“Do not unquiet yourself again,” Simone said calmly, running an expert eye over Julia from head to foot. “Mademoiselle Louisa will be very well. Stand, please, and permit me to observe you. I believe you are very nearly ready to descend.”

She adjusted a final pin in Julia’s hair, and with a nod of satisfaction, offered her hand to assist the younger woman to rise.

Julia stood obediently and turned in a slow circle for Simone’s inspection. The maid’s usually impassive eyes widened, and she drew in her breath sharply.

“Nom d’un nom,” she breathed out. “I am a genius, truly.”

“What? Why? What do you mean?” Julia was puzzled.

A slow smile spread over the Frenchwoman’s face. “You look wonderful, ma belle. You have never looked finer. I say again, I am a genius. I shall ask your aunt to pay me more money.”

Julia laughed unsteadily, then moved across the room to peer at herself in the glass.

It was her own self… but she had never seen herself look like this. Her anxiety melted into astonishment at the very sight.

Wispy curls framed her forehead and face, while the long mass of her fair hair was held back by two fine pearlescent Grecian-style bands. Behind their restraints, Simone had coaxed her hair into a neat chignon style, but with additional twists that made of Julia’s hair a glossy pile of sophisticated coils. Even when Julia prodded them with a curious finger, their perfection remained unmarred.

“Amazing,” she breathed. Her hair had never looked so tidy and stylish in her life.

Below the mass of her hair, her skin glowed pale and rosy next to the ivory triumph of Madame Oiseau’s first and most elaborate creation. The delicate silk fell in a lustrous sweep from the low-cut neckline down to Julia’s slippers. The skirt of the gown was gathered at the back into folds that just swept the floor in a suggestion of a train, and the dress’s net overlay added a gold-tinted shimmer. Long ivory gloves and delicate pearl jewelry completed the sweetly sophisticated ensemble.

Julia turned and stared at herself in the glass, and turned back and stared some more. When she met her reflection’s eyes, they were still disbelieving. This young woman was. . beautiful? Elegant? How could this be?

Simone had worked a miracle, for the woman in the mirror looked like she could do anything. She could be fascinating and charming, and she would never take a false social step. Men would fall at the feet of this woman. If her heart was hurt, no one would ever notice, because she would tilt her head back proudly and smile.

Julia tilted her head back proudly and smiled. The woman in the mirror smiled, too, right back at her.

It made her feel better. She tried again, and this time the smile was even real.

“Oh, Simone, how did you do it?” she finally said, touching the glass one last time. “I look. . I look like a real town lady.” She choked on the words, and turned to face the maid.

“And so you are, when you are at a party,” Simone replied. “Especially this night. Remember that people know only what you want them to know about you. And in this”—she wagged a dexterous finger at Julia’s ensemble—“they will know that they should admire you and be charmed.”

She smiled at the younger girl. “So, feel your most charming, ma petite. You are enchanting. You cannot fail to please.”

Julia’s throat caught. She grasped Simone’s hands gratefully and managed a watery smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“There, child, no crying.” Simone patted her hands, then opened the bedchamber door for Julia to exit down to the drawing room. “I am very wonderful, I know, but how much will it help you to cry and undo the magnificence that I have created?”

As Julia passed through the doorway and headed for the stairs, the maid added too softly for anyone else’s ears but her own, “Il va craquer, je suis sûr. He will never resist her when he sees such a beauty. I am a genius, vraiment.”

She permitted herself a small smile as she watched Julia begin, with an expression of great concentration, to descend the stairs deliberately, holding her skirts away from her feet. Then, with an anxious glance at Louisa’s closed bedchamber door, Simone returned to Julia’s room and began to tidy up the litter of leftover pins, curl papers, and other evidence of her undeniable brilliance.



James waited downstairs in the entry of Lady Irving’s house for at least one of the ladies to make her appearance. He had been perfectly punctual, though he should have known that women preparing for a ball tended not to keep to a scrupulous timeline. He hadn’t been able to keep himself away any longer, though. There was nowhere else he wanted to be.

