minutes, after all.
But it always took too long for her. And she hated that she gave such pleasure to him when she didn’t want to. That was why she dressed in the dark, and bathed only when he was out of the cottage, and…
Daisy drew a deep, shuddery breath. He wasn’t here now. He’d never be here again. She could dress like a princess and bathe in the light, and no one would ever be able to touch her if she didn’t want him to, no one.
“Daisy?” Helena asked. “Is there something wrong with the gown?”
“No,” Daisy said, returning to the present. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s magnificent,” Helena said. “More than that, you look so beautiful in it. The fit is perfect, the color brings out your hair, your eyes-you’ll astonish them. But is it a very grand dinner? Because that is a very grand gown.”
Daisy blinked. She saw Helena’s reflection behind her in the mirror. Her companion and her maid were staring at her with identical expressions of wonder. But the gown now looked wrong to her, theatrical and overdone compared to what they wore: the maid in her simple gray frock, Helena in one of her usual modest, high-necked lavender day dresses. The maid looked dazed, and so did Helena. But her new companion, Daisy thought, also looked a little wistful. She realized why. She’d spent too many years wanting what she couldn’t have not to know what she was seeing.
Daisy shook her head to clear it. Then, to make her audience laugh, she overdid it, shaking her head like a puppy coming out of the water. She grinned. “Too right! Trust you to put your finger on it. It’s too magnificent! I can’t wear this tonight. I don’t know if I ever can, unless I’m invited to a coronation-as the queen. I’ll wrap it in tissue and put it away until I do have a reason to wear it, some very special occasion. Tonight I’ll wear a gown I had made up before I came here. It’s rose-colored, too, and very pretty, actually, and I have a gold paisley shawl to make it livelier. But this?”
She raised her arms and held them straight out from her shoulders. “I’m afraid to move in this! I feel like a frog in a silk purse, mucking it up just by letting my skin touch it. I don’t want to get it dirty or damp, I don’t know how to live in it! The viscount was right: It isn’t for me, no matter how it’s dressed up or down. And you know what?” She snapped her fingers.
“But you’ve already ordered some,” Helena pointed out.
“Well, so I have, but we also have to get something else. You need new gowns, too!” She saw her companion’s face grow still and added quickly, “Not that there’s anything wrong with what you wear, but if I’m to look splendid- and every gown Madame Bertrand makes is splendid-then you must, too. I’m paying for it,” she went on, raising a hand. “Think of them as uniforms. Well, a fine thing if I go wafting in prinked to my ears, and let you look plain. I’ll look like a terrible vain creature, trying to keep you from being noticed, because you’re very pretty, you know.”
Helena laughed. “How could anyone look at anyone but you? With your face and hair? No one sees any other female when you’re in the room. And anyway,” she added more quietly, “a companion isn’t supposed to look dashing.”
“Why not?” Daisy asked, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t you look well? Please don’t argue.” She raised her arms again. “But please help me out of this beautiful thing right now, because I’m afraid to take a step in it!”
Daisy was afraid to step into the earl’s house that evening, too, but she wouldn’t let anyone know it. She wore a fine gown, if not a spectacular one. Her hair was drawn up in a cluster of curls, a simple cameo that she’d bought the other day hung on a spiderweb-thin chain at the base of her throat; her slippers were new, too. From her new underthings to the new cape on her back, there was nothing to be ashamed of.
“You hesitate?” Helena asked her.
“Well, I don’t know who’ll be here,” Daisy whispered. She smiled. “Expect the worst and get the best,” she said with false bravado. She raised her head and the hem of her cape, and walked into the earl’s front hall, Helena Masters a respectful two steps back. Geoff had been in Port Jackson. He knew how she’d lived. She doubted he’d ask any of Tanner’s friends here. Geoff Sauvage had been a popular fellow, with a smile for everyone, but he and his boys had been close to the nicest people there. Not one of Tanner’s cronies had been that.
