A Woman of Substance (29 page)

‘Yes, Mother,’ said Edwin, as respectful as always. He ran over and kissed her. ‘Have a lovely evening, darling,’ he added, smiling at her.

‘Thank you, Edwin. I am sure I will,’ said Adele, not sure at all that she would. But she determined not to give one thought to the forthcoming evening, or she would become hysterical and quite incapable of leaving her room at all. After Adele had dressed herself in her underclothes, Emma laced her into her corset. ‘Tighter, Emma,’ cried Adele, with a small gasp, gripping the bedpost to steady herself.

‘Nay, Mrs Fairley, ma’am, if I makes the laces any tighter yer won’t be able ter eat owt,’ Emma pointed out. ‘Come ter think of it, yer won’t be able ter breathe either!’

‘Of course I will! Don’t be foolish, Emma,’ said Adele crisply. ‘I like a tiny waist.’

‘Well, tiny waist or no, yer don’t want ter be fainting away at the dinner, now do yer, Mrs Fairley?’

Adele paled slightly as she recognized the truth of this. It would be a catastrophe if she passed out during the evening. Adam would never believe it was actually from lack of breath, and for no other reason. ‘Well, perhaps you are right,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘Don’t make the laces any tighter then, but don’t loosen them either, Emma. They are perfect just as they are. And please tie them in a strong double bow, so they won’t work open.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Emma, finishing the task quickly. ‘Now we’d best start on yer hair, Mrs Fairley. Yer knows it takes me ages.’

Adele sat down at the glittering mirrored dressing table,
studying her face admiringly and with loving self-absorption, whilst Emma brushed out the long shimmering hair and started the tortuous procedure of shaping it into a magnificent coiffure. This was an elegant pompadour, currently the height of fashion, which Adele had noticed in an illustrated magazine showing the latest London and Paris haute couture. The previous week, when Emma had copied it for Adele, she had taken a degree of licence and had elaborated upon it, adding her own special touches and adapting the original style so that it was more flattering to Adele’s fragile looks. To Adele’s astonishment the finished results had been not only quite outstanding and distinctly original but extraordinarily professional as well.

Now Emma swept the masses of hair up and away from Adele’s face, working the great lengths into the basic pompadour that was the foundation of the style. She rolled and folded the hair all around Adele’s head, so that it framed her exquisite features dramatically, anchoring it securely with hairpins. Emma worked patiently and skilfully in silent concentration, and at one moment she actually stood back to admire her handiwork, nodding her head with satisfaction, her eyes glowing. She had almost finished when she realized she had exhausted her supply of hairpins.

Emma clucked to herself with annoyance. Adele stared at her through the mirror, frowning. ‘What is it? No problems, I hope, Emma! My hair must be beautifully dressed tonight.’

‘Oh, it will be, ma’am,’ Emma reassured her. ‘It is already. But I need a few more hairpins, for the top curls. I’ll just pop along ter see Mrs Wainright, and ask ter borrow some. Excuse me, ma’am.’ Emma put the silver, monogrammed hairbrush on the dressing table, bobbed a curtsy, and flitted out.

The corridor was gloomy and wreathed in amorphous shadows, and the pieces of ornate Victorian furniture that punctuated its long expanse were like nebulous phantoms in the cold murky light emanating from the gas fixtures on the walls. Emma had to traverse the entire length of the shadowy corridor to reach Olivia Wainright’s room and, since it was deserted, she ran all the way, although this was prompted not so much by nervousness or fear as by her pressing need to save time, as usual. She was panting when she tapped on the door.

‘Come in,’ Olivia called out in a light melodious voice. Emma opened the door and stood politely on the threshold, as always surveying the room with grudging approval. It was the only one that appealed to her at Fairley Hall, apart from the cheerful kitchen.

Olivia Wainright was sitting at the carved oak dressing table with her back to the door. She swivelled around quickly. ‘Yes, Emma, do you need me for something?’ she asked with her usual courtesy.

Emma had taken a step forward, smiling in return, but she suddenly stiffened and stopped short. Olivia’s face was unnaturally pale, denuded as it was of the French rouges and powders and the other cosmetics she normally favoured. This intense pallor gave her a wan and exhausted look, as did her very white lips. Her aquamarine eyes were glittering and appeared larger and bluer in the paleness of her delicate face, their almost supernatural colour emphasized even more by the sky-blue silk robe she wore. Her dark brown hair, usually beautifully groomed and upswept in a fashionable style, fell around her shoulders like a glossy velvet cowl in the refracted light from the dressing-table lamps.

