The True Love Wedding Dress (6 page)

Then Mrs. Cole had a brilliant idea, better than butchering Blossom. “I know the perfect solution, darling! We can dye it! We can make it a pale blue to match your eyes, just what you wished. Remember how we dyed two of our old gowns when Lord Martindale passed on?”

“They looked rusty and drab.”

“That was because they were black and the fabrics were already old. Besides, I had never done it before. The gown will be stunning in blue, and Cook can help to make sure we get it right. It won’t be the velvet you wanted, but you will look beautiful. Don’t you feel it?”

Susannah felt itchy. She snatched the dress off as soon as she could unfasten the buttons, without waiting for Katie to check the fit or the hem. “If you insist,” she said with a martyr’s sniff.

“I must, darling. Now hurry, do, for we have much to accomplish before tonight’s dinner, especially if we need time to work on the gown. I can purchase the dye this morning when I take Cook’s shopping list into the village, if you look after the chickens and then set the table.”

“For how many?”

How many indeed?

Katie had decided that his lordship could wait for his private conversation—until doomsday. Once the banns were called, she believed, not even an interfering, arrogant snob like Viscount Forde would try to stop the wedding. She had, therefore, already sent a note around to the inn saying she would be regrettably too busy for his call today, with music lessons and the ladies’ guild. Susannah was promised to her friends in the morning, and fittings on her trousseau in the afternoon, so she was not available either, also regrettably. But they would be delighted—the pen left an ink blot at all the lies—to have him join them for dinner. Too bad she could not put him off for another day or two, when his nephew might have returned. The viscount should see how devoted Gerald and Susannah were to each other before he condemned the match out of hand.

Meantime, she meant him to see what a well-brought-up miss her daughter was, and how suited to polite company.

She invited Squire Doddsworth and his eldest son, Roland, to join the dinner party, and the Reverend Mr. Carlson and his family. Miss Louisa Carlson was Susannah’s best friend and was
au anges,
she’d sworn out of her mother’s hearing, to meet a real London swell. Katie also invited the Dowager Lady Martindale, the highest-ranking female in the neighborhood and a particular favorite of both the Cole women. They listened to the lonely old countess’s tales of her younger days, and in return, she let them borrow the latest novels from her extensive library.

There, a peeress, a magistrate, and a vicar were all pleased to sup at Cole Cottage. Let Lord Forde—Katie could not stifle a chuckle—lift his nose—which was slightly beaked—at that country society. And let him try to find a private moment for his inquisition.

“Oh,” she added before hurrying off on her errands, “I forgot to mention yesterday that his lordship noticed the wedding gown when he came to call.”

Susannah looked up from her glum contemplation of her wardrobe, hoping against hope to find a more suitable outfit. “What did he say?”

What he’d said were words her daughter should never hear. What Katie said was, “He was vastly impressed. One might even say he was knocked off his feet by it.”

 

“Another ruse to keep me away from the place,” Forde grumbled when he received another note, this one postponing the dinner and the confrontation for another night, due to a sudden illness. “Sick with fear I will put a spoke in her plans, more like.”

The innkeeper was waiting to send a reply back to Cole Cottage. Mr. Roundtree shook his head. “No, they say Mrs. Tarrant what cooks and keeps house for the ladies was a-dying this afternoon. They sent for the apothecary and all. She must’ve lived, iffen they are holding the dinner tomorrow.”

Mrs. Tarrant had been dying, all right. She’d decided to start the ivory gown in its dye bath while the joint of beef was roasting, the soup was simmering, the potatoes were baking, the pudding was setting, and the wine was chilling. Most of all, she wanted to get the job done while her mistresses were at their toilettes. That way they wouldn’t be getting in her way, like they’d been doing all day. You’d think they’d never had the vicar or the squire over for supper afore. As for the viscount, well, he was just a man like the others, and he’d eat the good, honest food what Cook put in front of him or she’d send him back to London herself. Upsetting her ladies that way, setting the house on its ear and missy into the fidgets over a silly gown just wasn’t right.

