The bed ropes squeaked as she settled herself more comfortably.
Caro leaned sideways to catch a glimpse of the slender, blonde, and beautiful sixteen-year-old in the dressing table mirror. "I can hardly believe it myself." Nor could she believe she was actually going through with her mad idea to go with Lucas to London.
Neat in black gown and white apron, and wielding hairpins like pitchforks, Lizzie shifted to block Caro's view.
"Be still, my lady. Havey cavey, I call it. Running off to Gretna Green with a man you hadn't a good word for a year ago."
"Lizzie, enough. What is done is done." A sense of foreboding made Caro's heart flutter. It might be undone all too quickly if Lucas found her tiresome.
Alex slid off the bed, squeezed past Lizzie, and rested her elbows amid the ribbons and tortoiseshell pins on the dressing table. Her blue eyes glowed. "Well, I think it is the most romantic thing."
Caro's stomach clenched at the thought that Alex might follow her example. "I do not recommend it, I assure you. We bounced over the worst roads in England for three days until my teeth were loose."
A furrow formed in Alex's marble brow. "But to be married over the anvil . . ."
"It was cold. I had not eaten a hot meal for hours, not even a cup of coffee, and the blacksmith was no gentleman." She shuddered. The man who performed the ceremony would have horrified her father. "It was not the least bit romantic."
"Oh," Alex said, picking up a pink ribbon and weaving it through her fingers. "I still do not see why we cannot all go to London with you."
Caro wanted to agree. She would feel a whole lot less nervous about the adventure with her sisters in tow and under her watchful eyes.
Lucas had all but choked on his brandy in the inn after the ceremony when Caro suggested that very thing. Perhaps she should tell him she had changed her mind about going at all?
Alex held the ribbon to her throat and pressed against Caro to catch her reflection. "What do you think?"
"I don't think it goes with that nice new blue gown," Lizzie said, her sniff a punctuation mark. "Move over, do, Miss Alex."
Alex craned her neck to see the back of her blue, sprigged muslin. "I love this gown. Foxhaven is very generous."
Openhanded to the point of wild extravagance. "Yes," Caro said. "And it must have cost a fortune to rent this house so close to Norwich."
"I suppose so." At Caro's glare, Alex blushed. "It is much nicer than Rose Cottage." She glanced around. "And at least we have a bedroom each."
Lizzie grasped Alex's shoulders and shifted her aside. "How am I ever to get this hair of Lady Foxhaven's looking decent with you standing in the way, Miss Alex? We can't have her going to London with her hair all straggly, now can we?"
Lady Foxhaven. How strange it sounded. A flutter of nerves danced in Caro's stomach, and she glanced down at her rose-colored brocade. Festooned around her neck and down the front with ribbons—it had been her father's favorite. "Do you think Foxhaven will approve of this gown?" Lucas had recommended she order a new wardrobe in London.
Lizzie glowered into the mirror. "He should be glad to see his bride when he hasn't seen you for two weeks, no matter what you have on. You are newlyweds."
Caro grew a little warm. She hated the lies that tripped off her tongue, but she could hardly announce the agreement she and Lucas had made. "Foxhaven says all the best houses in Town are snapped up early in the season. He had to go ahead to ensure us decent accommodations."
Lizzie snorted. "I've never heard the like of it, leaving a bride on her honeymoon."
She would never have a honeymoon, and there was no sense mourning the fact. Aware of Lizzie's suspicious glance, she blinked away the mistiness in her eyes.
"That last pin made my eyes run."
"Be careful, Lizzie," Alex said.
"You can't reform a rake." Lizzie's tone was dark as she fixed another wisp in place. "You said that to your poor dear papa, rest his soul. And he supported you. Why didn't you say yes at the time? Then at least Lord Stockbridge wouldn't have badgered him into an early grave."
Oppressed by the sense of guilt she'd carried since her father died, her shoulders sagged. "I don't wish to discuss it, Lizzie."
