"Indeed, ma'am," Vivian said, for want of any better comment. She was beginning to wish most heartily that she could be left alone in her new bedroom while the family entertained their guests. Meeting the Twitchens and being installed in their home was strain enough for one day without the addition of baronets and granddaughters of earls.

"He is not half so grand as to deserve such care," Penelope put in.

"Hush, child. You say that because you know no better. When you come out this season, you will see what difference it makes to say your cousin is a baronet."

"And my great-grandfather a baron. I know, Mama."

"You help Miss Ambrose choose something, and give her ear bobs and a necklace to wear if she has none of her own, and perhaps some silk flowers for her hair. Really, we cannot have her looking so shabby, and she a relative of mine!"

Mrs. Twitchen hustled off, murmuring worries about Cook and the footmen, and Vivian was left alone with her cousin.

"I am sorry about this," Vivian said to the girl, feeling awkward and unwelcome. And hungry, to add to her misery. "If I had new gowns meant for my season, I should not like to have another wear one of them first, and she a stranger to me."

"I have been looking forward to my first season since I can remember," Penelope said, a quaver in her voice. "And here you come, right before it is to start! And we will have to have dresses made for you, and take you about, and all our acquaintances will be asking who you are when this was supposed to be my time. And you're too old for a season, too old by half! It's not fair!"

Vivian could tell the spoiled creature a thing or two about fair; she could! But she would not. Such a protected creature as Penelope Twitchen could not know what life was like outside the loving care of her mama and papa, and Vivian herself would have rather been a spoiled creature than an impoverished one, had she the choice. So she held her tongue.

"Please choose your least favorite," she said, knowing that such was what Penelope had in mind anyway.

The girl chewed her upper lip, frowning at the dresses. "I'm not overfond of the yellow," she said. "It makes my hair look dull, although it does have that lovely Valenciennes lace."

"I would be glad enough to wear it," Vivian said.

"You won't spill gravy on it?"

As if she were a child who could not use a spoon! Vivian counted to five, unclenched her jaw, and said, "I shall take great care not to."

"Well, all right, then." Penelope picked up the dress and held it against Vivian's shoulders. "I suppose it might fit, and the color is not completely unattractive on you. Do you have hair ribbons, ear bobs, anything?"

"I'm afraid I will have to ask those of you, as well." She would rather stick a sprig of holly in her hair and call herself decorated. Mrs. Twitchen would be displeased, though, and she didn't want to embarrass the woman.

Penelope sighed, leaving the dress in Vivian's arms and going to her dressing table. "This is really most unfair of Mama and Papa. This was to be my season."

"I do not like it any better than you," Vivian snapped, her weariness, tension, and hunger getting the better of her tongue. Last night had been spent very uncomfortably, sharing a bed at an inn with the unwashed, phlegmy woman who had been paid a pittance to accompany her. She had not slept well. "But I am glad that Captain and Mrs. Twitchen are willing to sponsor me for a season, for marriage is the only way I can at last be free of the so-called charity of relations!"

Penelope turned to her, jaw agape. "What an ungrateful wretch you are!"

"Not ungrateful. I shall thank your dear parents every day of my life if they can help me find a husband."

"More's the pity we will not find you one before we return to London, for then I could be rid of you the sooner."

"There is no greater gift I could ask from this Christmas season than that! The three kings didn't bear anything half so precious as a husband would be to me." Certainly such a mercenary view wasn't anything out of a fairy tale, princes scaling castle walls to rescue her from the villainous clutches of evil knights, but she had never expected such. A husband was simply someone to whisk her away from her dependence on her family. There needed to be no drama.

Vivian's green eyes met Penelope's. A moment of consideration stretched between them. Vivian's stomach growled.

"It's not truly possible, is it, to find a husband in such a short time?" Vivian asked.

"I… I'm not sure."

"When does the family return to town?"

"Soon after Epiphany," Penelope said. "The parliamentary session will begin in January this year, and Papa is an MP, so we must go back."