Even so, apart from a few female friends, there was no one Daisy yearned to see, and a lot more she hoped never to lay eyes on again. She wondered again why it was that a woman who was treated badly by her husband attracted men who wanted to treat her badly, too. She’d have thought they’d have wanted to rescue her. The only times she’d ever been glad of being married to Tanner was when she’d seen that desire in his friends’ eyes when they looked at her after he’d punished her.
She’d dealt with them after Tanner died, she remembered, her mouth settling into a flat hard line. She could again. But she didn’t like doing it.
“Daisy!” the earl said as he strode into the hall to greet her and saw her expression. “What’s displeased you?”
“Nothing,” she said, as a footman took the cape she slipped from her shoulders. She gazed at the earl and felt the tension ease as she studied his familiar, kindly face. “Well, something,” she admitted. “I don’t like surprises.” She shook her head and set her red-gold curls trembling. “Who the devil is it that you have for me to see?”
He laughed. “No roundabout about you, is there, Daisy? Not to worry. It’s someone you like.”
She placed her hand on his arm and looked up at him with solemn eyes. “Straight truth, Geoff?”
He nodded, biting back his smile. “Cross my heart, Daisy, s’truth.”
She glanced across the hall to his salon. “Then lead on,” she said. “I’ll deal with it.”
She followed him to the door to the salon, Helena behind her. Daisy saw two men rise from their chairs as she entered the room. One was Viscount Haye, looking sardonic as usual, as he bowed to her. The other was a shorter man, dark and handsome, dressed like a top of the trees young gent about town. But she didn’t know any gentleman except for the earl and the viscount. Daisy frowned. This impudent fellow was laughing at her as she stood and stared at him, his slash of a smile white in his dark face.
“Don’t know me?” he asked. “There’s a blow to my vanity. Thought you’d remember me, Mrs. T.”
Her eyes widened. “Daffy!” she yelped, and raced up to him. She stopped short and looked up at him. “Of course I remember you. Always had a good word for me even on the hardest days, and weren’t there too many of those for both of us then? But I never saw you rigged out so fine. Lord, get a look at you!” she said, shaking her head. “A gent from your nose to your toes!”
“That I look, but that I’m not, I’d swear you know me better,” Daffyd said. “But you! You’re a lady, Daisy.”
“A trio,” the earl said.
“No!” Daisy said, swinging around to look at him. “You’re a gentleman born, Geoff, and that you always were.”
“You, too,” he said soberly. “You were born a lady. Have you forgotten?”
She hesitated. “I’m trying to remember,” she told him sincerely.
His smile was so full of sympathy and understanding that for the first time since she’d left New South Wales, she felt she’d done the right thing to come here and find him so she could make a life with him.
Then she looked up to see the viscount’s face, and doubted herself again. The expression she’d glimpsed was gone in an instant. But Daisy always looked for insult and distrust and knew it when she saw it.
“Lord,” she exclaimed, “some kind of lady I am! Where are my manners! I’ve forgotten most, you know. But I’m trying. Here’s my companion, Mrs. Masters; she’s here to remind me of them. Helena, here is Daffyd, the earl’s ward, one of the nicest fellows ever to be sent to Botany Bay by mistake.”
Daffyd laughed as he sketched a bow. “That’s what every lag in the colony says, and in my case it was no mistake. But you don’t have to watch your purse, Mrs. Masters. I gave up that life after I met the earl. So, Daisy, tell me about your trip and how things are back at Port Jackson.”
“My trip here was much better than the one out,” Daisy said with a wry smile, “as you may imagine. Still, I’ll be happy if I never set foot on a ship again! And I don’t think you really want to know how things are back there. Well, and if you do, all I can say is that we get more citizens by the day. You must be emptying all your jails here.” She frowned. “I don’t mean ‘we’ anymore, do I? You? We? Which do I mean? Lord, but it’s hard living between two worlds. Do you find that so?”