Running feet sounded on the stairs outside, followed by stifled giggles.
"Are you finished yet?" called Jacqueline on the other side of the door. "May we come in?" The younger girls had escaped the drawing room and Miss Salter, their governess, for the second time that morning.
Stepping back to admire her handiwork, Lizzie frowned. "It's the best I can do."
Caro nodded. "You have done your best, Lizzie. Thank you. No one can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse." Nor yet a sow into a fashionable gazelle.
"Caro!" Alex exclaimed crossly, and threw open the door. Lucy and Jacqueline danced over the threshold in new green muslin gowns. It was as if her parents had had two families. First her, and then seven years later, Alex, Lucy, and Jacqueline in quick succession. If only Mother had not died giving birth to the stillborn son and heir, who would have kept their home within the family, things might have turned out very differently for them all.
Lucy glued her gaze on Caro, her eyes like jade medallions, her curly red hair springing in little corkscrews around her face. "You look scrumptious."
Caro laughed. She knew she was mousy, not a glorious auburn like Lucy, nor blonde and blue-eyed like the other two. Mouse, plain and simple. With emphasis on the plain. The worst possible combination of her exotic French mother and sandy-haired father: brown hair, nondescript light-brown eyes, skin that would never be alabaster, no matter how much milk she used, and a figure like an overblown rose, when the fashion required elegant willows. But her younger sisters' youthful adoration glowed in her heart.
"You look like an iced cake," pronounced Jacqueline, dancing around her.
"A cake?" Caro said, uncomfortably aware of a surfeit of ruffles covering her overly bountiful bosom and generous hips. She darted a glance in the mirror.
"Silly," Lucy said. "She looks all grand, like a titled lady."
A small shiver ran through Caro at the thought of the title and all it should mean, but did not.
"I don't want you to go." Jacqueline's voice sounded as thick and damp as a foggy morning.
A shadow passed through the room, glowing faces dimmed, eyes clouded.
Caro forced a bright smile. "The season ends in July. I will be back before you notice I'm gone, and in a year's time, it will be Alex's turn to comeout. Then we will all go to London."
"A whole year." Alex flounced to the window.
"I don't mind waiting," Lucy announced, bouncing down on the bed and smoothing her new green skirts. "When it's my turn, you will know all the finest people and take me to all the best parties."
"I miss you already," Jacqueline said, her sapphire eyes moist.
Poor Jacqueline—she barely remembered Mama, and with Papa so remote the last few years before his death, Caro had come to feel more like a mother than a sister. Caro reached out and enfolded her in a big hug, ignoring the sniffles against her gown and the potential for wrinkles. "No you won't. You will be so busy having fun with Miss Salter here at the new house, she will have to remind you to write."
"I won't forget," Lucy said.
Caro reached around and pulled her off the bed and into her arms. "I hope not."
"Mind your dress, my lady," Lizzie said.
A forlorn expression crossed Alex's face. Over the heads of the younger two, Caro gave her the special big-sister smile she reserved for when the younger two were bothersome. Alex rushed forward and threw her arms around them all and pressed her face against Caro's shoulder.
A stomach-churning flutter in her stomach caught at Caro's breath. Perhaps she should stay here, safe within the bounds of her family. The idea sounded as tempting as the bonbons she'd tucked into her reticule to keep up her spirits on the ride to London.
Coward. This time she wouldn't be alone against the wall in a frumpy gown and spectacles; she'd be a fashionable, married lady. And although Lucas didn't feel more than friendship for her, she trusted him to keep her safe. At least, he would as long as he remembered her existence.
This trip was a longed-for adventure, and, like facing a high wall on a horse, she needed to hold her breath and fly.
She gathered her sisters closer, drawing courage from their slender bodies.
"Tsk tsk," Lizzie said, leaning against the door, wiping her eyes on her apron. "Lord Foxhaven's carriage has been outside for fifteen minutes or more. Let your sister finish getting ready."
