “She was an artist, like her son. Painted the birds herself. Quite spectacular, wouldn’t you say?” She cast a sly, sidelong glance at Lady Marleston before adding, “I have often heard that madness and artistic genius frequently go hand-in-hand.”