Miss Lindel's Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

already had the full tale of last year dinned into her ears by Mrs. Paladin and had begun to be quite curious how Lilah would describe it. Yet amid the whirl of shopping and fittings there’d hardly been a moment to investigate Lilah’s character. She already admired her taste. Though she apparently dressed to please her mother, always deferring to her ideas of fashion, Lilah had dropped a hint or two which had much improved Maris’s new gowns. Maris felt as if they might yet prove to be great friends.
    “Come, come,” Mrs. Paladin said. “Don’t be bashful or I shall begin to suspect a love affair.”
    Maris was loath to mention Lord Danesby by name. Mrs. Paladin claimed acquaintance with half a dozen or more notables, yet Maris had noticed that her invitations and letters never seemed to bear any grander names than Mr. Dash, Esquire, or Mrs. Blank of Here-and-There. Yet after a few moments, Mrs. Paladin’s arch banter all but forced Maris to give up his name.
    Mrs. Paladin sat back against the cushion of her job carriage, her face blank. Then, like a candle catching flame, she brightened. “Your mother never told me she knew Danesby. Danesby, of all people.”
    “What’s wrong with him?” Maris demanded.
    “Wrong? Who said there was anything wrong about him? On the contrary, he could lead the fashionable world if he would but bestir himself to do so. Half the young bucks in town follow his lead as it is. Thank heavens they do so. Once Brummel left, the eccentric began once more to appear in gentlemen’s clothing. As if a man need wear fine feathers.” As if reminded, she stroked her hand over one of the egret feathers nodding in her bonnet.
    Maris hoped that Mrs. Paladin would let the subject drop, yet after a moment’s thought, she continued. “Do you think he will call upon you?”
    “I don’t know why he should.”
    “He is a gentleman. If he knows you are in town ...”
    “We are only his tenants, ma’am. We hold the lease of Finchley Old Place from him, or rather, from his father. But we are not on calling terms. As I say, I have only been in the same room with him once.”
    “But so pretty as you are, my dear, once is surely enough?”
    “I pray you, ma’am, not to imagine that Lord Danesby would know me from ...from Eve.”
    Lilah spoke from her side of the carriage. “We are here, Mother.”
    Mrs. Lindel and Sophie had not accompanied them to the milliner’s shop. The journey to town had been unexpectedly difficult, thanks to the very bad roads. It had taken three days instead of two. Sophie had been much tired even before they’d left home, so excited had she been over her part in the trip. The extra night they had spent at a small inn where the sheets had not been properly aired. Between that and her already weary state, Sophie had succumbed to a bad head cold almost immediately after their arrival. While she recovered her health and spirits before journeying on to Uncle Shelley’s, her mother preferred to stay beside her.
    Maris’s head was soon spinning with cornettes, Scotch bonnets, caps, and toques, tall, short, and those seemingly worn slightly sideways as though put on by a tipsy lady’s maid. She could tell she’d soon be completely at a loss, liable to wear evening headdresses with morning gowns and vice versa.
    “However did you keep all this straight last year?” Maris asked during a moment when Mrs. Paladin was giving orders to the milliner herself.
    “My mother is a great help. Her taste is unerring.”
    “You’ve inherited it, I’m sure. Still, I live in terror of making some fatal mistake in dress.”
    Lilah smiled with real warmth for the first time since they’d met. “Never fear. I will catch you if you stumble.”
    Maris couldn’t help wishing Lilah meant it literally. Both the Paladins moved with a straight-backed, easy grace that seemed languidly elegant. Maybe it was their longer limbs. They were taller than the Lindel women. The assured way they