Mary Balogh: The Double Wager

"Bottoms up!" a piercing voice ordered from the depths of the carriage. Marian looked as if she would have swooned if she could have trusted her husband to break her fall.

"Pen, get that infernal blanket over the cage," Philip scolded.

"I did!" she protested loudly. "You must have pulled it off when you went in for Brutus, you clumsy ox

"Enough, children,"Peter said with chilling command. "If that is the parrot you mentioned in your last letter, you had better teach it manners, or out it goes.".

"But, Peter," they both chorused in protest.

"Enough! Miss Manford, the footman will show you and the children to your rooms. Might I suggest an hour's rest and then supper in the schoolroom?"

"Oh, so kind, Sir Peter, Lady Marian. Just what we need. So very thoughtful of you. Oh, please, we will be fine. Come along, Philip. Penelope? Oh, and Brutus. And Oscar? Are they to be allowed upstairs, too? So considerate. The children will be so grateful. Say thank you, Penelope. What's that, my dearest boy? Oh, it is still big enough to cover the cage. Thank you, Sir Peter. So kind." Miss Manford, flushed and embarrassed, fluttered her way out of sight and hearing.

"Darling Henrietta," Marian gushed, turning her atten-tion to her sister-in-law, "how-how well you look, my dear. I have been so looking forward to having you here. Since little Timothy was born, you know, I have hardly been out in society. But I have a veritable host of activities lined up for you. I am determined to make you all the rage, you know, though I see that we shall have to get busy to make you acceptable."

Henry glowered but said nothing. She hated to lose a bet, and if winning the one against Douglas Raeburn meant having to be made over into a different person-a simpering miss, no less-then a simpering miss she would become. She smiled grimly as she removed her bonnet and shook out her short curls.

Marian reached for a bell rope in the salon to which she had led Henry. "I shall have Mrs. Lane show you to your room, Henrietta," she said. "You must rest for a while. I shall instruct the cook to set back dinner an hour."

"I would much sooner eat as soon as it is ready," Henry declared candidly, forgetting in the instant her resolve to become a simpering miss. "I'm starved. I could eat a horse. "

Marian's smile was strained. "Of course, dear. How thoughtless of me. Traveling does tend to invite an appetite, does it not?"

Mrs. Lane entered the room at that moment, to Marian's almost visible relief, and took Henry to a large, comfortable room and, blessedly, a bathtub full of warm suds.

Marian meanwhile had collapsed gracefully onto a sofa after sending a footman for a tray of tea; she glanced despairingly at her husband, who stood with his back to the empty fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, a grim expression on his face.

"My dear Peter, what are we to do?" she wailed. "They are all so… rustic."

"They are Tallants," Peter answered stiffly, "and as I am head of the family, they are my responsibility."

"Oh, yes, of course, my love," Marian added hastily. "It is just such a shame that no one has taken them in hand until now. The twins are quite wild. I really do not feel they should be encouraged to speak until they are spoken to. It appears that their governess has no control whatever over them. And that dog and that bird, Peter! Really, they cannot be allowed to roam the house. Especially when we have the upbringing of little Timothy to consider."

"Under your genteel influence and with my firm hand, they will all come about in no time at all, my dear," Peter reassured her. "Miss Manford has been with them since Giles was quite young. I believe she stands somewhat in the place of a mother to them. She filled a gap after Mama died when the twins were born. If she must be dismissed, of course, then sentiment cannot be allowed to stand in't lie way. But I shall have a talk with her first."

"And Henrietta!" Lady Marian seemed lost for words for a moment. "Such a fright, my love. I shall have to call a dressmaker and a hairdresser to the house. I cannot take her out looking the way she does now."

"Yes," he agreed dryly, "I knew Henrietta would be the main problem. I reprimanded Papa many times when she was growing up about allowing her to indulge her tomboy ways. But he was a stubborn man. He could never be convinced that she should be properly prepared for the life she must be expected to lead as an adult."

"Her speech, Peter. Does she always speak with such a want of manners?"

Between them they had a comfortable cote over the teapot, pulling apart Henry's character and scheming to put right the terrible wrongs that her upbringing had developed in her.

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Henry gradually became aware the next day of the terrible ordeal in store for her. While the twins and their pets were confined to the schoolroom with Miss Manford, and Giles spent the day out of the house somewhere with his brother prior to returning to university the next day, I leery was consigned to the tender mercies of Lady Tallant.

During the morning a hairdresser arrived. Henry was made to sit on a stool in her sister-in-law's bedroom, while Monsieur Pierre (a phony Frenchman, Henry decided as soon as he opened his mouth) walked slowly around her several times, his head tilted at various angles, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

"I know there is not much to be done, Henry told him practically. "The curl is natural, you know, but no one has ever been able to control it. You can brush it and hot-iron it as much as you please, but it will look like a spiky thornbush five minutes later. And you really cannot cut it any shorter. I. should be quite bald if you tried it, and Marian would never recover from the vapors."

Monsieur Pierre appeared to ignore this candid advice and proceeded to alarm Henry to no small degree by picking up his scissors, flexing his fingers artistically, as if he were about to play a sonata on the pianoforte, and began to snip.

Henry sat meekly enough through the ordeal, which did not last for very long. When she was finally allowed to examine the results in the mirror, she was astonished. Her hair appeared to be no shorter than it had when she had ruthlessly brushed it for all of ten seconds earlier in the morning, but now it had shape. Soft curls molded her scalp and the nape of her neck. It actually looked tame.

After luncheon, Henry was confronted with her sister-in-law's dressmaker, Madame Celeste (another phony, Henry decided), in the yellow salon. Marian was present, too, having canceled all earlier plans for the afternoon and having instructed the butler to deny her presence to any visitors who chanced to call. Henry had been told quite bluntly that her own clothes just would not do in London, and she was ready to concede that it would be agreeable to have some new clothes. She was prepared for a boring half-hour with the dressmaker in order to accomplish the necessary task of choosing a few clothes-a day dress, a ball gown, and perhaps a riding habit, she thought, though the prospect of riding in London did not possess much charm for her if it meant having to ride sidesaddle.

Henry was horrified to find that the session lasted for almost three and a half hours and that she was to have so many new clothes that it would surely take her all Season to wear each of them just once.

"Why do I need ten ball gowns, for heaven's sake?" she asked, appalled. "Won't one last me for the few months until summer?"

Madame Celeste allowed a superior smile to settle on here sallow features while Marian raised her eyes to the ceiling and struggled to hold on to her ladylike patience.

"My dear Henrietta," she said, "we shall be attending niany balls, given by some of the most influential members of the ton. Your brother and I move in the highest circles, you know. It would be quite unthinkable to wear the same gown more than twice at the most in one year. Everyone would think you must be a pauper, my dear. And we would never find a gentleman to make an offer for You.