Though how she would manage the task without Mama hearing of it or some other nosy dame deciding it was her duty to chastise Jemmah, she hadn’t yet conceived.
“I can deal with Belinda well enough, my dear. You’re kind to humor an old woman’s idiosyncrasies.”
As Jemmah neared the table, a footman loading a tray with filled punch glasses smiled a polite greeting. “Good evening, Miss Jemmah. Mary said you were attending your aunt’s ball.”
“Frazer Pimble, isn’t it?”
Here was Jemmah’s answer to her dilemma. Most providential to come upon her maid’s brother.
“Aye.” He nodded once, a kindly smile emphasizing the swath of freckles across his nose and cheeks.
“May I impose upon you?” When he nodded, Jemmah angled toward the ballroom’s west side. “See that lovely lady in the gold and black, with the spray of black ostrich feathers in her hair. The one holding a cane and peering in our direction?”
“I do, miss.”
“She desires a glass of punch, and I don’t dare take it to her.” Jemmah bent a tiny bit nearer and murmured, “Can you imagine the gossip? Would you be so kind as to put a serving in a teacup for her?”
Frazer gave a quick glance around. “Leave it to me, miss. Do you need a beverage as well? If I may be so bold, you look a bit flushed.”
“I would love lemonade, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
He nodded and gave a small wink. “Return to your seat, and I shall be along straightaway.”
Jemmah resumed her seat and had just turned to explain the plan to the dowager when, true to his word, Frazer approached, carrying a tray with a glass of lemonade in addition to a teacup and saucer.
He presented the china cup to the elderly dame, and Lady Lockhart’s eyebrows crept up the creases of her forehead to hang there suspended.
“Tea?” fussed the dowager, giving Jemmah the gimlet eye. “I most definitely declined tea.”
“Oh, but this is a very special brew, my lady. I’m sure you’ll quite like it.” Frazer inclined his head, and the dowager’s eyes rounded.
She took a dainty sip, then smiled in pure delight. “Indeed. An exceptionally fine brew. Thank you.”
Frazer left them, and her ladyship turned an approving eye on Jemmah.
“That was well done of you, Miss Dament. Clever too.” Her watery gaze bored into Jemmah for a long moment before she nodded slowly, as if coming to a conclusion. “I’ve been of a mind to sponsor a worthy young woman this Season, someone to act as my companion too. I would be honored if you’d consider the proposition.”
Jemmah choked on her lemonade.
Eyes watering and swallowing against the burning at the back of her throat, she gaped.
Smack her with a cod.
A way out?
A way to escape Mama and Adelinda?
She wiggled her toes and gave a tiny glee-filled bounce upon her seat.
Aunt Theo had tried for years to persuade Mama to let Jemmah live with her, but truth be told, Mama was reluctant to lose Jemmah as a servant.
But turn down the dowager’s sponsorship?
That Mama wouldn’t do.
The only thing she valued more than Adelinda was money, something the Daments were perpetually short of.
Jemmah laid her hand atop the dowager’s. “I would consider it the greatest honor to be your companion, your ladyship, and there’s no need to sponsor me. I’m not meant for routs and balls and such.”
“Oh, posh. What rot. Of course you are, my dear,” Lady Lockhart assured Jemmah. “But if it makes you more comfortable, you may begin as my companion straightaway. We’ll take the Season sponsorship a jot slower.”
“Companion...?” Mama sidled up to them, a ribbon-thin, forced smile tweaking her mouth’s corners. “If anyone is granted a sponsorship and the privilege of being her ladyship’s companion, it must, quite naturally, be Adelinda. I’m sure you understand, my lady. She’s the elder daughter, after all.”
All hail the elder daughter.
Bah!
“Are you entirely daft, Mama?” Adelinda hissed near Mama’s ear, her usual artificial smile making her seem the mild-tempered innocent to the casual onlooker. The fury in her coffee-colored eyes told an entirely different tale.
Lady Lockhart slid Jemmah an I-knew-she’d-pitch-a-tantrum look.
Adelinda grumbled on, a pout upon her rouged mouth.
“You expect me to wait upon another? An old woman? At her beck and call?” She huffed her outrage, flinging a hand toward the dowager while thrusting her dainty chin upward in haughty arrogance. “I am not companion material. Most especially not to a deaf, demented, aged crone.”
Her chin descended an inch as if granting a royal favor. “Jemmah may act as the companion, and as the eldest, I shall accept the sponsorship.”
La de dah.
The last she uttered with the austerity and entitled expectation of a crown princess.
Jemmah lifted her cup whilst eyeing the dowager.
Lady Lockhart planted both gnarled hands upon her cane’s floral handle and cut Adelinda a glare of such scathing incredulity, only the dame’s irises remained visible.
This ought to be very entertaining.
Her ladyship was precisely the person to knock Adelinda and her pretentious superiority off her self-appointed pedestal and onto her well-rounded arse.
“An old crone, most certainly, but not at all deaf, Miss Dament.”
Jemmah bit the inside of her cheek.
Most diverting, indeed.
The dowager’s gaze raked over Adelinda who didn’t have the refinement to look abashed, but rather contentious.
“I’d have to be demented to consider you for the position. But since it’s already been filled by your utterly charming sister, we needn’t worry on that account, need we?” She graced Jemmah with a wide—yes, distinctly smug—closed-mouth smile. “Oh, and the two go hand in hand—the sponsorship and the position, lest there be any confusion.”
Adelinda’s smile slipped a fraction and displeasure pursed her mouth. However, accomplished in artifice, she quickly masked her true feelings and pressed her point.
“My lady, surely you cannot mean to waste expense and time on my plain, wholly unexceptional sister, when both would be so much better spent on the more attractive of the pair of us. The little toad is hardly worth the effort, and I fear you’ll find the outcome most unsatisfactory.”
Adelinda tilted her head and summoned her syrupiest, most beguiling fake-as-a-purple-wig-on-donkey expression. The calculated one that inevitably ensured she acquired whatever the pampered darling coveted at the moment.
“Thank you for your kind words, sister.” Jemmah couldn’t attribute the acidic taste on her tongue to the lemonade she’d just choked on.
How could Adelinda be such a cruel, insensitive bacon-brain?
Adelinda laughed, the often practiced before her looking glass tinkle ringing hollow and shrill rather than light and musical. Snapping her fan open, she fiddled with the spines, expectation still arcing her winged brows.
Dense as black bread.
“Hmph.”
A sound very much like a stifled snort or oath escaped Lady Lockhart. She fumbled in her reticule for a moment then glanced up in triumph as she withdrew a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. “Aha, here they are.”