Lady Adventuress 02 - The Education of Lord Hartley Read Free Page B

them see just what they are missing. Perhaps a lovely gown and a new coiffure would not hurt the matter. You do sew such pretty things – I wonder that you never wear them. No matter – we will see about that for you soon, dearest. It will be just the thing to cheer you up. A pretty coiffure cannot but make a young lady feel that much more courageous.”
    “Thank you, Aunt Verity.”
    Maggie did feel somewhat better at these words, full of fresh hope.
    She would bloom. Surely, any day now, she would bloom. And then Hart would forget all about the dreadfully perfect Lady Alice.
    Maggie spoke with her aunt a while longer, enjoying the quiet, peaceful conversation. They discussed arrangements for going to town and the letters Maggie’s cousins had written their mother in her absence.
    Even though Lady Compton was a tad old-fashioned, Maggie loved having someone like a mother to talk to. There had been too little of that kind of relationship in her life.
    Her father had certainly been no good on that head. He had always been scornful of what he termed ‘female hysterics and fripperies’, and he’d hardly ever been at Chenefelt when she was growing up.
    And now that he was at Chenefelt, Maggie did not know how to go on with him.
    The cessation of the war with France and his subsequent return to shore had certainly done nothing to make Admiral Lord Chenefelt any more approachable.
    Maggie’s father had never been able to form a strong attachment with his son or daughter, feeling that they ought to obey orders without negotiation or explanation. He did not see why they should be allowed to think for themselves, and his character was much too different from theirs to allow for common interests. Maggie knew that he loved them in his own way: this did not, however, make him an easy man to live with.
    Sensing that her aunt wished to return to her correspondence, Maggie reluctantly excused herself to go clean up her sticky face and hair.
    She made her way to her room, meaning to ring down for Cecile, her companion, and ask that she retrieve her glasses and book from the lawns.
    She was momentarily taken aback to discover these items already delivered up to her room and placed on her little escritoire. She called for a maid to draw her a bath and watched the innocuous objects out of the corner of her eye.
    “Cecile?”
    “Yes, Maggie?” Cecile’s lilting French accent had remained unchanged in the years Maggie had known her.
    “The glasses…?”
    “Oh! Lord Hartley sent those up for you. He said you’d forgotten them and may want them later.” Cecile gave the younger girl a warm smile. She had become Maggie’s dearest friend over the years, quite beyond the requirements of her post as a lady’s companion.
    “I see,” said Maggie. Only, she didn’t really.
    Hart had sent up her things. It was such a little gesture, yet strangely thoughtful. Did he mean anything by it? A hopeful warmth spread through her, and clung on as she washed lemonade out of her hair and dressed in a dry, clean gown.
    She even took that warmth with her when she had her afternoon embroidery lesson with the prim Mrs Barton, one of the accomplished former students of Mrs Pawsey’s prestigious school of needlework. Mrs Barton was a punishing task-master, and prickly of temperament, but Maggie found that her skills at needlework more than made up for that.
    Needlework was Maggie’s favourite accomplishment, and the only one she felt she was truly good at.
    Her efforts on the pianoforte were undistinguished, her drawing unremarkable – but her embroidery had always felt like a true art. A way to express herself though complex patterns and silk thread. Needlework had always come easily to her, her fingers quickly mastering complex stitches, confident with the finest threads. She could embroider elaborate patterns and sew new gowns out of bolts of fabric she’d found in her mother’s stores. Over the years, she had accumulated four notebooks’ worth