Refining Felicity Read Online Free

Felicity’s practical jokes and wild behaviour, but Wanstead had remained for three years now. Her greatest asset was that she was hard of hearing. The noise of Felicity’s tantrums did not disturb her, and she had developed a bobbing, weaving motion from learning to avoid thrown hairbrushes, curling tongs, and other missiles.
    Felicity adored her father and tried very hard to behave like the young rip he would have liked for a son. She had once put on a very pretty gown with frills and lace to please her mother and her father had laughed and laughed and had said she looked like an organ-grinder’s monkey. This was the first time since that humiliating incident that Felicity was making any effort to look like a young lady.
    Patiently she sat before the toilet table while her hair was pomaded and curled, while she was scented and powdered.
    She was a tall girl with thick black hair, a thin, tanned face, and large greenish-grey eyes. She had a generous mouth and a deep bosom. She was not beautiful by fashionable standards, which demanded a plump, dainty figure, a dimpled face, and a tiny mouth. She had high cheekbones, a great disadvantage in an age where women wore wax pads inside their cheeks to achieve a Dutch-doll look. But with her black hair dressed in a Roman style and with her thin and athletic figure attired in floating white muslin, she managed to attain a certain regal air. Good health gave her skin a glow and made her hair shine with blue lights.
    Felicity had her instructions. She was to wait until the guests were assembled in the hall and then descend the staircase. The staircase was a double one and she was to walk down on the right-hand curve, one hand resting lightly on the banister, and with her head held high. A footman would follow her, holding a branch of candles. Felicity was now quite excited at the idea of making an entrance. And at the back of her mind, although she did not quite know yet what it was, was the hope that her father, seeing his daughter as an attractive young lady, would give up his longing for a son. Although he doted on Felicity, he always made her feel as if she had usurped the place of that dream-child.
    She had caught a glimpse of the Marquess of Ravenswood the day before, when she had been out riding. Some of his men had been digging a drainage ditch on Plump’s field on his property. As Felicity rode past, the marquess, who had been giving instructions, took off his coat and seized a spade and started digging himself. She noticed, not for the first time, that he was tall and powerfully built. A lord who was not too high in the instep to dig his own ditches would make an amiable husband. Felicity thought of a husband as being someone like her father, who would allow her free rein. She knew that romance did not enter into an aristocratic marriage. Their lands bordered the marquess’s. It would be a sensible business partnership.
    From downstairs came the strains of a waltz. Felicity felt a tremor of excitement and ran to the long looking-glass in her room and twisted this way and that to make sure the tapes of her gown were correctly tied.
    ‘’Bout time you started to care for your looks, my lady,’ grumbled Wanstead.
    ‘Must you always be complaining?’ snapped Felicity, colouring up.
    There was a scratching at the door. Wanstead opened it. The footman with the branch of candles. Time for Felicity’s grand entrance.
    Felicity walked out and along the corridor, followed by the footman. Behind the footman came Wanstead, calling out, ‘Short steps, my lady. Do not stride along like that. Mince, my lady. Mince!’
    At the top of the double staircase, Felicity paused and looked down. Faces were turned up to her: her mother’s, pale and anxious; her father’s, florid and amused. And then she saw the Marquess of Ravenswood. He was very handsome indeed, thought Felicity with a little stab of shock. She had not had a chance to see him in evening dress before. He had thick fair