Read Online Our Lady of Pain by Marion Chesney - Free Book Online Page B

fashionable S-figure. She was still upset with Harry. She felt sure he had enjoyed a liaison with Dolores Duval. “What would my lady like to wear tonight?” asked Benton.
    “You choose something,” said Rose.
    Benton went to the tall wardrobe and selected a blue chiffon gown embroidered with tiny rosebuds. It was low-cut and the layered chiffon sleeves covered the tops of her arms. All Rose’s jewels had been brought over from the town house. “I think the rope of pearls, my lady,” said Benson, “Now, the hair.”
    Rose’s long brown hair was piled up on top of her head, pouffed out, and ornamented with little silk rosebuds.
    “You look like another girl,” said Daisy, who was already dressed and was watching the toilette. “Sister Agnes wouldn’t recognize you now.”
    Rose normally detested wearing a long corset, but for once she did not mind. She felt she needed to be armoured in fashion before she saw Harry again.
    “This is a very beautiful gown,” said Benton. “Is it one of Mr. Worth’s?”
    “No, my seamstress, Miss Friendly, designed it and made it for me.”
    “Then this lady is more than a seamstress!”
    Daisy scowled. She was still furious at Becket for having turned down her idea of setting up a salon with Miss Friendly.
    At last Rose was ready. She and Daisy descended to the dining room to join the others. Daisy thought it was a shame that Becket could not join them, but in the duchess’s eyes he was nothing more than a gentleman’s gentleman.
    The duchess, already seated at a dining table, flashed and glittered under the weight of diamonds. She had a large diamond tiara on her head, a collar of diamonds around her neck, and diamond brooches pinned haphazardly on her dark blue velvet gown.
    “My dear Rose,” she said, “how beautiful you look. Don’t you think so, Captain?”
    “Very fine,” said Harry.
    “We will have you married off to some dashing French comte, you’ll see. Can’t you just see our dear Rose on the arm of some handsome Frenchman, Captain?” The duchess’s eyes twinkled like her diamonds.
    “Alas,” said Harry, “I have no imagination.”
    Had it been left to Harry and Rose, it would have been a silent dinner, but various aristocrats kept interrupting their meal to chat to the duchess.
    At last, when the duchess was engaged in another animated conversation with an old friend, Harry whispered to Rose, “Truce.”
    “What truce?”
    “Between us. We cannot go to Paris glaring and staring silently at each other. If it makes you feel any better, I did not have an affair with Miss Duval.”
    “That means nothing to me!”
    “Oh, Rose, please.”
    Rose sat with her head bowed for a moment. Then she raised her blue eyes and looked into his black ones. “Very well,” she said with a little smile. “Truce.”
    “Thank God for that,” chirped Daisy. “All this heavy silence. It was like being back in the convent.”
    The duchess finished speaking to her friend and turned her attention on Daisy. “Do I detect a certain Cockney accent there, Miss Levine?”
    Daisy looked wildly at Rose. “Miss Levine,” said Rose repressively, “is a distant relative of mine from a branch of the family which fell on hard times. She has not had my advantages.”
    “Really?” said the duchess, unabashed. “I had such a business ages ago when Warnford fell for a chorus girl at Daley’s. He even had her invited to a house party where she pretended to be a lady. I saw through her little act and sent her packing.”
    “I do not see what your husband’s amours have to do with my companion,” said Rose angrily. “Pray talk of something else.”
    The duchess raised her lorgnette. “You know, animation suits you. You should cultivate it.”
    The duchess turned her attention to her dinner. She was a messy eater and the front of her gown was soon decorated with the detritus of her meal. Rose, who had been taught to eat ortolans by dissecting them with a sharp knife, wondered