A tingle of anticipation raced along Phoebe Renshaw’s spine as she regarded the shimmer of alabaster satin draped over the dress form in her bedroom. The fabric, unadorned but for its flawless sheen, was draped to one side and held in place with what appeared to be a diamond-encrusted brooch the size of a man’s hand, but was, in fact, a hook-and-eye closure beaded with crystals and embroidered in silver. The arrangement lent the gown a clever asymmetry that declared it as modern as could be. Although the current trend was for shorter wedding dresses, Phoebe had opted for full length. She delighted in the gown and counted the hours until she felt its cool glide against her skin.
Her grandmother, on the other hand, sighed yet again, a sound that prompted Phoebe to turn away from her wedding gown and regard the woman who had raised her since she had turned six. “Grams, even you must admit it’s a work of art. And that it suits me. And that it’s going to play an essential part in the happiest day of my life.”
Grams tilted her head, as if that slight change in perspective might suddenly reveal the dress in a new light. “If only it weren’t quite so plain.”
Phoebe reached out to pet the Staffordshire bull terrier lounging on the floor beside Grams. Given to them as a puppy two years ago by Owen, Mr. Fairfax had immediately gravitated to Grams’s side and had rarely left it since. “What do you think, sir?” she asked the dog, stroking the luxurious patches of brown and white down his back. “You like it, don’t you, boy?”
Mr. Fairfax thumped his tail, sniffed at Phoebe’s hand, and gave an approving lick.
Phoebe’s elder sister, Julia, rose from the foot of the bed and sauntered over to the full-length mirror beside Phoebe’s dressing table. “I’m afraid I have to agree with Phoebe, Grams. The dress is charming on her. Anything else—anything with tiers or petticoats or flounces—, would have made her appear short. Because Phoebe is a tad short.” She flicked an unapologetic gaze at Phoebe. “No offense.”
She smiled. “None taken.”
Grams sighed again. “I don’t see what would have been wrong with a smidgeon of lace or a ruffle or two.”
“Don’t worry, Grams.” Phoebe’s younger sister, Amelia, did a little pirouette before plucking a shortbread biscuit from the tray Eva had brought in earlier. “You still have my wedding to look forward to, and you know I adore lace. My wedding dress shall have oodles of it.”
“You’re much too young to think about marriage,” Grams admonished, but not without a fond look at her youngest granddaughter. At nearly twenty years old, Amelia was not at all too young to consider marriage, but Phoebe understood Grams’s fear of too many changes at once. “And don’t use words like ‘oodles,’ Grams added. “It makes you sound American.”
Phoebe crossed to the easy chair by the window, crouched before her grandmother, and took her hand. “Grams, I know you wish me to be married in a dress I love, and I love this one. Besides, the lace will be in my veil, as you well know.” As Julia had for her first wedding, Phoebe would don her great- great- grandmother’s Honiton lace, a wedding tradition begun by Queen Victoria herself. Perhaps it didn’t truly go with the design of Phoebe’s gown, but Grams’s disappointment would be manyfold if she didn’t wear it. Besides, Eva, her lady’s maid since before the Great War, would work an artistic miracle incorporating the veil with the crystal orange blossom headpiece Phoebe would wear.
She rose and glanced back at the dress with longing. They were all still in their wrappers, their hair up in curling pins, but in only two hours she would slip into its elegance, slide into the backseat of the Rolls- Royce beside Grampapa, and make her way to the village church.
Where Owen would be waiting.
The door swung open. Eva had left only minutes ago for a fresh pot of tea, but as she burst into the room now, her hands were empty. “It’s Lady Cecily,” she said breathlessly. “She’s missing.”
“What?” Phoebe, her sisters, and Grams spoke at once. Grams came to her feet—or sprang, Phoebe would say, with the energy of a woman half her age. “What do you mean missing?”
Before Eva could form a reply, a voice could be heard from somewhere down the corridor.
“We must find her immediately! Immediately, I tell you! Raise the alarm!”
“That’s Lucille,” Grams said, and hurried from the room, Mr. Fairfax streaming out behind her. Julia darted after her like a startled jackrabbit. Only Phoebe and Amelia hesitated, staring at each other in dismay. A missing Great-Aunt Cecily could seriously hamper the day’s proceedings. And if anything happened to the octogenarian, who also happened to be Julia’s great- aunt by marriage—well, a weight of dread dropped in Phoebe’s stomach.
