Constant Heart by Siri Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

me from her mind. Until I could return the earl to her good graces, I would try not to remember myself to her at all.

6
    I dressed with great care the next morning as I thought about claiming my place among Her Majesty’s nobility. That place was mine to claim, by right of marriage, unless the earl indicated otherwise. But if the previous day’s experiences were any guide, I could only assume that place would not be given unless I asserted my right to have it. It was imperative that I show my presence. To remain at Lytham House would be to relinquish my position, to forfeit any hope I had of being useful to the earl. For how else could I determine which ladies were most influential and whom I must befriend? Whom I must invite to supper and whom I must avoid? It was at court that my talents for singing and for dancing could be best displayed.
    Since I longed to be part of what I had been trained for, I wanted neither to be the first in fashion nor to be among those wearing the previous year’s styles. I wanted to look like all the other courtiers’ wives.
    A chambermaid helped me put on my shift, corset, and silk stockings. Then Joan motioned me to stand on a stool, and together she and the maid raised the farthingale hoops above me so I could push my head through them.
    I took some bread as the maid fastened the farthingale to the bodice. That done, there was the question of the kirtle. Since I would wear a French gown with the front of the skirt cut away, the front of the kirtle would be revealed. “I want the gold gown, I think, and so the cloth of gold kirtle.” But after it had been taken to the sempstress, I changed my mind. It would seem dull to wear too much gold. “Could I . . . I think the cloth of gold forepart should be replaced with the carnation.”
    As I sipped at wine, Joan found the sempstress and told her to detach the remainder of the cloth of gold forepart from the front of the kirtle and join the carnation forepart to it instead. The forepart replaced, she brought it back to my chambers. The chambermaid aided me into the gown and arranged it over my farthingale.
    But I stopped her. “Leave me think a moment.” Instinctively, I had chosen to wear my gold gown, the only gown I could see in the dim light. But it would be the first gown any would notice in the bright-lit Presence Chamber, and that would not do.
    I could wear the indigo once more. Or the one my mother had ordered made in gray. The gray gown was wretched, the color of ashes. But it symbolized repentance. At my mother’s insistence, a gray gown of satin had been part of my dowry. She had advised that a proper wife should always have a gray gown in which to mourn a death or beg forgiveness from a husband.
    Perhaps gray; I could play the penitent. Surely that would please the Queen.
    “I shall need this gown replaced by the gray.”
    Joan cast a long look at me before she gestured the maid to pull the gown from me.
    “And with it, not the carnation forepart, but the cloth of silver in its stead.” If I was to make myself humble, at least I could do it in a gown worthy of my new station.
    The maid removed the gown and then the kirtle I had just put on, handing it to Joan.
    Joan disappeared, no doubt to take it to the sempstress once more. I felt bad that the woman would have to unpick the stitches that had just been sewn.
    I took more bread while I waited for Joan’s appearance.
    When she returned with the forepart replaced, I lifted my arms to be dressed once more.
    “Sleeves, my lady?” The chambermaid curtsied as she asked.
    “The gray.” Much as I would have liked the silver which matched the forepart, I chose for the Queen’s pleasure, not my own.
    The maid laced the sleeves to my gown. I stood straight as she laced the gown up the back.
    “A hat, my lady?”
    I preferred my tall hat for its gaiety but had chosen a more traditional French hood for my introduction the day before. I settled, finally, on a caul. It needed but a