Juliana grinned as her friend narrowly avoided a diplomatic disaster.
“And besides,” Mariana continued, “Callie spent far too long in horrible clothing. She has much to make up for. We just come along for the excitement . . .” She paused. “And perhaps a winter cloak in this green?”
“Your Grace would look beautiful in the velvet.” Hebert did not look up from her work. “May I suggest a new gown in the dupioni to match? It will make you the belle of a winter ball.”
Mariana’s eyes lit up as Valerie spread out the stunning green silk—heavier than most with a dozen different greens shimmering through it. “Oh, yes . . .” she whispered. “You may certainly make such a suggestion.”
Juliana laughed at the reverence in her friend’s tone. “And with that, we are here for another hour,” she announced, as Mariana headed behind a nearby screen to be measured, poked, and pinned.
“Not too tight,” Callie said quietly to the dressmaker before smiling at Juliana. “If autumn remains as social as it has been, I cannot imagine what will come of winter. You’re going to need new dresses as well, you know. In fact, we have not discussed what you shall wear to your dinner.”
“Not my dinner.” Juliana laughed. “And I am sure I have something suitable.”
“Callie’s selected an excellent crop of London’s lords, Juliana,” Mariana sang from behind the screen. “Each one more eligible than the last.”
“So I have heard.”
Callie inspected the waist of her gown in the mirror. “And all but Leighton have accepted.” She met Juliana’s eyes in the mirror. “Including Benedick.”
Juliana ignored the reference to the Earl of Allendale, knowing she should not press Callie further on the event. Nevertheless, “Leighton is not coming?”
Callie shook her head. “It is unclear. He simply has not responded.” Juliana held her tongue, knowing that she should not press the issue any more. If he did not wish to attend the dinner, what business was it of hers? “I am trying to find the good in him . . . but it is not easy. Ah, well. We shall have a lovely time without him.”
“Would you like me to have Valerie show you some fabrics, Mademoiselle Fiori?” Hebert interjected, as excellent a businesswoman as she was a dressmaker.
“No.” Juliana shook her head. “I have plenty of dresses. My brother need not be bankrupted today.”
Callie met Juliana’s gaze in a large looking glass. “Don’t think I don’t know about your little secret gifts with Gabriel. You know he loves to buy you clothes and whatever else you want. And I know where all his new books and pieces of music come from.”
Juliana smiled. When she had first come to England, feeling entirely disconnected from this new world and her new family, she had been convinced that her daunting half brothers would hate her because of who she represented—the mother who had deserted them without looking back when they were boys. It did not matter that that same mother deserted Juliana, as well.
Except it had mattered. Gabriel and Nick had accepted her. Without question. And while their relationship as siblings continued to evolve, Juliana was learning—later than most—what it was to be a sister. And as part of that immensely pleasurable lesson, she and her eldest brother had begun a game of sorts, exchanging gifts often.
She smiled at her sister-in-law, who had been so instrumental in building the relationship between her brother and her, and said, “No gifts today. I am still reserving hope that the season will come to an end before I require a formal winter wardrobe.”
“Don’t say such things!” called Mariana from behind her screen. “I want a reason to wear this gown!”
They all laughed, and Juliana watched as Madame Hebert artfully draped the fabric of Callie’s gown over her midsection. Callie considered the folds of fabric in the mirror before saying, “It’s perfect.”
And it was. Callie looked lovely. Gabriel would not be able to keep his eyes off her, Juliana thought wryly.
“Not too tight,” Callie said.
It was the second time she had whispered the words.
Their meaning dawned.
“Callie?” Juliana said, meeting her sister-in-law’s guilty gaze in the mirror. Juliana tilted her head in a silent question, and Callie’s wide, lovely grin was all the answer that she needed.
Callie was with child.
Juliana leapt from her seat, joy bursting through her. “Maraviglioso!” She approached the other woman and pulled her into an enormous embrace. “No wonder we are shopping for more gowns!”
Their shared laughter attracted Mariana’s attention from behind the dressing screen. “What is maraviglioso?” She poked her blond head around the edge of the divider. “Why are you laughing?” She narrowed her gaze on Juliana. “Why are you crying?” She disappeared for a heartbeat, then hobbled out, clutching a length of half-pinned green satin to her, poor Valerie following behind. “What did I miss?” She pouted. “I always miss everything!”
Callie and Juliana laughed again at Mariana’s pique, then Juliana said, “Well, you’ll have to tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
Callie’s cheeks were on fire, and she was certainly wishing that they weren’t all in the middle of a fitting room with one of London’s best dressmakers standing a foot away.
Juliana could not stop herself. “It appears my brother has done his duty.”
“Juliana!” Callie whispered, scandalized.
“What? It is true!” Juliana said simply, with a little shrug.
Callie grinned. “You are just like him, you know.”
There were worse insults coming from a woman who madly loved the him in question.
Mariana was still catching up. “Done his—Oh! Oh, my! Oh, Callie!” She began to hop with excitement, and the long-suffering Valerie had to run for a handkerchief to protect the silk from Mariana’s tears.
Hebert quit the room—either to escape smothering in a wayward embrace or being caught in the emotional fray as the two sisters clutched each other and laughed and cried and laughed and chattered and cried and laughed.
Juliana smiled at the picture the Hartwell sisters made—now each so happily married and still so deeply connected to each other—even as she realized that there was no place for her in this moment of celebration. She did not begrudge them their happiness or their connection.
She simply wished that she, too, had such an unbridled, uncontested sense of belonging.
She slipped from the fitting room to the front room of the shop, where Madame Hebert had escaped moments earlier. The Frenchwoman was standing at the entrance to a small antechamber, blocking the view to another customer. Juliana headed for a wall of accents—buttons and ribbons, frills and laces. She ran her fingers along the haberdashery, brushing a smooth gold button here, a scalloped lace there, consumed with Callie’s news.
