The Demure Miss Manning by Amanda Mccabe

Author:Amanda Mccabe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mills & Boon Historical
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Mary surveyed the drawing room, set up with tea for Teresa’s visit with the dressmaker they had somehow bribed to make their costumes for that night’s masked ball. All seemed to be in readiness, as elegant as she could make it in such a short time. The room was small, but pretty, with her mother’s finely embroidered tablecloths and silver ornaments on every surface. The china tea service was laid out, along with an array of delicacies she had managed to communicate with the cook on making. Large arrangements of tropical flowers, bright pink and red and yellow, splashed their vivid colours over the pale walls.

From beyond the louvred doors of the dining room, which her father had set up as his makeshift library, she could hear him rustling papers and moving books about. He had been quiet over breakfast, smiling as she told him about the arrangements for the masked ball, but also distracted. She hoped she would not be in his way.

She moved a vase of flowers from one table to another, wondering why she felt so restless. Was it the sun, so golden-hot behind the shutters? The strangeness of the new place? The ball? She couldn’t fathom it at all.

She just hoped it was not because of Sebastian. Surely that was not it!

Her whirling thoughts were interrupted when Teresa arrived, amid flurries of bonnet ribbons and feathers, exclamations of the loveliness of the room, the excitement of the ball. She was soon followed by the dressmaker and there was very serious work to commence.

Before long, the sitting room was scattered with lengths of bright silks and velvets, sheer muslins, spools of ribbon and lace, as fine as any that could have been found in Europe. Mary sipped at her tea and watched as the dressmaker finished with the hem of Teresa’s costume, a frothy confection of white cotton and lace with delicate, silvery angel’s wings.

The warmth of the sun flowing from the windows, the shadows that lurked in the corners, gave it all such a wondrous dreamlike feeling. She almost felt as if she was dreaming, watching the scene through a lacy veil. She remembered what her father had said about Sebastian and wondered if he would be at the masquerade. Would he tell her then what he had warned her about? Or would he evade her again?

He was so very maddening.

‘What do you think, Mary?’ Teresa asked, pulling Mary away from her thoughts of Sebastian. Teresa spun around, her sheer sleeves fluttering in the sunlight. ‘Does it need more ribbons? More lace here?’

‘I am afraid those are all the ribbons I have, senhorita,’ the dressmaker said with a fierce scowl. ‘Since the royal family has arrived, every scrap of silk and lace has been sold five times over! No one wanted such things before; almost no merchants would import them. Now they are all anyone asks for! How am I to run my business?’

‘It doesn’t need anything at all, Teresa,’ Mary assured her. ‘You will surely be the prettiest, most stylish lady at the party.

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