Neither was the dye. Mrs. Tarrant had the silk and lace colored perfectly—darker than Mrs. Cole wanted, of course, so they would lighten when they dried. Everyone knew that, everyone but Mrs. Cole, that was. Then she used a wooden broom handle to move the gown into another tub, with cold water and the setting agent. Finally she used her stick to lift the finished gown out for rinsing under the pump. But the gown needed no rinsing—the perfectly white gown.

So she did it all again, adding a bit more of this and another dash of that. Hotter water, more mordant, longer time in the dye bath, more stirring with her broom handle. The dress was still ivory-colored at the end.

This was all the fault of that fancy toff and his uppity ways. Cook being an undeclared sympathizer with the French revolutionaries, she had no use for the English aristocracy, who had so much while the rest of the country had so little. If Lord Forde and his fussy kin weren’t coming to the wedding, missy could get hitched in her Sunday best, the same way Mrs. Tarrant and her daughters had done.

Cook went at that gown with her broom handle as if it were mad King George and his profligate son both. Soon her apron, her shoes, and her hands were blue, and the floor was awash. The roast was burning, the potatoes were charred, the soup had boiled away to a thick porridge, and the wine . . . well, she drank the wine. Then she passed out, right in the bowl of pudding.

Katie could only postpone the dinner and calculate how much of her egg money had been lost, and how much more she was going to have to spend tomorrow, once Cook got over her headache and her hysteria. Katie was going to have to do something about her daughter’s wedding gown, too.

“No, darling, kicking at the dress will not change its color. I was afraid something like that might happen, because the fabric seems to be coated with a protective substance. You know, like an oiled cloth?”

“You want me to wear a raincovering for my wedding?”

“No, that is not what I meant. But no matter, we can trim it with ribbons and silk flowers, and make a wreath to match for you to wear in your hair. That way the ivory will be less stark against your skin. Now come, help me clean up this mess so we can plan on tomorrow’s dinner for our guests.”

 

Forde was not certain he wished to attend the next night’s dinner, if he lived that long. His head was stuffed, his chest was congested, and not even the landlord’s excellent mulled ale could warm him after yesterday’s chill. Besides, he was certain the conniving Mrs. Cole would find another excuse to put him off. Whoever heard of canceling a dinner for three people because one’s cook was having a fit of the vapors or some such? She most likely figured that he would grow bored soon enough in this little village and leave her to her devious plotting.

He had a good mind to ride—no, he would take the carriage this time—over to her house right then and have it out with the wily widow. Except he felt as if he had a fever. He’d wait for the next day, then. Yes, and he would bring flowers, as if he truly believed there was illness in the house. That way she would not suspect his intentions and bar her door.

“Have you seen Mrs. Cole’s garden?” the innkeeper asked when Forde inquired as to a flower seller the next morning, after sleeping late and awakening in somewhat better condition, except for a few sneezes.

“It was, ahem, raining.” And a sore throat.

“She grows the finest roses in the neighborhood, she does, barring Lady Martindale, a’course, who has four gardeners. Asides, Mrs. Cole’s already come and gone from the village while you were sleeping, and she’s off to give music lessons in Little Brookville, then it’s trying to drum manners into the squire’s boys. She’d appreciate a fine ham better’n flowers anyway, iffen you were hoping to turn the lady up sweet.”

This backwater innkeeper was playing matchmaker? Now Forde had a headache. Roundtree’s words reinforced the conclusion that the Cole women were pockets-to-let, though. Or dallying with the nearby landowner.

Either way, Forde had no desire to turn Mrs. Cole into anything but a former acquaintance. He went back to bed.

W
hy, that scheming shrew! This was no intimate dinner between strangers who were about to be related, or for combatants at daggers drawn. Mrs. Cole had invited half the countryside, it seemed to Forde, to avoid speaking with him. Every seat in her narrow parlor was taken when he arrived, as if that would keep anyone from noticing the threadbare upholstery.

Deuce take that innkeeper, and deuce take the female for letting him make a fool of himself, walking into a formal dinner party with a ham in his hand. Then an older woman in an apron, most likely that Mrs. Tarrant who had been ill, reached to take the thing, and Forde stopped worrying what Mrs. Cole’s other guests were thinking of him. If they were not flummoxed by a blue-handed housekeeper, a peer with a pork could not matter.

