The Double Wager Read Online Free PDF

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 the way. But I shall have a talk with her first.”
    “And Henrietta!” Lady Tallant 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 coze over the teapot, pulling apart Henry’s character and scheming to put right the terrible wrongs that her upbringing had developed in her.
    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, Henry 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