How to Be a Wallflower Read online

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to all the women who dream of being wallflowers.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  A Historical Note About Opium, Clippers, and Commodes

  About the Author

  Also by Eloisa James

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Germain’s Hotel

  Mayfair, London

  March 15, 1815

  Miss Cleopatra Lewis looked at her reflection with satisfaction. Her hair was pulled into a dowdy knot, and the jet beads encircling the high neck of her gown made her skin look sallow rather than interestingly pale.

  On the other hand, the black fabric made her hair turn from auburn to fire red.

  “I need a turban,” she told her dresser, who was scowling as if Cleo’s appearance gave her indigestion.

  “You must be jesting!” Gussie cried with all the horror of Lady Macbeth confronting her cowardly husband. “You’re trying to provoke me.”

  Cleo allowed a chill to creep into her voice. Years of managing her own fortune—including Lewis Commodes, the wildly successful, if indelicate, business she had inherited from her father—meant that she had long practice in squashing rebellion. Though Gussie, who had dressed her mother before her, had all the boldness of a member of the family.

  “I am resolved, Gussie. A turban, if you please.”

  “You’ll look a proper quiz!” Gussie retorted. “Not that you don’t already, with that high neck.”

  “That’s the idea,” Cleo said, mustering patience. “I plan to be a wallflower while living in London, and it’s important to dress for the role.” She gave her maid an apologetic smile. “My appearance won’t reflect your abilities.”

  “You look like a crow as got his head stuck into a red paint pot.”

  “I am in mourning,” Cleo pointed out.

  “Your mother—heaven rest her—has been gone almost these ten months, so half mourning at the most. Your mourning gowns were respectable but never frumpish.” Gussie sucked in a dramatic breath. “It’s more than I can bear.”

  “You must bear it, just as I must bear the tiresome series of events that makes up the London Season,” Cleo said. “I promised my mother I would debut. But that doesn’t mean I have to collect a train of followers who will waste my time. The obvious solution is to become a wallflower.”

  “Barbarous,” Gussie moaned. But she began poking through a trunk to the side of the dressing table. “The only turban we have is a Mameluke cap, out of date these three years!”

  “Think of it as a new role. I couldn’t have a better maid, given your background in the theater,” Cleo said encouragingly.

  “You as a wallflower is a casting choice that I would never make. You was never meant to be a wallflower.” Gussie straightened, holding a limp length of gray fabric. “I didn’t care for this cap even when your mother dressed it up with feathers.”

  “Costumes make the role,” Cleo reminded her. “Just think of how many plump Henry VIIIs turn out to be lean and hungry without their padding.”

  “What of your grandfather?” Gussie demanded, shaking out the layers of gray muslin that made up the turban. “The viscount will probably be mortified to find you looking like a quiz. You know how your mother regretted being estranged from him. Mrs. Lewis would want you to make the old gentleman happy, especially since you still haven’t managed to meet him.”

  Gussie’s right, her mother announced, deep in the recesses of Cleo’s mind. Cleo had been somewhat dismayed to find that in the months after Julia’s death, some errant part of her memory persistently offered up her mother’s commentary.

  It was because Cleo missed her so much, of course. Julia had dazzled: clever, witty, beautiful. Erratic, but always entertaining.

  “I’ll wear an ordinary gown to meet him tonight,” Cleo promised. “He and I have exchanged several letters. I warned the viscount that I have no wish to marry, and that I plan to be a wallflower when I join him at society events. He indicated that he will happily sit with me at the side of the room.”

  From what Cleo had gleaned through their correspondence, her grandfather, Viscount Falconer, was lonely and desperately sad about Julia’s death. Unfortunately, his daughter hadn’t bothered to stay in touch with her family after she married—and then it was suddenly too late. Julia had died without even knowing that her mother had passed away a few years ago.

  One of Julia’s last wishes had been that her parents would launch their granddaughter into society, a prospect that Cleo did not find exciting. She would prefer to spend her time expanding Lewis Commodes into one of the most powerful business concerns in Europe, as well as learning French, improving her vocabulary, and visiting Paris once Napoleon was evicted.

  The prospect of joining the viscount for the Season didn’t make her nervous. Julia might have been a free spirit, but she periodically recalled that she was the daughter of a viscount. Cleo had mastered ladylike comportment by the age of ten.

  Yet even at that age, Cleo had preferred to shadow her father in his office rather than practice quadrilles with a dance master imported from London to Manchester at huge expense. A yawning feeling of boredom loomed at the very thought of accompanying her grandfather to one ball, let alone night after night of them.

  Gussie was entertaining no such foibles. “You can try to be a wallflower.” She started to fit the cap over the hair coiled at Cleo’s neck. “It’ll never work. It’ll be like when I played the flower seller in My Fairest Lady! You’ll walk into a ballroom. There across the room you’ll see a tall man with piercing eyes—”

  “I’ll promptly look the other way,” Cleo interrupted. “Don’t forget that Reggie Bottleneck played the hero, Gussie, and he got two women with child, though the production only had a four-month run.”