Emma knew she was gaping at Olivia Wainright and that this was the height of rudeness. But she could not help herself, and she could not turn away, so stupefied was she. That pallor, the tumbling hair, those brilliant eyes, all merged to form a face that overflowed with gentleness and poignancy, a luminous, haunting face with which Emma was only too familiar.

Olivia, meanwhile, had immediately perceived Emma’s strong reaction. She was mystified and regarded the girl at first curiously, and then with mounting nervousness, the powder puff dangling in her hand.

‘Good gracious, Emma, whatever is it? Why, you look as if you have seen a ghost, child. Are you feeling ill?’ she cried in a voice unusually vehement for her.

Emma shook her head. Finally she spoke. ‘No, no, Mrs Wainright. Nowt’s wrong. Please don’t fret yerself, ma’am. Excuse me, if I looked a bit funny like—’ Emma paused, uncertain of how to correctly explain her behaviour, which she knew must have seemed queer and was also improper. She
coughed behind her hand. ‘I felt a bit faint for a second,’ she lied, and continued more truthfully and in a stronger voice, ‘I ran ever so fast down the corridor. Yes, that was it.’

Olivia relaxed, but she continued to frown. ‘You are always running, Emma. One of these days you will have an accident. But never mind that now. Are you sure you are perfectly all right? You are very white indeed. Perhaps you should lie down until the guests arrive,’ Olivia suggested with obvious concern.

‘Thank yer, ever so much, ma’am. But I’m better.
Honest.
I was just puffed. And I can’t rest now, Mrs Wainright. I’ve got ter finish getting Mrs Fairley ready. That’s why I came. Ter borrow some hairpins, if yer can spare a few,’ Emma explained in a rush of words to camouflage her considerable embarrassment.

‘Of course. You may have these,’ Olivia said, gathering up a handful.

Emma took them from her and attempted a smile. ‘Thank yer, Mrs Wainright.’

Olivia’s perceptive eyes contemplated Emma thoughtfully. She was not at all certain she believed the girl’s explanation. However, since she could not imagine any other logical reason for her ashen face and her apparent distress, she had no alternative but to accept it.

‘You do look a little peaked to me, Emma,’ she said slowly. ‘After the guests have arrived, and when you have attended to the ladies’ wraps, I want you to rest in the kitchen until it is time to serve dinner at eight-thirty. I don’t want you collapsing from fatigue. Inform Murgatroyd that is my wish.’

‘Yes, ma’am. That’s kind of yer,’ said Emma. She felt guilty and ashamed for pretending to feel faint, and also for having lied to Mrs Wainright.

Olivia reached out and patted Emma’s shoulder. She shook her head in fond exasperation. ‘Sometimes I think you are much too diligent for your own good, Emma. You know I am more than satisfied with your work. Try and take things at a slower pace, child,’ she said with the utmost kindness.

Emma, staring up at her fixedly, felt her throat tighten with emotion and tears stung her eyes. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She bobbed a curtsy and left the room as sedately as
she could. Once she was safely in the corridor, Emma exhaled deeply and with enormous relief. She leaned against a small carved table to steady herself. Her legs felt wobbly and her heart was hammering. She looked back at the door, shaking her head from side to side in total disbelief.
Olivia Wainright looked like her own mother.
As incredible as that seemed, Emma had just seen it with her own eyes. She’s the spitting image of me mam, she whispered to herself with awe, and still disbelieving.

Emma then wondered why she had never noticed this likeness before. Instantly she understood. It was very simple really. In all of the time Olivia had been staying at Fairley Hall, Emma had never seen her so intimately revealed, undressed and ungroomed in the privacy of her room, until a few moments ago. Sitting at the dressing table in the diffused light, so informally attired, her face naked of cosmetics, she looked a different woman from the one Emma was accustomed to seeing moving around the house so elegantly and with cool authority. In her naturalness Olivia was still stunningly lovely, but without the stylish clothes, the elaborate hairdos, and the other artifices of fashion, she appeared ingenuous and vulnerable, and there was a sweet simplicity about her that was girlish and even innocent.

