Marquesses at the Masquerade(2)
Melinda plucked the gown from the maid’s arms and dropped it on the small table next to Rosamund. “You know what to do, Mundie, and she wants crystals sewn along the neckline as well. You’ll need to finish it tonight, because you’ll be working on Vanessa’s gown tomorrow.”
Which meant more rushing to finish in time for any last-minute nips and tucks before the ball. Rosamund had often suspected that Melinda took special pleasure in seeing how fast she could make her sew.
“I’ll make certain the gowns are ready in time.”
“See that you do.” Melinda gestured to Mary. “Take this tray away. We don’t want Rosamund to be distracted while she works.”
With an apologetic look that Rosamund returned with a quick, understanding smile, Mary removed the tray.
The hour was late when Rosamund finally finished the last stitches on Calliope’s gown, but she knew Mrs. Barton had brought up Uncle Piggott’s evening tea and was lingering in his room to chat. Rosamund hung Calliope’s gown neatly on the hook in her room that had been installed for just that purpose and crept down the dark corridor toward the light of Uncle Piggott’s room.
Uncle Piggott’s living had been a poor one. Now nearly eighty, his financial circumstances necessitated accepting the charity of his niece Melinda, who’d offered him a room and meals in exchange for the right to let all her acquaintances know how charitable she was.
“I’m her ticket into heaven,” Uncle Piggott liked to tell Rosamund with a wink. As the stairs were now too much for him, he passed all of his time in his room, contentedly. The tall stack of books that stood on his night table and was frequently refreshed by Rosamund accounted for a large part of his contentment, along with his beloved pipe. If his body had betrayed him in age, though, his mind remained sharp.
“So, Melinda has you working your fingers to the bone so those awful daughters of hers can be paraded before the ton in the hopes of catching husbands,” Uncle Piggott said when Rosamund joined him and Mrs. Barton in his room.
“This will be the first time madam and the young ladies have been invited to Boxhaven House,” Mrs. Barton pointed out.
“Not surprising, as the Marquess of Boxhaven is surely too sensible a man to want anything to do with either Melinda or those chits,” Uncle Piggott said cheerfully. “It’s actually quite remarkable how rotten they are, considering how nice they look. I have often observed to our Lord that if He only made everyone look on the outside as they are on the inside, so many of our human problems would resolve themselves.” He shook his head. “Lemon-suckers, the pair of them.”
“Shh,” Rosamund said, giggling. “They might hear you.”
“What, all the way up here in the Outer Reaches?” Uncle Piggott liked to refer to the fourth floor as the Outer Reaches. His room was comfortable but modest, a chamber obviously meant for guests of little importance. At the far end of the corridor, in a dark, perpetually chilly spot, was Rosamund’s own tiny chamber.
“Melinda would have to be a witch to hear that well,” Uncle Piggott said, filling his pipe. “Though I have not discounted the idea that she might be some sort of devil’s imp.”
“I despair of your sense of decorum,” Rosamund said, “though I like it more than I ought to when you speak badly of Melinda. My own relations, and they’re providing my meals and shelter.” She shook her head. “I am shocking.”
“They’re the shocking ones,” Uncle Piggott said around his pipe stem. “For your mother’s own sister to treat her niece so shabbily is appalling.”
But they all knew that it was the very fact that Rosamund was her mother’s daughter that had doomed her to the position she now had in the Monroe household. Melinda had never forgiven Rosamund’s mother for marrying “a penniless sailor.” Her sister marrying beneath her, Melinda believed, had dragged down her own consequence, resulting in Melinda’s marriage to the “worthless” (and now dead) Mr. Monroe, instead of the viscount who had once pursued her.
Melinda had clearly felt vindicated when Rosamund’s father, a captain in the Royal Navy, had been involved in a public scandal related to some men who had deserted their posts. Rosamund had never wavered in her faith that her father had done the right thing throughout the affair, but he had been court-marshaled, and their distinctive family name had been dragged through mud that stuck to it forever after.
“If your mother hadn’t married a man with such an unforgettable name,” Melinda said on the day seven years before when Rosamund arrived to stay, “perhaps you could recover somewhat from the scandal. But no one will forget it, or his infamy, and I won’t have my generosity to you repaid by subjecting my family to derision. You will keep to yourself and not draw attention in any way. And you will never, under any circumstances, give anyone your last name.”
Uncle Piggott poked the air with his pipe. “You ought to be attending the Boxhaven ball. As a member of the family, you were invited.”
Rosamund had privately felt more than a few stings of disappointment while laboring over gowns for a ball she could not attend—because she couldn’t attend, she knew that. Melinda had never once included her in a social event in all the years she’d lived with the Monroes.
“Why would I want to go to the ball when, with my aunt and cousins gone for the evening, the three of us can have a whole lovely evening together?” Rosamund said. “Perhaps we might even purloin some wine.”