  Gussie grimaced. “Not his piercing eyes. Better ones.”

  “I know too much about men,” Cleo told her. “I don’t need one of them getting in my way, not to mention claiming my fortune. Just look at all the men who Mother . . . well, with whom she was acquainted.” Not to mention that rat she’d been betrothed to.

  “May heaven rest her, your mother had a tender heart for a leading man. Drat it!” Gussie muttered as the turban dislodged a couple of hairpins and Cleo’s curls sprang free.

  A soft heart was a tactful description. Julia rarely met a handsome actor whom she didn’t instantly adore—and invite to her bed, both during her marriage and after her husband’s passing. Cleo had decided early in life that nurturing illusions about her mother would be disastrous.

  Her levelheadedness was precisely why her father had left his fortune to his fourteen-year-old daughter, rather than to his wife. On occasion, Cleo had made use of it by paying off a particularly fervent lover who wouldn’t accept that Julia had lost interest in him.

  Cleo’s opinion of the male sex had fallen lower and lower as actor after actor strode through her mother’s bedchamber door.

  “I’m not tenderhearted, like my mother,” she said flatly. “I’m . . . I’m inimical to men.”

  “Word of the day?” Gussie asked. “I’m thinking ‘inimical’ means you don’t like men, which, begging my pardon, miss, we both know isn’t true. You were betrothed to Foster Beacham only a year ago.”

  “Briefly,” Cleo stated.

  “You can’t let one broken engagement sour you on the pack of them.”

  “I shan’t. I would simply prefer to cater to my own interests rather than someone else’s. Still, Lord Falconer is my only relative, and I shall enjoy spending time with him. Which reminds me that I meant to send a note asking him to recommend a modiste. I need everything from gowns to parasols in—in wallflower mode, if you see what I mean.”

  “Your mother hated drab clothing.” Gussie paused. “Heaven rest her.”

  “You needn’t say that quite so often,” Cleo said.

  “Mrs. Lewis wasn’t restful, was she? I hope that she’s at peace now.”

  “Mother’s version of heaven likely includes a great many handsome actors, and as many romantic plays as anyone can watch.”

  That’s right, Julia murmured, with a naughty chuckle.

  “Half mourning suits my mood,” Cleo said, prompted by her mother’s commentary. “I needn’t want to wear black any longer, but I miss her.”

  Gussie put her hand on Cleo’s shoulder for a moment. “The sadness will go away
with time. You do realize that French modistes won’t want to dress a wallflower?”

  “They will create whatever garments I require,” Cleo stated, confident in the power of the almighty pound.

  “We’d do better with a costumier. My dear friend Martha Quimby has her own emporium and outfits the best theater companies. It was her da’s, but she renamed it after herself when he died. Drury Lane Theatre Company won’t buy costumes from anyone else.”

  “I don’t want to stand out,” Cleo warned.

  “That’s not how it worked in My Fairest Lady, nor yet in that other play your mother loved so much, So Dear to My Heart. Remember The Highland Rogue? The heroine—”

  “Exactly: those are heroines,” Cleo interrupted. “Think of me as a bit player, Gussie. I need to be costumed accordingly.”

  “A wallflower, I can’t promise. You just don’t fit the role, miss, if you don’t mind my saying so, no matter what you’re wearing. But Martha would do her best.”

  Cleo glanced at herself in the mirror. Her reflection looked back at her: passable features, blazing red hair mostly caught up under the turban, a pointed chin that she secretly disliked. In her opinion, what would make her a wallflower wasn’t only her clothing; it was her expression. She was too old at twenty-two to bother with looking demure, let alone shy.

  “Men from the gentry and nobility want ladylike wives,” she pointed out.

  Gussie shook her head. “You’re being naïve. Trust me, you will be catnip to a tomcat.”

  “Nonsense. Gentlemen fondly believe they’re desirable. If you aren’t interested, they scamper off to women who will flatter them.”

  “Your mother—may heaven rest her—would chase after any fellow who caught her eye, but it didn’t make them fall in love with her, did it? Most times she lost interest, but others dropped her and disappeared.”

  “Men are easily distracted by the next pretty face they see,” Cleo said, not bothering to add that her mother had been the same.

  Gussie chuckled. “Not when they see something they really want.”

  “Pooh,” Cleo replied. “I don’t care what men really want or don’t want. I shall spend time with my grandfather as Mother wished. After I’ve learned French, I will travel to the Continent. Enough fussing with the turban, Gussie. I have to be back here by four in the afternoon to meet with the hotel manager as he’s considering a renovation with our commodes.”

  Gussie pulled the turban a bit lower on Cleo’s ears.

  “Didn’t Mother pin an emerald brooch in front as well as the feathers?”

  Gussie nodded, with the air of someone biting her tongue.

  I hate to think of my lovely daughter in London—with curls that resemble a bushy hedge in autumn, Julia observed in the depths of Cleo’s mind.

