What an Earl Wants by Kasey Michaels

Author:Kasey Michaels [Michaels, Kasey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373776764
Google: penU7fYzBBsC
Amazon: 0373776764
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2012-11-19T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

JESSICA DRESSED FOR DINNER in one of her new gowns, with both Mildred and Doreen fussing over her the entire time, admiring her undergarments, squealing in delight when she at last chose the dusky-rose over the sky-blue, saying one couldn’t possibly be better than the other but wasn’t it a marvel how the rose went so well with Jessica’s red locks. “And who would have thought any such thing?”

Gideon would, Jessica answered silently as she sat in front of the dressing table while Mildred, who was proving a marvel (although not in the sense Adam would have meant), handled the curling stick with flair, and not once did Jessica have to remind her that pins were to be put into hair and not her scalp.

Her mind traveled back in time for a moment, recalling Alice, her maid and friend of a lifetime ago. Jessica knew she had been a petted and pampered child, lacking in nothing, at least in a material way. She’d had a lovely roof over her head, had never known what it was like to worry about where her next meal or bed would come from. She had missed her mother, loathed her stepmother, enjoyed spoiling her half brother, could say she barely knew her father...but she had been content. Indeed, she’d been looking forward to her first Season, sure she’d be at least a moderate success. Fear had no place in her life.

That she’d been through what she’d been forced to endure these past five years and survived it all might be considered something of a miracle, and to once again be sitting in the lap of luxury very nearly erased those sad memories from her mind. Truly, it was amazing how adaptable a person could be. Although it was much easier, she knew, to accustom oneself to luxury than to the catch-as-catch-can existence of those five long years between her girlhood and the woman she had been forced to become.

As Mildred fussed with the trio of curls she was arranging to fall just so on Jessica’s left shoulder, Doreen gathered up mountains of tissue and paper and string now that all of the new clothing had been carefully put away in drawers and cupboards and armoires. Jessica’s own wardrobe, from shifts to shoes to shawls, had been playfully argued over, with the shoes going to Mildred, who said she could stuff tissue in the toes while Doreen couldn’t stuff her toes into the toes. Doreen laid claim to the night rails, Mildred the bonnets, and nobody begged to please be given the black gowns Jessica had worn in the gaming room.

“His lordship asked to be informed as to your choice for the evening, ma’am,” Doreen told her when she’d returned to the bedchamber after disposing of the wrappings. “I was just running down that footman with the Adam’s apple big as a lemon, to get him to help me carry everything down to the kitchen fire, when one of that pair of

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