Epiphany was January sixth, the day after Twelfth Night. "It is not much time, less than two weeks. It's not possible." Vivian sighed, her momentary hopes sinking.

"No, perhaps it is." Penelope had a pink silk rose in her fingers, which she began to tap against her lower lip as she considered. "Are you particular about whom you marry?"

"I would wed a man forty years my senior who smelled like molding potatoes and had the wit of a particularly stupid rabbit-as long as he had a solid income and could provide me with my own home."

"You are desperate, aren't you? You have no dowry, and no income of your own. You are past the better part of your youth. You might have to make do with such a one."

"I expect little better." And truly she did not. The only things that saved her from joining the ranks of governesses were that her education was insufficient to qualify her, and that most of her relatives would rather have her as a spinster gentlewoman they had to support than as a spinster with an occupation.

They would rather as well keep her a poor relation than to see her marry below her level, ending up with a man in trade whom they would then have to claim as a relation. Gentry was all that was acceptable, as well as all that was beyond her, given her lack of an inheritance. And what chance had she to go against their wishes and find herself a blacksmith or a carpenter with whom she might make a ruder home? None.

A woman of her age and station, of her poverty and genteel connections, was subject to the tyranny of her relations. They held her welfare within their purses, tied tight with a drawstring cord, and her only escape was marriage.

It was only the average prettiness of her face she could sell, and the youth of a body that could still bear children. It was old men who were forever the most eager buyers of those commodities.

Who said she wasn't in trade, like the lowest grocer or fishmonger? She would do what she had to to sell herself before she went rotten.

"There is one possibility of a match," Penelope said, coming forward and tucking the silk rose into Vivian's hair. "And he will be visiting us this very night!"

Chapter Two

Whatever weariness Vivian had felt was burned away by a new tension. If Penelope had her way, she would be meeting her future husband tonight. And the cruel child refused to tell her anything about him!

"He'll be the only single man present. You can find out what you will about him on your own. I shan't spoil the fun of that for you," Penelope said, then took the curling tongs to Vivian's hair.

As she sat and endured Penelope's primping and trimming of her, she wondered what it could be about this man of which her cousin was unwilling to speak. She did not fool herself: there had to be something wrong with him. Very wrong. Why else would Penelope believe he might be interested in Vivian's own impoverished self, and so eager to wed that the engagement could be accomplished in a mere two weeks?

Penelope was treating her as a large doll to be dressed and rearranged without complaint. No longer did she fret about her Valenciennes lace garbing another, nor about loaning her yellow topaz ear bobs and the necklace that went with them. She dabbed Vivian's face with powder, and tinted her lips and cheeks with a faint trace of carmine.

"Shhh," Penelope said. "Don't tell Mama I have it."

Penelope held a needle over the candle and used the soot to fill in the spots where Vivian's brows were sparse or uneven. She was as determined as a mama preparing her daughter to snag a young peer at a ball. Her concentration was a testament to her desire to have her season all to herself, yet at the same time it showed a certain pride in her handiwork. Vivian recalled the carefully arranged mountain of sweetmeats and mistletoe, and hoped her own appearance fared better under Penelope's artistic guidance.

She also felt a bit of a fool while Penelope fussed over her. She was twenty-five and had never been a beauty even when she had the freshness of youth to her face. She feared that when at last she was allowed to look in the mirror, it would be a caricature of a young woman that looked back at her, and it would be plain to all that she was pretending to be something she was not, and with only one goal in mind.

There was, though, a small part of her that began to come alive under the attention, watching with interest the way in which Penelope wielded the cosmetics and chose ribbons and flowers for her hair. With a start she realized what it was: vanity.

And so what if it was? It was long past time she had the chance to indulge in that vice that women were said to have perfected.

"There. I think that is the best that can be expected of us," Penelope said, standing back and examining her handiwork.

At last Vivian was allowed the mirror. She stood in front of the cheval glass and blinked in surprise. She had not been transformed into a beauty-that much even Penelope's pastes and lotions could not achieve. But what charms she had were brought out while the flaws were concealed.