“The choker, I think,” Anna said, hopping up and going to her jewelry box and returning with a cameo on a ribbon. “We can exchange these ribbons.” She wrapped it around Megan’s throat and held it, looking toward Kyria for confirmation.
“Simple and elegant,” Kyria said with a nod.
Megan, looking at her reflection in the mirror, could not help but agree. Even with her hair twisted into its usual plain knot, she looked more attractive than she could ever remember looking. The rich material and the warmth of the color made her skin glow, and her eyes were lit with pleasure. Her waist was infinitesimal in this tight dress, well worth, she thought, a little discomfort. Her bosom, larger than Olivia’s, swelled above the lowered neckline, full and soft, beckoning the eye.
“Um…don’t you think it’s, well, a little low cut?” she asked doubtfully. “I mean, I am only a tutor. It seems, well…” She shrugged.
“Nonsense,” Kyria said firmly. “There is no need to look like a governess at a ball, is there? It isn’t as if you’re going to be teaching anyone.”
“Besides, it’s simple,” Olivia put in. She cast a look at Kyria. “Plain, in fact. No one could say it was inappropriate.”
Megan suspected that her father and the nuns would probably argue about that, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her from wearing this dress. It was sheer vanity, she knew, but she could not wait to see Theo’s face when he saw her in this dress.
Joan fussed about the skirt of the gown, pulling it up here and there, and telling Kyria that she could drape the hem over the copper lace, as well as add a little more padding to the modest bustle. Kyria was quick to agree.
Puzzled, Megan looked at Kyria. “I have to wonder—why are you doing this?”
Kyria raised an elegant brow in a gesture that was designed to quell impertinent questions. “I’m sorry. Do you not wish to attend the museum benefit?”
Megan was too accustomed to asking unwelcome reporters’ questions to be turned aside by the other woman’s manner. She merely smiled and said, “It’s not that I am not grateful for your kindness and generosity, Mrs. McIntyre. Or that I’m not looking forward to being Cinderella at the ball. It is just, well, I cannot help but wonder why you are going to so much trouble to take me to this party.”
Kyria’s snobbish expression dissolved into a grin. “All right. I do have an ulterior motive. Surely you know what that is—I would like to put Lady Scarle’s nose out of joint.”
“She has had her tentacles out for Theo for months now,” Olivia put in, surprising Megan a little. She would have thought Lady St. Leger was as unobservant as her father of all things social.
“He doesn’t have any partiality for her, though,” Anna said. “Does he?”
“Oh, no. He has never been more than polite to her,” Kyria replied. “It’s just…well, I worry sometimes that she will keep after him so long that she will wear him down. Or that she will manage to trick him into some compromising position. You know Theo. He would marry her if he thought honor demanded it.”
“She is just the sort who would do something like that,” Olivia agreed.
Megan could understand Theo’s loving sisters’ motives. She would herself relish irritating the obnoxious Lady Scarle.
“But why—I mean, what does that have to do with me?” Megan blurted out, then blushed to her hairline.
Kyria let out a throaty chuckle. “My dear Miss Henderson, surely you have noticed that our brother spends an inordinate amount of time with the twins these days.”
“And he is not usually inclined to scholarly pursuits,” Olivia stuck in with a smile.
“Lady Helena saw it as soon as the two of you walked into the drawing room the other day. Her back went up immediately. Even she isn’t usually quite that rude. She was livid when I said you were coming with us to the ball.” Kyria smiled at the memory of the other woman’s discomfiture. “I intend for her to be even more upset when she sees you this Friday evening.”
Megan could not understand Kyria’s satisfaction at the thought of her brother’s interest in a mere employee. The Morelands were abnormally egalitarian for aristocrats, of course. Kyria herself had married an American and was quite happy to be addressed as Mrs. McIntyre instead of Lady Kyria. But Rafe McIntyre was at least enormously wealthy, whereas Megan was nothing but a tutor.
It was not, she supposed, as bad as her real occupation—she could think of little an aristocratic family would like less than one of them marrying a muckraking careerwoman. But even so, she was not only a commoner and a foreigner, she was someone who worked for them. And while a daughter might marry outside their group of peers, as Kyria and Thisbe had obviously done, it was an altogether different thing for their firstborn son, the heir to the ancient title, to do so. A tutoress as the next duchess? It would be, Megan guessed, unthinkable.
Then she realized that that very fact was the answer to her question. Kyria and Olivia knew that Megan was so unacceptable as a wife that Theo would never consider marriage to her. It would not be the same as falling into the clutches of a woman of good birth, whom he might have to marry. An employee, and an American at that, would never be anything to Theo but a passing fancy—a mistress, at best.
Megan was aware of a pang of hurt and disappointment at the thought. She liked Kyria and Olivia, and it wounded her to think that they did not consider the consequences for her in their scheme to keep their brother out of Lady Scarle’s clutches.
Somewhat subdued, she stood, letting Joan crawl around her skirt, pinning it up here and there, while the other women chattered about ribbons and jewelry and the dreadful Lady Scarle. When the maid finally finished, Megan quickly got out of the elegant gown and back into her own plain clothes, and left the ladies with a polite smile and thank-you.
She went through the rest of the week careening back and forth between conflicting emotions. Part of her did not want to go to the benefit, didn’t want to face Theo—or Lady Scarle. Yet she knew that she had to; it was a perfect opportunity to see Mr. Coffey again and question him privately about the trip he had made with Theo and her brother.
However, she knew that it was not simply this opportunity that made her a little breathless with anticipation every time she thought about the ball. She wanted to see herself dressed in the beautiful gown; she could not help but imagine how Theo would look when he saw her—the smile that would curve his mouth and the heat that would light his eyes. She wanted to put that hot glow of passion in his eyes; indeed, she melted a little inside just thinking about it.