  “Perhaps we can fit in a visit to a milliner,” Cleo said.

  “Martha also makes headdresses,” Gussie said, eyeing her critically. “You look more like an old maid than a wallflower. May I point out that one follows the other, like night and day?”

  Cleo shrugged.

  “Lip color?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s not natural,” Gussie said mournfully. “What if we was to meet that piercing-eyed gentleman right here on a London street? What then?”

  “He’ll walk straight by me,” Cleo told her. And smiled.

  Frightened off by that turban, her mother put in, having the last word, as usual.

  Chapter Two

  An hour later, Cleo’s carriage drew up before a large building with a striped awning. A sign hung from the second story: Quimby’s Emporium: Purveyors to Drury Lane Theatre & More.

  The carriage was toasty warm, but a fretful spring breeze tossed scraps of paper along the sidewalk.

  “Your muff,” Gussie said briskly, handing over a velvet puff, trimmed with swansdown, in a somber dark blue that matched Cleo’s pelisse.

  Once on the sidewalk, Cleo saw that the store’s bay windows held a dressmaking form clad in a gown sewn all over with golden spangles. Given its starched ruff, it might have been fashioned for a queen, albeit one on the stage, not in Westminster.

  “Mother would have leapt at the chance to wear that gown,” she said, feeling a pang. Sometimes it seemed impossible that such a vivid, passionate person could simply disappear after a short illness.

  “Quimby’s costumes entire casts,” Gussie said, following Cleo’s head groom, Chumley, up the short flight of steps to the front door. “That includes queens, maids, and old maids—excuse me—wallflowers.”

  Chumley pushed open the door and waited until Cleo walked past him. The front door opened directly into a large chamber with two curtained enclosures to one side, and a gracious seating area encircling a low platform on the other.

  “Martha is usually here to greet people,” Gussie said, taking off her pelisse and hanging it on a peg on the wall before she bustled over to help Cleo. “Chumley, you guard the mistress’s belongings. No saying who might walk in, and this muff came from Paris.”

  Cleo smiled at the groom. The whole household was used to being bossed around by Gussie. “Thank you, Chumley,” she said, handing over her gloves.

  “Mind them gloves,” Gussie ordered. “That swansdown trim is murder to clean. No getting that pelisse wrinkled either!”

  “Yes, Miss Daffodil,” Chumley said obediently. He backed against the wall, holding the pelisse, muff, and gloves as if they were made of fine crystal.

  “Martha will be upstairs,” Gussie said, “though I’ll have a word with her about leaving her establishment without a soul to guard the door.” She headed straight toward a broad flight of stairs in the rear of the chamber.

  The stairs led to another large chamber, this one containing two clusters of women, many of whom appeared to be weeping. Cleo paused in the entrance, but Gussie rushed forward, heading for a stout woman in the middle, presumably her friend Martha.

  Cleo stayed where she was, looking around with curiosity. The ceiling was very high, and the walls were lined with shelves holding bolts and rolls of fabric. Lace and ribbons spilled from half-open drawers. One corner held a tall vase full of curling multicolored feathers, so long that they looked like exotic ferns.

  Dress forms clad in half-constructed garments were scattered about. Unlike the dress forms she was used to, these had round, cotton-stuffed heads, presumably so an entire ensemble could be designed at once. A pope’s miter, thick with jewels and golden embroidery, graced one head; the form was clad in a sweeping white silk gown draped with bands of gold embroidery.

  Gussie was hugging her friend, so Cleo wandered over to another form, this one wearing a misty gray gown under an exquisite spencer, very severe and cut in sharply just below the bust. The gown could be worn in the morning, but adding the jacket transformed it into a walking dress. The wrists ended in corded rows forming Vs at the wrist.

  Her mother had had a veritable lust for brightly colored clothing. Secretly, Cleo had sometimes thought Julia’s garments were garish, if fashionable. To Cleo’s mind, the design of a frock was irrelevant if it had been constructed from bright orange silk with an apricot overlay.

  This gown had elegant lines, but it was reserved. Powerful. The woman who wore it informed the world that her lack of general’s stripes was merely an accident of birth. The silk felt smooth and heavy. If a bonnet had one of those long lavender feathers . . . No, that would call too much attention to herself.

  “He can’t do that!” Gussie cried sharply, behind her. “I’m sure it’s illegal.”

  Cleo turned. Her maid was still hugging Martha.

  “How can he possibly move you wherever he wishes? It’s impossible. There must be a law against it. You should write to the constable. The king! Write to His Majesty!”

  “I won’t, I just won’t,” a young woman sobbed. She was drooping on the shoulder of an older seamstress, who was patting her and staring into space.

  “We have arrived at an uncomfortable moment,” Cleo said, walking over to Gussie.

  “Martha is being forced to move, Miss Lewis,” Gussie cried.

  “You must be Mrs. Quimby,” Cleo said. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Gussie has told me of your emporium.”

  Martha bobbed a curtsy. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss. I’ve just had some bad news, or I’d be more cheerful.”