At Your Request (Apart from the Crowd 0.5)(31)
Nevertheless, even though she had formed a friendship with Gertrude, she had yet to understand Gertrude’s unusual sense of fashion. Though she always dressed in a rather peculiar manner, tonight, well, Gertrude had simply outdone herself.
Gertrude’s golden curls were gathered together in two unevenly matched bunches on either side of her head. Brightly colored feathers were stuck into the bunches, and then more feathers—ones that appeared to be from a chicken—were attached to wings that had been sewn onto the back of her blue-and-green-striped dress. Additional feathers had been glued, and not glued very well, all over the fabric of Gertrude’s skirt.
“I’m a peacock,” Gertrude said before Permilia had a chance to recover her speech.
“Of course you are.”
Gertrude grinned. “I know I don’t look anything like a peacock, Permilia, but Mrs. Davenport, the lady I’m paid to be companion to, fancies herself a somewhat artistic sort. One of the conditions of her hiring me on as her companion was that I needed to agree to allow her to pursue her artistic nature by styling me in whatever manner she saw fit—or . . . ‘as the muse strikes,’ as she so quaintly put it.”
Resisting the impulse to grab a dance card from her muff and write down that intriguing piece of nonsense concerning one of society’s established matrons, Permilia summoned up a smile instead. “Perhaps the muse will stop striking.”
Miss Temperance Flowerdew—another wallflower, but one who rarely spoke—let out what almost sounded like a laugh, until her eyes widened. She gulped in a breath of air and immediately settled into silence again.
Releasing a laugh of her own, Gertrude caught Permilia’s eye. “While I can always hope that Mrs. Davenport will decide she’s not an artistic sort, for now, since she pays very well for my company, I’ve learned to avoid mirrors at all costs.” Gertrude patted a spot beside her on the log. “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
Feeling a rush of affection for her new friend, Permilia moved to the log and took a seat. “May I assume the two of you plan to spend the entire ball hidden behind here?”
“I should think not,” Gertrude said even as Temperance began nodding. Reaching over to Temperance, Gertrude patted her hand. “We can’t stay here all night—especially since I’ve come to the conclusion that this cozy nook may have been created to offer couples seeking out a bit of privacy, a place to . . . well . . . do whatever it is couples do when they go off searching for a secluded spot.”
Temperance immediately stopped nodding, turned a bright shade of pink, and got to her feet, shaking out the folds of what appeared to be some sort of a servant costume. “I’ll get in all sorts of trouble if anyone comes to the conclusion I’m hiding away back here in order to have a clandestine meeting with . . . a gentleman.”
For the briefest of moments, Permilia simply stared at the woman who’d just strung an entire sentence together. “Get in trouble from whom, pray tell?”
Temperance shuddered. “It would be for the best if I didn’t answer that, but I do appreciate you asking.” With that, she spun around and rushed away.
“You don’t suppose her cousin, Mr. Wayne Flowerdew, is abusive toward her, do you?” Gertrude asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Mr. Flowerdew, nor about Temperance, for that matter,” Permilia began. “I’ve heard the rumors that she’s a poor relation, taken in by her cousin after her parents died a few years back. I’ve also heard that the Flowerdew family was fortunate in that they were vouched for by a very respected New York Knickerbocker matron who saw them accepted into New York society two years ago without much fuss.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s been clear to me for some time now that the Flowerdews place little value on Temperance. Her sole purpose in attending society events seems to revolve around her being at the ready if Wayne Flowerdew’s daughter—the very fashionable, yet quite nasty, Miss Clementine Flowerdew—needs assistance with anything. Why, I’ve seen her called away from the wallflower section numerous times over the past two years in order to sew a button back on Clementine’s gown, search out glue to reattach a heel that had come off Clementine’s dainty shoe, and once . . . I watched Temperance hold a parasol over Clementine’s head in order to keep the sun away from her cousin’s pale complexion as they strolled around Central Park.”
Gertrude gave a shake of her head. “And here I thought I had a difficult time of it being a paid companion to Mrs. Davenport, who isn’t always pleasant, but at least there’s only one of her, and—”
Whatever else Gertrude had been about to say got lost when there was a loud shriek and then a thud. A second later, one of the pillars that had been brought in to lend the gymnasium an ancient-Roman feel, and one that could be seen from their hiding place since it reached almost to the ceiling, began to teeter.
Not hesitating, Permilia moved into motion and burst through the foliage she’d been hiding behind. Her gaze took in the sight of Temperance lying on the floor, obviously a victim of an overly long hem, before she switched her attention to the pillar Temperance had apparently bounced against. To her horror, that pillar no longer simply teetered but began to topple, sending the plants on top of it cascading to the ground.
Dashing forward, she put her shoulder against it, praying that would be enough to set it to rights again.