The Dress of the Season by Kate Noble Read Free Book Online

don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Smith.”
    “The last house I worked in, the house’s young man kept bringing in young ladies—friends, he called them, or long lost cousins, and his mother never said a word. It made for a very uneasy house, to tell the truth, and I was glad to leave it.” Mrs. Smith shook her head. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before it started happening here, though—his lordship being a bachelor and all.”
    “You . . . you think I am . . .” Felicity choked out.
    Mrs. Smith gave her a pitying look. “Well, what am I to think? He’s never mentioned a ward before. Then, you and he come in hand in hand, and he puts you up in his room, and you . . . you are far too old to be ward to a young man like Osterley.”
    Ice ran down Felicity’s spine as she straightened.
    “You are right. I am far too old. Or, rather he is too young.” Off Mrs. Smith’s look, she explained. “We were all too young when the epidemic hit. I was sixteen. He was four and twenty, I believe.”
    “The epidemic?” Mrs. Smith repeated warily. The way her face went pale, Felicity knew Mrs. Smith realized that she might have made a mistake.
    “How long have you been working for Lord Osterley, Mrs. Smith?” she asked, keeping her voice cool and inquisitive.
    “Two . . . two years, miss.” The older woman replied, her mouth flattening into a grim line.
    “Then you’ve been here long enough to know what happened.”
    Mrs. Smith coughed into her hand. “They say in Whitney it was smallpox.”
    “Yes.” Felicity regarded Mrs. Smith, a little more kindly. After all, regardless of how wrong the woman’s assumptions were, it would only cause difficulties if she suffered an apoplexy. “You know the little house with the rose garden, about two miles down the main road? Just past the bridge that is the entrance to Croft Park?” At Mrs. Smith’s nod, Felicity continued. “That is my home—I grew up there.”
    “Is it?” the housekeeper replied. “Forgive me, but I thought it was part of his lordship’s property—after all, he’s the one who hired the workers when the roof was blown off in a storm and the tenants had to relocate.”
    “Lord Osterley manages the property in trust for me, until I come of age next year.” Felicity let her eyes flit to the window, the rain smashing down against it. “I did not know about the roof.”
    Panic lanced through Felicity, shockingly strong and swift. Her home was damaged? Had it fallen into disrepair? When they had driven past the house, Felicity had peered through the trees, trying to see its familiar gray stone façade. Her home. But the rain was too heavy, and the night too dark.
    She had to force the fear to quell down. Of course she would. Even if it was falling down about her ears, her home was still there, it had to be. It was the one link she had to the life she once knew. As frightening as it was for her to come back here and see what she left behind, it would be ever more intolerable to come back and find nothing.
    It was too lonely, too frightening a feeling.
    But then her brow came down critically. Osterley had made a promise to look after her affairs. Why was her house’s roof falling down? Even if he cared nothing for her, certainly he cared about appearances.
    “I . . . we did not always live there, of course.” Felicity forced herself to continue, bringing her mind back to the massive bedchamber with the heavy drapes, the rain, the stricken housekeeper. “My father was a solicitor in London, and he met my stepmother when I was but a babe. My stepmother—Sylvia, was her name—was cousin to Lady Osterley, and they were very close. So when they married, my parents moved us here. We all grew up together . . . almost as cousins.
    “As my father had no close family, and getting on well with the elder Lord Osterley, his lordship agreed to serve as guardian to my brother John and I, should anything happen to my family. My father