Given a few unexpected minutes of quiet, he idly paced back and forth, his cloudless face giving no hint of the hectic buzz of his thoughts. Despite himself, despite his years of experience with the ton, he found himself anticipating the night’s ball with as much pleasure as if it were his first.

Something wonderful was going to happen tonight, he had a feeling. By gad, his very fingers were tingling.

His mouth crooked into a wry smile as he regarded himself in the decorative pier glass of Lady Irving’s fashionable entryway. He had wanted to look especially well tonight, for whatever happened, and he’d let his fastidious manservant arrange his cravat. Delaney’s standards were amazingly high, and they’d wasted eight starched neckcloths before the valet had been satisfied. It was ridiculous, of course, but the effect was rather good, if he did say so himself.

“Drat.” A voice from the bottom of the staircase broke into his reverie.

James’s smile broadened. He knew who that had to be. Without turning to look, he said, “Hello, Julia.”

She gasped, and he turned to face her, grinning at her surprise. “James! I didn’t see you there.”

He opened his mouth to offer his usual friendly, joking reply, and then he just left his mouth open.

She was luminous.

She was herself, of course, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Was it the elegant sweep of her gown? No, her sophisticated clothing was but the gilt on the lily. She herself made it shine. Her skin glowed; her hair was bright; her lips were rosy.

She was the loveliest creature he’d ever seen.

He sagged against a wall. He needed to get hold of himself. This would not do. This would not do.

He closed his mouth and drew in a deep breath through his nose, and felt somewhat normal again. At least, if you were comparing him to someone who’d just been hit on the head with a club, run over by a carriage, and then been committed to Bedlam.

He was quite certain at that moment that there was indeed a God, because Julia didn’t notice him gaping at her like a schoolboy seeing his first nude statue.

All right, that wasn’t the type of thought that was going to help him get hold of himself.

He shook his head again to clear it, and noticed at last that Julia was behaving rather oddly. She was turning in slow circles, wrenching her head to one side. She looked as if she were having a tooth drawn by a set of clock gears.

“Er — is everything all right?” he managed.

Julia continued to turn in that odd way. “I’m not sure,” she said over her shoulder. “Simone had me all prepared like a perfect town lady, and then I was trying to be so careful as I came down the stairs, thinking that I mustn’t miss any of them, that I concentrated too hard instead of just going down normally, and I forgot how to move my feet properly. So I actually did miss one of the steps and my foot slid onto my hem, and now I’m afraid I’ve ripped it.”

She stood straight at last, flushing the embarrassed pink he knew by heart. “Could you check it? It’s the part in the back just next to the train. I can’t twist around quite far enough to see it.”

“Of course,” he replied. He crouched at her feet like a supplicant, his eyes not seeing her dress. The position gave him another welcome few seconds to hide his face for fear of what his expression would show her.

He took another deep breath, then cleared his throat as he stood slowly. “Your gown is fine. You look very nice.”

He still couldn’t trust himself to say more, or even to meet her eye. He pretended to check the arrangement of his cravat again in the glass.

At the edge of the glass, he could just see Julia’s reflection. She lifted her chin and smiled at his lukewarm compliment, cool and proud, looking for all the world like a princess.

“Thank you,” she said, sounding not quite like her usual self.

He turned to face her again, his face schooled into what he thought was a look of normal, friendly interest. “Why were you so worried about your dress?”

She grinned at him — her regular, everyday Julia grin — and its brightness hit him like a punch in the gut. He pitied the poor bachelors who would soon be vying for her hand.

“I’m just nervous,” Julia admitted, the self-deprecating grin still on her face. “It’s my first real ball, you know.” The grin crumpled, and she shuffled one of her dainty slippers on the floor. “Even so, I suppose I’ve let myself dwell too much on things I shouldn’t.”

James allowed himself to place one finger under her chin and tip her face up to his. Even through his glove, he could feel the heat of her smooth skin. “I know the feeling you mean,” he whispered huskily.

Her lips parted as if to reply — and of course she had a reply, because she always had a reply — and he drew his fingertip up to cover her lips for a moment. He’d never allowed himself such a liberty before, and he swore to himself that he never would again.