“Why don’t you take them home for Lady Ashendon to see,” Miss Chance suggested, finding George still trying to decide. “As long as you don’t want lots of embroidery or beading or pearls sewn on—and I can see you don’t—we have plenty of time to get it made.”

“Oh, lovely idea,” Aunt Dottie said immediately. “Poor Emm is feeling so out of everything with this confinement of hers. I’m sure she would love to see these designs.”

So that was that. Miss Chance placed the sheaf of designs in an elegant folio and handed it to George, while Aunt Dottie hugged to her bosom a fat squishy parcel, tied with ribbon. “She had some already made up that were a perfect fit for me,” she confided to George in an excited whisper. “I’ve ordered some more.”

“Oh, but, Aunt Dottie,” George began. Miss Chance had a peculiar rule, that her customers had to pay for their clothes before taking them home. She claimed that toffs were bad at paying bills. But before George could explain, Aunt Dottie pulled a wad of banknotes from her reticule.

“It’s all right, my dear, Bea warned me about it. I find it refreshingly straightforward. I’m forever forgetting to pay bills.”

They left, promising to come back in a day or two with a final decision.

Chapter Twelve

I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes . . . in a total misapprehension of character at some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided . . . by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

—JANE AUSTEN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

The barbed comments continued to fly. It seemed there was no way George could escape them, except by hiding at home all day and night or by having the duke at her side, and she wasn’t going to resort to either stratagem.

But each day her temper was sorely tried.

She and Aunt Dottie went to the Pantheon Bazaar to shop for stockings and other bits and pieces. Waiting in line to pay for their purchases, George heard a woman behind them saying, “That’s the jade who snared the Duke of Everingham in her web.”

“Take no notice, my love,” Aunt Dottie said in a crisp, audible voice. “The woman is ignorant as well as ill-bred.”

Another woman elbowed George as she passed, hissing, “Jezebel!”

George gritted her teeth and held on to her temper.

In the park, people who used to smile at her now eyed her thoughtfully and failed to meet her gaze. She didn’t receive the cut direct from anyone, but it wasn’t pleasant.