In the Shadow of Arabella Read Online Free PDF Page A

to rig them out in the latest style. Immediately after breakfast they began their second exhausting shopping expedition. They needed morning dresses and evening gowns, walking dresses and ball gowns, each with shoes or slippers, bonnets, gloves, and wraps to match. They chose fabrics and patterns and were assured by the dressmaker that the gowns they ordered for his lordship’s party would be ready in plenty of time. For that evening Charity chose a gown of pale blue crepe over a slip of white satin, while Katherine settled on India mull-muslin and Brussels lace.
    Katherine and Charity did manage to purchase much less than Lady Brent intended. Though Lord Harrington had placed no limit on his daughter’s expenditures, Charity was, nevertheless, modest in her purchases. Katherine, in her turn, was conscious of her limited budget and intended to spend each shilling to the best advantage. Elegant but not extravagant, she told herself, quality, not quantity. She must do nothing to endanger her plans.
    When Lady Brent urged Charity to order a lavish ball gown, she protested. “Need I go to balls? I have no intention of attending every function to which we are invited.”
    “I should think not!” her aunt replied, clearly shocked at such a thought. “Once it is seen that you have been the guests of Lord Rudley, you will receive invitations of every sort. You may rely upon me to choose only the best and most proper ones for you to accept.’’
    “Of course we shall depend upon you, Aunt, to guide us in such matters.” Charity spoke meekly, but Katherine knew that she found the situation as amusing and absurd as Katherine did.
    To Katherine the London world had always seemed preposterous, quixotic. She had come three times for the Season: when she was eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. She had stayed each time with a maiden aunt of her mother’s who had hovered just on the fringes of polite society. Katherine had been invited to a great many social engagements and had enjoyed herself, but as far as her stepfather was concerned, she had been a social failure. She had failed to find a husband—Sir Humphrey’s only reason for permitting her to go in the first place. When the old aunt died before Katherine’s twenty-first birthday, the visits to London ceased.
    Now she had come again, discovering it was still the dramatic change it had been for her the first time she visited. In the country she was often occupied with housekeeping duties, but now the biggest decision of her day was whether to have the blue silk or the French muslin! She found herself in the midst of a society of leisure where people seemed to think of nothing but dressing, dancing, eating, and making polite, jejune conversation. She was distracted by the absurdity of it all but determined not to lose sight of her goal.
    The following morning Charity and Katherine set off for Bond Street, where Charity had a fitting scheduled. The day was fair, cold but sunny, so they decided to walk, taking Charity’s maid with them.
    When the fitting dragged on, Katherine grew restless. “Would you mind if I stepped to the milliner’s across the street?” she asked. “I could look for a bonnet to match my blue cloak.”
    “I do not mind in the least,” Charity responded. “How boring for you to sit and wait. Take Molly.”
    With the unobtrusive maid at her side, Katherine left the dressmaker’s shop and carefully made her way across the street. The milliner’s had nothing to please her, or at least nothing she felt she could afford. On the street again, she looked in the window of the next shop and was drawn inside. The window exhibited delicate silk fans, skillfully painted in multicolored Eastern florals. Just inside the door a display case held all manner of jewel-encrusted trinkets. There were ladies’ snuffboxes set with diamonds; brush and comb sets of finest ivory; jewel boxes in every size and shape carved from fine wood and decorated with jade, rubies, and