Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense by Amanda DeWees Read Free Book Online Page B

measurement.”
    Felicity, perhaps guessing the nature of my silence, asked bluntly, “Have you a dinner dress?”
    “…with you?” added the duchess smoothly.
    “I am afraid I don’t,” I admitted, even as I appreciated her tact. “None of my dresses is truly suited for evening.” But surely it would not matter if I had nothing to compare with her wardrobe; indeed, there could be few who could match her in the magnificence of her dress. Today she wore a less elaborate gown for travel, but it was of lilac shot silk, and the skirt and sleeves were edged with a design of flowers in cut velvet. She was even wearing one of the new crinolines, whose steel or whalebone hoops lent her skirts the coveted bell-shaped silhouette. I was wearing the dress in which we had first met, over my two meager petticoats.
    “I knew it!” exclaimed Felicity. “You are a Quaker, aren’t you?”
    “Felicity!” The duchess was half shocked, half laughing. Even I could not keep from smiling, though the laughter was at my own expense.
    “I am sorry to disappoint you, but no,” I said. Felicity subsided, disappointed, and her aunt patted my hand.
    “Of course we know you are in mourning, my dear. But that does not mean you must deny yourself pretty frocks,” she said coaxingly, and I realized she too had misunderstood my unfashionable dress. Evidently the only reason she could imagine for the style of my dresses was that they had been made expressly for mourning clothes; the truth was that I had simply dyed my everyday dresses black. “I would dearly love to see you in a deep wine color, or violet. Nothing too elaborate for mourning, of course, but with a bit of décolletage… we shall see what we can do.” She smiled with such sly delight that it would have been churlish of me to object to her designs. Clearly she did not see them as charity, but simply enjoyed indulging her generosity.
    The dingy views of London gradually gave way to brighter shades of landscape as we traveled farther into the country. It was another grey, rainy day, but there had not yet been a hard frost to blanch the countryside, and through the windows of our traveling parlor, streaming with rain, I could see an enchantingly dimmed and rain-softened landscape, whose emerald greens glowed mysteriously through their veil of grey. The duchess wrote letters and gave instructions to the footmen, and when Miss Yates began to doze, Felicity came to perch next to me on the couch from which I watched the changing scenery.
    “It isn’t much of a view,” she said. “There won’t be anything interesting to look at for ages and ages yet.”
    Taking the hint, I turned away from the window. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind entertaining me, then? At least until the scenery improves.”
    “Oh, good; I was so hoping you’d feel like talking.” She gave an eager bounce on the sofa and I tried not to smile; she might have been ten instead of seventeen. “I’m longing to know more about you.”
    “And I you,” I said. “I would very much like to know more about the family. How many of you are there?”
    “Let me see.” She frowned prettily. “Aminta and her husband have their own place in Derbyshire, so they don’t count. At Ellsmere there are Aunt and Miss Yates, of course, and me; Papa, and Charles—my brother; he’s much older—and Herron. Not very many of us at all; we scarcely take up one wing unless we have visitors, and Miss Yates will be leaving this summer, when I come out. I shall miss her terribly, but I cannot wait to be done with lessons and to put my hair up and go to parties and balls like Aunt Gwendolyn.” She greeted this prospect with a beatific smile, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for Miss Yates, who must find her work difficult with so distracted a student. “If Charles is well enough by the beginning of the season he will be my escort. He has only been home for less than two months. He was in the Crimea—like your brother—only Charles