Elizabeth Bailey - Misfit Maid

Delagarde found his tongue. ‘What the devil is that?’

‘Laurie!’

‘Have you all gone stark, staring crazy?’ He turned a fulminating eye on his great-aunt. ‘What do you call this? She is supposed to be making her debut. Only look at that neckline! And feathers!’ he uttered in a voice of loathing, his eye rising to Maidie’s head. ‘She looks like a matron with a bevyful of brats in her train, instead of…’

His voice died as he caught sight of her hair. For a moment he gazed in blankest amazement, the fury wiped ludicrously from his face.

‘Good God!’ he uttered faintly at length.

Quite unable to prevent herself from reaching up to cover what she might of her horrible locks, Maidie burst out, ‘He hates it! I knew he would.’

‘It is certainly startling,’ he conceded. He might have been looking at a stranger!

‘Well, you cannot hate it more than I do myself,’ Maidie stated, resolutely bringing her hands down and gripping her fingers together. ‘You may be thankful you were spared seeing it before it was styled.’

A short laugh escaped him. ‘Yes, I think I am.’

Maidie shifted away, and he moved around her, his eyes riveted to the extraordinary hair. Who would have believed it? Such a little dowd as she appeared this morning—and now! He tried to recall the impression he had formed of an unremarkable countenance, but the colour of that head was so very remarkable that he could not recover it. She turned to face him again, and he could not repress a grin at the sulk exhibited in her features.

Maidie flushed. ‘It’s well for you to laugh. I dare say you think it excessively funny. But I must live with it.’

‘So, it would appear, must I,’ he returned smoothly.

‘Well, it is no use supposing that I can get rid of it,’ Maidie said, goaded. ‘I have tried before now, and it does not help in the least.’

‘You tried to get rid of it?’ repeated Delagarde, amazed.

‘She did,’ averred Miss Wormley. ‘She cut it all off.’

It was a new voice to the Viscount, and he turned quickly in her direction. One glance at the faded countenance and the discreet grey gown told him exactly who she must be. Moving to her chair, he held out his hand.

‘You are Lady Mary’s duenna, I think?’

‘Miss Wormley, Delagarde,’ confirmed Lady Hester. ‘Our cousin, you know.’

‘Ah, yes. How do you do?’

Miss Wormley had risen quickly to her feet, and now grasped his hand, murmuring a series of half-finished sentences, from which Delagarde was unable to untangle the references to his supposed kindness from her hopes that he had taken no offence. He cut her short with a word of dismissal.

‘But you don’t mean,’ he went on, ‘that Lady Mary really did cut off her hair?’

Miss Wormley nodded vigorously. ‘Indeed, she did. She must have been thirteen at the time.’

‘Worm, don’t!’

‘But I wish to hear it,’ said Delagarde, a hint of amusement in his tone, and a smile for the duenna.

Miss Wormley succumbed. ‘She appeared at the dinner table one evening, quite shorn to pieces. She might almost have taken a razor to her head, except that it was cut too raggedly for that. I was very much shocked, but Lord Shurland could only laugh.’

‘Yes!’ said Maidie bitterly. ‘I have never forgiven Great-uncle Reginald for that. Ever since I have kept it strictly confined—until today. And I wish very much that I had not allowed Lady Hester to persuade me to do otherwise.’

Delagarde rounded on her. ‘My good girl, don’t be stupid! For God’s sake, take off that ridiculous bandeau, and let me see it properly!’

‘She will do no such thing.’ To Maidie’s relief, Lady Hester rose and came to stand beside her protegée. ‘Leave the child alone, Laurie. You can see she is distressed.’

These words caused Delagarde’s glance to move to Maidie’s face. She looked not distressed, but decidedly mutinous. As well she might! What the devil was Aunt Hes playing at, to dress the girl in this fashion? His eyes raked her from head to toe and back again. It was not so much the style of the gown as the bandeau and feathers—and the colour. There was something—yes, repellent!—in the combination of dark blue and silk. Almost he preferred the dowd. This look of sophistication, of mature womanhood, he found distinctly disturbing.

He became aware of Maidie’s wide-eyed gaze upon him, in it both question and—doubt, was it? He frowned. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

She put up her chin. ‘It would take more than your disapproval to offend me. It is immaterial to me what you think of me.’

‘Is it, indeed?’ said Delagarde, instantly up in the boughs. ‘Then allow me to point out that it was not I who sought to place you under my sponsorship. But, since you will have it so, you had better learn to take account of my opinion.’

Maidie’s brows drew together. ‘Well, I will not. I have not asked you to interfere beyond what I specify.’

‘Oh, indeed?’ returned Delagarde dangerously. ‘And what precisely do you specify? I may remind you that I have not yet agreed to do anything at all.’

‘Then why am I here?’

‘You are asking me? How the devil should I know?’

‘Oh, tut, tut!’ interrupted Lady Hester, laughing. ‘Do the two of you mean to be forever at loggerheads?’ She turned apologetically to the duenna, who was looking distressed. ‘Miss Wormley, pray pay no attention. If you had been here this morning and heard them both, you would think nothing of this plain speaking between them.’

‘But Maidie must not—it is quite shocking in her…’ The Worm faded out as her charge’s inquiring grey gaze came around to her face. Daunted, but pursuing, she took up her complaint again. ‘It is not becoming, Maidie, when his lordship has been so magnanimous as to—’

‘But he has not, Worm,’ interrupted Maidie, moving to resume her seat in a chair next to her duenna’s. ‘It is Lady Hester who asked me to come. Lord Delagarde has not ceased to object—quite violently!—and he has been far from magnanimous.’

‘Oh, no doubt it is churlish of me,’ uttered Delagarde in dudgeon, ‘to object to my house being invaded, my peace being disturbed, and my life turned upside-down merely to accommodate the whims of a pert female who has not even the courtesy to make the matter a request. She demands—or, no, it was required, was it not?—that I should arrange her debut. If anyone can give me a reason why I should be magnanimous after that, I shall be delighted to hear it.’

Silence succeeded this tirade. Delagarde, having discharged his spleen, looked from one to the other in growing bewilderment. The Worm looked crushed. If Aunt Hes was not on the point of laughter, he did not know his own relative. As for Maidie herself—was that a hint of apology in her eyes? Before he could quite make up his mind, Maidie spoke.

‘It is—it is quite true,’ she said, in a gruff little voice. ‘I had not thought of it in quite that way. I suppose I need not blame you for being so horrid.’

Delagarde was conscious of a peculiar sensation—as of a melting within him. Thrown quite out of his stride, he directed the oddest look upon her, and began, ‘Maidie, I—’

She cut him short, rising swiftly to her feet. ‘No, it is for me to speak now.’ With difficulty, she overcame a rise of emotion that she did not recognise. ‘I have been selfish. If you feel that you cannot bear to accommodate me, even for a little time, I shall quite understand.’

Before Delagarde could gather his bemused wits at this wholly unlooked-for turn of events, the door opened to admit a footman. Fleetingly, Delagarde wondered at his butler’s absence, but his attention was caught by the man’s words, which had nothing, as he might have expected, to do with dinner.