Caro kissed each girl in turn on their soft, smooth cheeks, tasting salty tears. A hot, hard lump blocked her throat, making her laugh shaky and breathless. "Go and put on your hats and coats, and wait with Miss Salter in the drawing room. We will go out together, and you can stand on the step and wave goodbye."
"Me first," Lucy said.
"No, me." Jacqueline raced for the door.
Giggling and pushing, they squeezed through the opening.
With a sedate flick of her skirts, Alex followed. "You can't be first," she called out. "I'm the oldest."
Caro watched them go, her heart aching, and then glanced at Lizzie with a rueful smile. "I'm glad you are coming to London with me. I shall not feel quite so lonely."
"Lonely?"
Oh heavens, she had said too much. She peeked in the mirror and ran her hands down the front of her gown. "I really am three times the size of Alexandra."
"That girl eats like a horse."
"And I'm the size of one."
"Buxom, your Papa called it. You need to eat proper, or you'll get sick. I'm right glad you asked me to go along, my lady. You need someone to keep an eye on you in that there heathen city."
Rolling her eyes at Lizzie's foreboding expression, Caro followed her sisters down the stairs.
* * *
Lucas's head ached abominably. He really shouldn't have allowed the Grantham triplets to drag him off to a cockfight at the George Inn, but it had been impossible to dampen their enthusiasm for a belated bachelor party. They'd mourned the end of his freedom in prime style, little knowing the joke was on them.
He stared morosely at the Torrington front door. He'd been married for three weeks, and now he had to keep his end of the bargain and take Caro to London. She'd wanted time to settle things with her sisters after the wedding, so he'd gone to London to rent a house. Now he was back, and he'd been waiting for what felt like hours.
The fresh east wind that sent gray clouds scudding across a watery blue sky whipped a strand of hair into his eyes. He hunched deeper into his greatcoat. He could go inside and wait, but the thought of a house full of young females curdled his blood. What the hell was keeping Caro, anyway?
"Shall I walk 'em, my lord?" asked Tigs, his diminutive tiger. Stretched to his full height, the wizened man held the tossing heads of the spirited team of grays, while the footman kept the reins from tangling from his perch on the box. Hitched to the back of the carriage, Maestro lifted a back hoof and gazed his reproach.
Lucas shook his head. Surely she couldn't be much longer?
Damn it. If marriage meant hanging about waiting, he already didn't like it.
The front door opened. At last!
The three younger Torringtons poured out in a swirl of warm wool cloaks and beribboned bonnets, followed by a tall, gray-haired woman, Miss Salter, their governess. He winced as their twittering chatter bounced around inside his skull.
Last to emerge, Caro lingered on the steps, hugging and kissing her sisters in turn. The tawny velvet cloak he'd sent over yesterday suited her unusual coloring much better than black. With fashionable clothes, something more flattering to her fulsome figure, and a little town bronze, she might even look striking.
Caro glanced over at him with a hesitant smile, a tiny curve of her full lips.
His wife. A strange warmth stole into his chest, something he hadn't felt for a long time. If his head wasn't aching like the inside of a kettledrum being marched up the hill by the Duke of York, he might have smiled back.
Lizzie pulled her black shawl tight, as if daring the wind to tug it loose, and marched down the path to the carriage. He scowled. He'd wanted to leave the self-opinionated maid behind.
A pain stabbed his temples.
He dragged himself to the front door, and in a blur he shook hands with the stick of a governess, bade the tearful sisters farewell, and then escorted Caro to the carriage.
"Are you ready?" he croaked through a dry throat, holding in check his mad instinct to flee.
She nodded, ran a considering gaze over him, and frowned.
That frown didn't bode well. His stomach felt heavy, as if a lead ball had landed in its pit. "What?"
"You might have worn a decent cravat instead of that handkerchief thing."