Amelia rallied herself with a too-bright smile. “Don’t worry. She’ll be found. She’s probably gone below stairs to hunt down a treat or two. You know what a sweet tooth she has. Let’s just hope she hasn’t swiped a finger across the frosting on your cake.”
Phoebe hoped—prayed—Amelia was right, yet a sinking feeling suggested this latest crisis would not be so easily resolved.
Eva had followed Julia into the corridor. Now she strolled back in bearing a smile that resembled Amelia’s in its artificial optimism. “Don’t you worry about a thing. It looks as though every available hand is joining the search. Lady Cecily will be found presently, I’m quite sure of it.”
To that, Phoebe blew out an exasperated breath. Eva crossed the room to her and grasped her firmly by the shoulders. “Now, none of that. You’re not to give the matter another thought. Let everyone else in the house worry about Lady Cecily. You’re to concentrate on one thing, and one thing only: your happy day. Now then, Phoebe, take a seat in front of the mirror and I’ll do your hair.”
Sometime over the past year, the last vestiges of employer-servant protocol had dissolved between them, leaving them on familiar terms. Eva had dispensed with calling her my lady, and Phoebe was glad of it; glad to have a true friend in Eva, rather than merely someone who showed her deference because of wages paid. She needed that friend today, far more than she needed a lady’s maid—albeit no one could arrange her hair the way Eva could.
Phoebe did her best to hide her qualms as Eva led her, like a docile child, to her dressing table and gently pressed her onto its tufted bench. Sure enough, as each curling pin came out to ping on the tabletop and Phoebe gave herself over to the magic of Eva’s ministrations, her cares melted into a swirl of excitement.
#
Two hours later, Eva paused for a breath at the bottom of the servants’ staircase. Lady Cecily and been found, and the family and their guests were now piling into the automobiles, with Phoebe and her grandfather waiting until everyone else had left. Eva would go to the church with the servants, but first she wanted the details about Lady Cecily. She followed the trill of excited voices into the servants’ hall, where the staff were gathering before setting off together.
“Where was she found?” she asked while simultaneously pinning on her best hat, a gift from Phoebe, covered in pale rose silk and trimmed with a grosgrain ribbon and matching rosette. She tipped the asymmetrical brim cunningly low to one side as Vernon, the under butler, offered a reply.
“On the High Road, walking back from the village.” He stood up from the table, giving the coat of his Sunday best suit a tug.
Eva’s hands, still fussing with her hat, hung in midair. “She walked all the way to the village and back?”
Vernon shrugged. “Don’t know if she made it all the way there. I only just know she was walking back when I found her. Just ambling along the roadside, hands full of wildflowers. Like this were any normal Sunday morning.”
“What did the dowager marchioness have to say when she saw her aunt?” Eva wanted to know. Lady Lucille Leighton, dowager marchioness of Allerton, was Lady Cecily’s niece.
As Vernon shrugged, Mrs. Sanders, the housekeeper, turned briskly into the room. “I do hope you’re not gossiping. You know the rules about gossiping about our betters.”
That last word produced more than a few winces from those in the room, Eva included.
Since the war, fewer and fewer of them took for granted the traditional view of servants being inherently beneath their employers—a view Eva once shared—and instead acknowledged that one’s circumstances owed much to the luck of one’s birth, and that while service was certainly an honorable occupation, there were other choices to be had. Looking around the room, Eva saw the evidence of this new philosophy in the dwindling numbers of Foxwood Hall’s servants. So many young people these days opted to find work in the cities.
Dora, once Foxwood Hall’s scullery maid but now an assistant to the cook, gathered up her hat and handbag. “Mrs. Sanders,” she said with far more self-assurance that she once would have shown, “we’re only concerned about Lady Cecily and hope her niece didn’t suffer too much of a fright.”
“And then there’s Lady Phoebe,” added Connie, who also had enjoyed a recent promotion and was now head housemaid. “Such a tumultuous start to her wedding day. Is she quite settled now, Eva?”
“Quite.” Eva set her own handbag on the table and stood before it. She gave a sideways glance at Mrs. Sanders. “And I did glimpse an enormously relieved Lady Allerton—the dowager that is. Lady Allerton the younger, as was our Lady Julia, was vastly relieved as well.”
“All right, all of you. The disaster has been averted.” Mrs. Sanders clapped her hands together. “We’d best be off or we’ll be late for the ceremony. Some of you will have to walk, as we can’t all fit in the farm lorry and the motors are all needed for the guests.”
