Page 59 of Scandalous

“Yes, I daresay Bouchard would not find it easy to have another captain on his ship.”

“It was not so much that, as it was the issue of slaving.”

Lady Ramsay’s pale eyebrows arched. “Oh, so that’s the case. No, Captain Bouchard would not go easy on such a man. Neither would my husband.”

Sarah cursed her loose lips and hoped she hadn’t just damned Graaf’s chances for help from the big man.

“Don’t worry,” the blond woman assured her, reading Sarah’s expression with an ease that left her unnerved. “Ramsay will stand by his word. He is less . . . barbaric in his methods than he used to be.”

“I’ve heard stories of your husband from several people. He is still very much respected and not a little feared, I think.”

“Yes. I believe he misses those days, particularly when the children fail to obey him as his crew was used to doing.”

The women laughed, and the tense moment passed.

* * *

Sarah lay in the enormous tub long after the water had cooled, until her fingers and toes wrinkled, and she began to shiver from the cold. She bundled up in thick towels that had been heated with hot bricks and padded into her dressing room.

A small, aged woman with a dour expression was riffling through her dresses. She gave Sarah a quick, unsmiling glance before turning back to the garments.

“My name is Rowena. My lady sent me to help you with your toilette.”

Sarah felt odd having somebody help her dress, but Rowena looked unwilling to take no for an answer.

She pushed Sarah down in front of the mirror and proceeded to work on her hair with all the care of a farmer hoeing a field. Sarah gritted her teeth to hold back agonized screams as the woman drew out the tangles. Rowena left her tormented hair to dry and then helped Sarah into a chemise and drawers before cinching her into a corset with a ruthlessness that would have done a general proud.

The little termagant had selected the fanciest dress Arlette and Adele had given her, a jade green silk embroidered with tiny jet beads. Once Sarah was dressed, Rowena pushed her back onto the yellow silk padded bench and resumed working on her hair. She only spoke to tell Sarah to move one way or the other.

It was deeply uncomfortable to be the beneficiary of such intense, silent care.

“Have you been with Lady Ramsay long?” Sarah asked, for lack of anything else to say.

“All her life.” Rowena spoke around the pins she held in her lips as she created an artful crown of ringlets from Sarah’s straight hair. “Tilt your face down.”

It was like watching a miracle in progress. Sarah would not have believed she could look so elegant. When Rowena finished with her hair, she opened a small casket and rooted around before pulling out a triple strand of pearls with a single emerald cabochon in the middle. She clasped it around Sarah’s neck and stood back to admire her work. She grunted.

Sarah just stared.

The woman in the mirror was still Sarah, but not as she’d ever seen herself before. Not even a gown as fine as the green silk could make her beautiful, of course, but it somehow made her eyes look larger and more green than brown. And her hair? Well, that was beyond amazing.

“Thank you, Rowena. I have never looked so splendid.”

“My lady said to bring you to the drawing room.” Rowena opened the door and went through it, not waiting to see if Sarah followed.

The only person in the drawing room was Baron Ramsay, looking enormous and elegant in his black-and-white dinner clothes.

“Good evening, Miss Fisher, Rowena.”

Rowena turned and left the room without a word.

The baron winked at Sarah. “She adores me.”

Sarah laughed, and the baron raised an ornate gold quizzing glass. “You look lovely, Miss Fisher,” he said, and then frowned.

“What is it, my lord?” She looked down at her gloved hands and examined her skirt. Had she managed to rip or stain her gown?

He tapped the glass against his chin, a wry look on his face. “Perhaps you look too lovely. I’m afraid Martín and Graaf will be engaged in fisticuffs before the first course has finished.”