Mrs. Cole stepped forward to welcome him. She looked different tonight, naturally. She was not wet, for one, or wearing a shabby cloak with her hair scraped back in a braided bun. Tonight she wore a dark blue gown that, while not in the height of fashion or the depth of daring, still managed to show her lush, mature figure to wondrous advantage. The flesh that rose above the neckline was creamy and soft and inviting and—

She coughed. She must have caught the same congestion from the rain. Forde raised the hand she offered, and his eyes.
Her
eyes were a more vivid green than he recalled, with fascinating blue glimmers. Her fair hair was done up on top of her head, with long, honey-colored tendrils trailing down smooth, sun-kissed cheeks. She was no dasher, but damn if the widow was not one fine-looking woman, the equal to any London lady. In fact, she looked vaguely familiar.

“Have we ever met?” he asked when she took her hand back.

Katie noticed his heightened color—and his finely tailored Bath superfine coat, his biscuit trousers and his intricately tied neckcloth, and what was filling them to perfection. She could feel warmth come to her own cheeks. “Are you feeling quite the thing, my lord? We met the day before yesterday, you know.”

“I do know that. I mean before. For a moment I thought—”

“Impossible,” Katie replied before the viscount could say anything else. “Unless you have traveled through Brookville in the past. I have not been out of Devon since before Susannah’s birth.”

Forde’s brows were lowered, as if he were trying to dredge forth a distant memory. “No, I have never—”

“And here is Susannah now,” Katie quickly said, pulling her daughter over to be introduced to her prospective uncle-by-marriage.

The girl was not what Forde had been expecting, although Gerald would never have fallen for the painted doxy he’d been picturing. Well, he might have fallen, but he was wise enough despite his years to know one did not marry a light skirt. Miss Cole was a pretty young chit with blond curls and blue eyes, a pale complexion, and her mother’s determined chin. She had some of her mother’s poise, too, not simpering or blushing shyly as so many of the debutantes did. There was no mistaking her rosebud innocence, however, in sprigged muslin with ribbons in her hair. She was a bit shorter than Mrs. Cole, and daintier, like a china shepherdess.

Gerald had said she liked long walks, and the girl must help with the livestock and the gardens and the cottage if the family was as hard-pressed as it appeared, with so few servants. So Miss Susannah Cole was no hothouse bloom, either. He could see where the combination of delicacy and vigor might fascinate a man, especially a young, idealistic, untried fellow like Gerald.

“Susannah,” Mrs. Cole was saying, “why do you not take his lordship to meet the other guests while I see about dinner?”

The girl made the introductions as properly as any miss fresh from finishing school. He doubted his nieces could do as well, for all their years of governesses and expensive lessons. She offered him a glass of Madeira before leaving him with the squire while she went to pour one for Lady Martindale.

Squire Doddsworth was older than Forde, hefty, hearty, and hunt-mad. He would chase down anything furred, feathered, or finned, it seemed, and expound at length on the challenges of each. His eldest son, the only one ready for polite company, was a rangy youth dressed in yellow pantaloons and shirt collars so high they almost, but not quite, hid his protuberant ears. He stared at Forde’s neckcloth with such intensity, trying to memorize the folds, that the viscount took pity. He offered to let his valet teach Roland how to tie the knot, which earned him a fervent prayer of gratitude.

“Lud, I hope he outgrows it soon,” the squire muttered after the young man hurried off to boast to Miss Louisa Carlson, the vicar’s daughter, of his promised treat.

“What, the lad’s propensity toward dandyism, or his obvious attraction to Miss Carlson?”

“Oh, the nonsense about becoming a man-milliner. My eldest son ought to be studying agriculture, not how to be a fashionable fribble.”

Forde cleared his throat, not due to the congestion.

“Gads, I’m not implying any insult to yourself, needless to say, or your valet’s skill. That neckcloth of yours is a work of art the likes of which are seldom seen in our corner of the world. My fool of a son would have the cows laughing at him if he dressed so fine. As for Louisa, they’ve known each other since the cradle. Never looked at anyone else, either of them. A June wedding it’ll be.”