The three footmen and Vernon indicated they planned to walk. That left the maidservants, Mrs. Sanders, Eva, and dear old Mr. Giles to ride in the lorry, which in fact wasn’t a farm lorry any longer, since Lord Wroxly had it fitted with wooden benches along the sides of its bed for the express use of the servants on Sundays.
Mrs. Sanders waved the male servants on, admonishing them to hurry on their way. As Eva piled along with the others into the back of the lorry, she found herself seated next to Mr. Giles. The Renshaws’ longtime butler, the kindly man had become rather unsteady and forgetful in recent years. Lord Wroxly kept him on officially as butler, although it was Vernon who did most of the work. It warmed her heart when he reached for her hand and held it fast.
“Why, I’m finding myself quite nervous, Miss Huntford. One might think it was my wedding we’re off to.”
“I completely understand, sir.” Eva’s fingers tightened around his in reassurance. “I want everything to go perfectly for Lady Phoebe. This is a happy day for all of us.”
Except that, once at the church, Eva’s own happiness dimmed a fraction. She stood outside St. George’s, Little Barlow’s ancient Anglican church made of honey-colored Cotswold stone, and gazed up and down the High Street. Everyone else had gone in to take their seats, and now the organist began playing softly to encourage people to settle in. Lady Phoebe and Lord Wroxly would be arriving at any moment.
But where was Miles?
She and Miles Brannock had been stepping out together these three years or so, and he had promised to meet her here promptly at ten forty-five. Surely on this glorious morning in this sleepy village there could not have been a crime to keep him away. Then again, Little Barlow wasn’t nearly as peaceful as it often looked; Lord knew, as did Phoebe and Eva, that evildoers struck at the most inopportune times and in the most unlikely of places. Still, nothing but serenity pervaded the curving High Street, the pavements swept clean, the window boxes outside the shops teeming with spring blossoms, the sky overhead a stretch of bright blue velvet punctuated with pearly clouds.
No, surely nothing bad could happen on such a day as this. Miles would be here shortly. But to ensure Eva wasn’t standing outside when Lady Phoebe arrived, she hurried in and took her seat near the back of the nave with the other servants, saving a space for Miles. The pews were packed, with as many of the villagers as possible having squeezed in. The front pews had been reserved for the family, including aunts and uncles who hadn’t been seen in years, along with Lady Julia’s mother-in-law, Lucille Leighton, and her Aunt Cecily. To the other side of the aisle sat Owen Seabright’s parents and a handful of relatives.
At some invisible signal, the organist slid into the opening notes of the bridal processional. The congregants stood. A door to one side of the transept opened and out strode Owen Seabright and, right behind him and, standing in for Lord Owen’s deceased brother, was Phoebe’s brother, Fox. Eva felt a surge of pride in the young man. Only a few years ago an arrogant terror in an Eton tailcoat, Fox Renshaw, at eighteen, with his golden-brown hair slicked back from his chiseled features, looked every inch the earl he would someday be.
A burst of spring air flooded the church as the doors at the back swung open. All turned their gazes to the vestibule, and when Phoebe, on Lord Wroxly’s arm, stepped through, a collective, delighted gasp echoed through the church. Phoebe had been right about her gown. It was a statement in simple elegance, unequalled in quality, and set off her best features. Dearest Phoebe had always considered herself plain, but in that gown, with its sleek asymmetry and gentle folds gathered at her right hip, even Julia, long considered the beauty of the family, paled in comparison. Beside her, Lord Wroxly walked straighter, stood taller, and his shoulders spread wider than they had in years. Tears pushed at the backs of Eva’s eyes.
Amelia and Julia followed, and another gasp was heard. They wore palest yellow silk, vividly mirrored by the little bouquet of primroses and celandine they carried. Amelia had donned a headpiece studded with amber stones that caught the candlelight, with golden ribbons trailing down her back. The outfits were similar, yet where Amelia’s dress had been fitted and tucked and had the darlingest short sleeves, Julia, as matron of honor and in the family way, wore a looser- fitting garment with three-quarter sleeves, and instead of a circlet, she wore the smartest little chapeau with a shallow crown and a flat brim.
Yet, even in Eva’s joy for her lady, a worry slipped through. Miles should have been here. Had Chief Inspector Perkins refused him the morning off? Eva’s gaze slid past Phoebe and her sisters into the vestibule. Perhaps he had arrived late and didn’t wish to interfere with the procession. Perhaps he would slip in as soon as Phoebe reached the altar. . . .