And Emma was not mistaken. Olivia Wainright, stripped of the outer trappings of the chic society woman, did resemble Elizabeth Harte. In fact, the resemblance was so extraordinary as to be uncanny. They might have been created from the same mould, except that Elizabeth’s beauty was now only a faint echo of Olivia’s. Worn out as she was by the struggle to survive, riddled with consumption, undernourished, and in constant pain, her fine looks had blurred and slowly begun to fade. Yet Emma had seen in Olivia her mother’s beauty as it had once been, and this had not only startled her but moved her as well. Emma was not the only one to have noticed the strong likeness between these two women from such different worlds. Another occupant of Fairley Hall had also detected it and, like Emma, had been rocked to the core at this discovery.

But Emma was unaware of this as she stood staring at Olivia Wainright’s door, still shaking her head. She regained some of
her composure and for once in her life she did not run. She walked down the corridor, and slowly, benumbed by this odd coincidence. As she made her way back to Adele’s bedroom, it did not occur to Emma that perhaps she had unconsciously recognized the similarity earlier, and that this might partially explain her secret adoration of Olivia. Only years later did this thought strike her, and quite forcibly so.

In Emma’s absence, Adele had attended to her face. For once she had decided it was necessary to resort to her jars of French cosmetics. She had applied a little rouge, just enough to highlight her cheekbones and dispel the paleness of her skin, and had also touched her lips with it. She was lightly powdering her nose when Emma entered.

‘Here I am then, Mrs Fairley,’ said Emma in a low voice hurrying to the dressing table, and the waiting Adele.

Normally too preoccupied with self to be conscious of anyone else, Adele was particularly keyed up and alert tonight, in readiness for the important and perhaps trying evening that lay ahead. She was so acutely aware, in fact, she noticed the subdued note in Emma’s voice, which was always so cheerful, and she gave her a piercing look.

‘Did Mrs Wainright give you the hairpins? Was there a problem?’ she asked quickly.

‘Oh no, ma’am,’ responded Emma, already starting to work on the remaining curls. ‘She had plenty ter spare.’

‘What is Mrs Wainright wearing tonight, Emma?’ Adele continued curiously, watching Emma carefully through the mirror.

‘I didn’t see her dress, Mrs Fairley,’ said Emma quietly, her face closed and still.

Adele pursed her lips in frustration and disappointment. She had been longing to know which one of her many exquisite gowns Olivia had selected. Adele had always been highly competitive with her older sister, and this was now more pronounced and consuming than ever. Adele was filled with mortification, and infuriated by the fact that Olivia managed to appear elegant and arresting on every occasion. She smiled, and not a little smugly.
She
would outshine everyone tonight. Olivia will be dowdy in comparison to me, she thought, gloatingly.

‘There we are ma’am, all finished!’ exclaimed Emma with a triumphant flourish of the brush, stepping back to regard Adele’s hair. She gave Adele the small silver hand mirror. ‘See if yer like the back, Mrs Fairley.’

Adele moved and twisted and swivelled in the chair, viewing her pompadour from all angles. ‘Why Emma, it’s positively divine,’ she cried with delight. She laughed gaily. ‘It’s a work of art. A masterpiece. And so flattering to me. You
are
a clever girl.’

Adele put on her evening slippers and then stepped into the gown Emma was holding for her. She stood in front of the cheval mirror, and Emma patiently fastened the long line of buttons up the back, praying Adele wouldn’t remember the roses she had removed earlier. They were ugly, and Emma was convinced they ruined the gown, which was elegant and dramatic in its basic simplicity. As she did up the last button, Emma said hurriedly, hoping to divert her attention, ‘All we need for the finishing touch are yer jewels, Mrs Fairley.’

‘In a moment, Emma,’ said Adele, stepping back to view herself. She was ecstatic at the vision she made. The black velvet gown stunningly emphasized her tall, lissom figure and its excellent cut drew attention to her tiny waist. It had a low neckline that was draped adroitly across the shoulders, and a tightly moulded bodice that hugged her figure deliciously. She decided it was her most becoming gown as, intoxicated with herself, she swirled around on her elegantly shod feet that peeped out beneath her skirt. Emma was quite right about the roses. They were ghastly, she thought, marvelling that her young maid had such an innate sense of taste.

She sat down and took the diamond chandelier earrings out of the red velvet case and put them on. She added two bracelets and several rings, and then Emma placed the diamond necklace around her throat, securing it carefully. It was a glittering lacy web of brilliant, perfectly cut and mounted stones. The diamonds had such fire, such life, such matchless beauty, Emma gasped.