Chapter 27
The dressmaker had managed to finish Emily’s blue tissue wedding dress by the morning before the wedding. It was a simple gown, the only adornment a row of silver silk rosettes with seed pearls on the skirt’s hem. She had never worn anything as fragile before. It draped her curves in a way that the earl would have to notice. Whatever happened in the future, she wanted on this one day to feel desirable. She wanted everyone in the village to watch her exchange vows with the earl and wonder how their awkward Emily had become a countess, when all signs had indicated that she would lead a lonely spinster’s life.
She shopped that afternoon in the village for a small trousseau, all the while aware that the villagers who had been lukewarm toward her for years now went out of their way to acknowledge her.
“Everyone is staring at us,” Iris said, at Emily’s side.
“No,” Emily said, smiling ruefully. “They’re staring at him.”
The earl had insisted he would accompany Emily on her most trivial errands. If she needed a new hairbrush, he stood by to offer his opinion.
By the end of the day she wanted to shake him. “I hope you don’t intend to shadow me like this for the rest of my life.”
“Like a thundercloud, sweetheart.”
Oh. She knew she ought to scold him when he teased her. She ought to feel more anxiety as their wedding day approached. She ought to feel anything but the inexplicable anticipation that built inside her whenever she heard his gently mocking voice.
? ? ?
Lucy and her stepmother, Diana, brought their own three maids and a hairdresser to help Emily prepare for the ceremony, which would be held at Fletcher Manor. Iris gave an audible sigh of relief when the army of women arrived. The windy day would turn Emily’s hair into a bird’s nest if it was not properly secured, and Lady Fletcher had a talent with cosmetics that might prevent Emily from walking to the altar like a ghost risen from her eternal repose.
“She’s as pale as a corpse,” Lucy said over and over, pinching one of Emily’s cheeks while Diana vigorously smoothed rouge across the other.
Her pallor was nothing to worry about, Emily thought. Wait until the wedding night, when the earl demands repayment for his protection. She would be blushing from head to toe as she kept her part of their arrangement.