She didn’t speak. She couldn’t, because her breath was caught. She had never heard herself described in such terms by anyone. How could she, when the local gentry who had known her all her life told a different story about her? One of an eccentric spinster who coarsened herself with commercial enterprise. An arrogant, unlikable woman, unhealthily obsessed with plants.
“Thank you,” she said, hoping her voice did not convey how deeply what he said affected her. It would not do to seem overly moved.
He shrugged, as though his words were unremarkable. As though such assessments of her worth were lobbed at her all day.
The carriage she had been waiting for at long last appeared through the stable gates and rolled up to the bottom of the steps.
“Miss Cavendish, in light of my lapse of judgment, I fully understand if you do not wish to return to Westhaven. But if Constance believes me guilty of ruining her plans, I shall have to live with her mortal disapproval. I don’t suppose I could prevail on you to reconsider finishing the work for my sister? I assure you that I will not attempt to intercede in so much as the placement of a vase.”
The contours of his face should not have a say in her decision, and yet she could not help but admire them as the fading light danced across the planes that made him sometimes handsome, sometimes fierce.
Or perhaps it was only the way that he looked at her. As if her respect meant something to him. As if she did.
“Very well,” she said. “I shall return in the morning. For Lady Constance’s sake.”
He nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. For Lady Constance’s sake.”
And then he smiled.
Boyishly and quick and warm, like the sun darting out from a bank of clouds. It was so unexpected and disarming that without thinking, she craned her face toward his to get a better view of it. Their eyes met, and a chill ran down her spine. Because for just a moment, she thought he might lean in, close the distance, and kiss her.
No. Not thought he might. Wanted him to.
She wanted him to kiss her.
Instead, he folded his mouth back into its usual grim line, bent in a deep bow, and offered her his hand to help her into the carriage.
But it did not escape her notice that he held her fingers just a beat too long as he said: “Be well, Miss Cavendish.”
That he stood at the steps to his house and watched her carriage drive away until it went out the iron gates.
She hugged herself.
Not return to Westhaven? It was unthinkable.
She had spent far too many years of her life insisting she was worthy of the future she imagined to well-intentioned people who dismissed her as intractable at best. But she knew—knew—what she was capable of. She knew it the way she knew her own soul, her own breath, her own pulse. What she had not realized was that she had been pining for someone who knew it too.
She was going to prove that it was the Duke of Westmead, not the others, who was right about her.
She was going to leave them stunned by what she would accomplish.
Chapter 6
Indomitable, Poppy coached herself as she marched to the door of Westhaven, clad in boots and men’s breeches. You. Are. Indomitable.
She had lain awake for hours replaying Westmead’s speech about her in her head. At dawn she had come to a decision: she had chosen to simply believe him.
She would no longer attempt to pass for a mannerly maiden with her awkward curtsies in her mended dresses. She would simply be Poplar Cavendish, named for a tree. A brilliant nurserywoman who wore breeches and rode astride and did not require society’s approval. She would use her inborn gifts to design the most remarkable ballroom in the history of Great Britain and leave this house with a legion of new customers and her independence finally secure.
“Lady Constance has requested the pleasure of your company in the morning room, Miss Cavendish,” the butler said, his face frozen in alarm at her appearance.
She smiled, ignoring his discomfiture. “Certainly. Lead the way.”
The room she was shown to was a jumble of disorder. The chairs and sofas had been pushed to the walls to make a large empty space in the middle of the chamber, and every surface was slung with colorful bolts of fabric and boxes of lace and feathers.
Constance stood on a round stool at the center of this chaos in a confection of shimmering pink taffeta, her arms held out to either side as a seamstress stood behind her, sticking the seams with pins.
A woman in a striking scarlet dress observed with regal bearing. “Tighter still around the waist, I think,” she said grimly to the needlewoman.
“Valeria, if she fastens it any tighter, I shall be capable of nothing beyond fainting. All of England’s oldest families will think I have a wasting illness.” Noticing Poppy, Constance smiled. “Ah, Miss Cavendish, you’ve arrived! I’d like you to meet Madame Valeria Parc, my mantua-maker.”
The tiny woman stood, revealing herself to be as striking as her gown, all angles and swirls of long black hair. Her green eyes flashed over Poppy, from her unkempt head to her men’s attire.
“Enchantée,” she said, looking quite the contrary.
“There’s a dressing gown for you behind the screen,” Constance called. “Do get changed. It’s time for your fitting.”
“My what?”
Hopping down from her perch, Constance linked her arm with Poppy’s and inched her toward a pair of Chinese screens. “I want you to have a new gown for the ball. Something that is as stunning as your designs. It is the least I can do after the profound misunderstanding last night. Now hurry up and disrobe! If Valeria is given any more time to straiten my stays, I will suffocate.”
Poppy opened her mouth to object—she was here to work, not accept gifts she had no use for. Indomitable, she reminded herself. The ball was an opportunity to win new customers. She couldn’t very well do that in her fraying dun-colored muslin.
“How kind of you,” she said firmly, and marched behind the screen to remove her clothing.
When she had changed into a shift, Valeria whisked her onto the stool and began measuring her with efficient little flicks of her wrist.
“She’ll need a proper set of stays,” she sniffed.
Poppy frowned. She favored the leather stays worn by working women, cut to allow movement. One could not tend plants if one could not bend at the waist.
Constance draped her with a selection of fabrics and trimmings. “I think the jade silk for her. It makes a wonder of her eyes.”
“Perhaps. With ivory petticoats and a gold sash.”
“The cut must be rather dramatic. Nothing maidenish,” Constance said.
The women pulled fabric across Poppy’s arms and chest and hips, pinning here and there, and then stepped back to inspect their handiwork.
Constance spoke first, allowing her lips to curve in a barely perceptible smile. “Well, well. Perhaps there’s a viscount’s granddaughter in you after all, Miss Cavendish.”
Valeria turned her around to view her image in the looking glass. Where moments ago had been a girl with the dimensions of a weed, now an altogether different kind of woman gazed back at her. A slender sylph with a wasp waist and a snowy expanse of upward-sloping bosom. Poppy immediately covered the exposed tops of her breasts with her hands.