There would be two new additions to the family in the spring—Nick’s wife, Isabel, was also with child.
Her brothers had overcome their pasts and their fears of repeating the sins of their father, and they had taken that unfathomable leap—marrying for love. And now they had families. Mothers and fathers and children who would grow old in a happy, caring fold.
You’ve never in your life considered the future, have you? You’ve never imagined what came next?
Leighton’s words from the theatre echoed through her mind.
Juliana swallowed around a strange lump in her throat. She no longer had the luxury of thinking of her future. Her father had died, and she had been upended, shipped to England and delivered into a strange family and a stranger culture that would never accept her. There was no future for her in England. And it was easier—less painful—not to fool herself into imagining one.
But when she saw Callie and Mariana looking happily toward their idyllic futures, filled with love and children and family and friends, it was impossible not to envy them.
They had what she could never have. What she would never be offered.
Because they belonged here, in this aristocratic world where money and title and history and breeding all mattered more than anything else.
She lifted a long feather from a bowl, one that must have been dyed; she’d never seen such inky blackness in a plume so large. She could not imagine the bird that would produce such a thing. But as she ran her fingers through its softness, the feather caught the sunlight streaming into the shop, and she knew immediately that it was natural. It was stunning. In the bright afternoon light, the feather was not black at all. It was a shimmering mass of blues and purples and reds so dark that it merely gave the illusion of blackness. It was alive with color.
“Aigrette.”
The dressmaker’s word brought Juliana out of her reverie. “I beg your pardon?”
Madame Hebert raised a black brow. “So polite and British,” she said, continuing when Juliana gave her a half smile. “The feather you hold. It is from the egret.”
Juliana shook her head. “Egrets are white, I thought.”
“Not the black ones.”
Juliana looked down at the feather. “The colors are stunning.”
“The rarest of things are usually that way,” the dressmaker replied, lifting a large wooden frame filled with lace. “Excuse me. I have a duchess who requires an inspection of my lace.” The distaste in her tone surprised Juliana. Surely the Frenchwoman would not speak ill of Mariana in front of her . . .
“Perhaps if the French had moved more quickly, Napoleon would have won the war.” Disdain oozed across the shop, and Juliana turned quickly toward the voice.
The Duchess of Leighton stood not ten feet from her.
It was hard to believe that this woman, petite and pale, had spawned the enormous, golden Leighton. Juliana struggled to find something of him in his mother. It was neither in her pallid coloring nor in her parchment skin, so thin as to be nearly translucent, nor was it in the eyes, the color of a winter sea.
But those eyes, they seemed to see everything. Juliana held her breath as the duchess’s cool gaze tracked her from head to toe. She resisted the urge to fidget under the silent examination, refused to allow the woman’s obvious judgment to rattle her.
Of course, it did rattle her.
And suddenly, she saw the similarities in crystal clarity. The stiff chin, the haughty posture, the cold perusal, the ability to shake a person to her core.
She was his mother—him in all the very worst of ways.
But she did not have his heat.
There was nothing in her but an unwavering stoicism that spoke of a lifetime of entitlement and lack of emotion.
What turned a woman to stone?
No wonder he did not believe in passion.
The duchess was waiting for Juliana to look away. Just like her son, she wanted to prove that her ancient name and her straight nose made her better than all others. Certainly, her unwavering gaze seemed to say, it made her better than Juliana.
Ignoring her rioting nerves, Juliana remained steadfast.
“Your Grace,” Madame Hebert said, unaware of the battle of wills taking place in her front parlor, “my apologies for the delay. Would you care to look at the lace now?”
The duchess did not look away from Juliana. “We have not been introduced,” she said, the words sharp and designed to startle. They were a cut direct, aimed to remind Juliana of her impertinence. Of her place.
Juliana did not respond. Did not move. Refused to look away.
“Your Grace?” Madame Hebert looked from Juliana to the duchess and back again. When she continued, there was uncertainty in her tone. “May I introduce Miss Fiori?”
There was a long pause, which might have been seconds or hours, then the duchess spoke. “You may not.” The air seemed to go out of the room with the imperious statement. She continued, without releasing Juliana’s gaze. “I admit to a modicum of surprise, Hebert. There was a time when you serviced a far less . . . common . . . clientele.”
Common.
If the rushing in her ears had not been so loud, Juliana would have admired the older woman’s calculation. She had chosen the perfect word—the one that would provide the quickest and most violent set down.
Common.
The very worst of insults from someone who lived life up on high.
The word echoed in her head, but in the repetition, Juliana did not hear the Duchess of Leighton.
She heard her son.
And she could not help but reply.
“And I had always thought she serviced a far more civilized one.” The words were out before she could stop them, and she resisted the impulse to clap one hand over her mouth to keep from saying anything more.
If it were possible, the duchess’s spine grew even straighter, her nose tipped even higher. When she spoke, the words dripped with boredom, as though Juliana were too far below her notice to merit a response. “So, it is true what they say. Blood will out.”
The Duchess of Leighton exited the shop, taking the air with her as the door closed, its little bell sounding happily in ironic punctuation.
“That woman is a shrew.”
Juliana looked up to see Mariana heading toward her, concern and anger on her face. She shook her head. “It seems that duchesses can behave as they please.”
“I don’t care if she’s the Queen. She has no right to speak to you in such a way.”
“If she were queen, then she really could speak to me however she liked,” Juliana said, ignoring the shaking in her voice.
What had she been thinking, goading the duchess on?
That was the problem, of course. She hadn’t been thinking of the duchess at all.