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shook out her own dark skirts. “I do not like London anymore,” she grumbled, “and no one should live here at this time of year. It is too warm, and much too damp, but what could we do? We had to come to London to greet the new queen.”

      “I think the queen is very pretty,” India noted.

      “All young girls are pretty,” her great-aunt said, “and this one no more or less than many, but there will be difficulty over her religion, mark my words. And if all those French with her persist in their rude habits, the king will do well to send them away.” She moved toward the door. “I am going back to your uncle’s house now,” she announced. “I will see you all in the morning when we go to court, and I hope, Jasmine, that your daughter will be suitably garbed like a proper young Englishwoman, and not decked out like some foreigner.” The countess of Alcester stamped through the open door, which a servant held for her, her skirts swinging indignantly as she went.

      “Fat old cow!” India muttered when the door had shut again.

      “She has just forgotten what it is like to be young,” Jasmine told her daughter, although personally she agreed with her daughter’s assessment. Aunt Willow had always been prim and proper. It was as if she strove to be entirely and totally different from her own mother, a lady of passion and colorful character. It often made her seem joyless and didactic. “Your great-aunt is correct in one thing, however, India,” Jasmine said. “Tomorrow you will wear one of your less spectacular gowns to court to greet the queen. It would not do to outshine Her Majesty when she is undoubtedly striving to make a good impression upon her new subjects. She will be feeling strange, and, I suspect, not just a little frightened in her new land.”

      “Like when you came to England?” India said.

      Jasmine nodded. “At least the queen can go home again if she wants to visit France. Once I left India there was no going back.”

      “Do you ever regret leaving?” her eldest child asked.

      Jasmine shook her head. “No. My life there was at an end. My fate was here with your father, and later in Scotland with your stepfather, my darling Jemmie. You must never fight your fate, India, even if it is not the fate you believe you would choose.”

      “My fate isn’t very interesting, Mama,” India said. “I will have to choose a husband very soon, or risk being an old maid. I will settle down, and have children as you, and Grandmother Velvet, and my great-grandmother, Madame Skye, did. There is no excitement or surprises in such a fate. It is all quite ordinary, I fear.”

      “Neither Madame Skye, nor my mother, nor I led dull lives in our youth, India,” Jasmine reminded her daughter, “although I do hope you will not face quite all the excitement we did. I am not certain you could cope with it, being so gently raised.”

      “Grandmother Velvet was gently raised, and she managed to survive her adventures,” India reminded her mother.

      “It was a different time,” Jasmine said softly, thinking her English born and bred daughter did not know the half of it.

      “Come, and help me choose what I will wear tomorrow, Mama,” India said. “And we must choose something for Fortune. She will wait until the last minute, and somehow manage to look like nobody’s child, embarrassing us all. Fortune’s appearance matters little to her, I fear.”

      The duchess of Glenkirk laughed aloud at her eldest child’s assessment of her younger sister. It was so accurate. India cared very much how she looked, and how she appeared before the world. Her hair was always properly coiffed, her gown fresh, her nails neatly trimmed. Fortune, on the other hand, was an unrepentant hoyden whose red hair was always flying and tangled as Fortune dashed impulsively through life, her skirts muddied and more than likely a smudge upon her pale cheek. The duchess’s mother said that Fortune would change when she got older, but Fortune would be fifteen in just a few weeks and showed no signs of maturation. How on earth could she and Rowan Lindley have spawned two such different daughters? “Let us choose your sister’s gown first,” Jasmine suggested, knowing it would take India forever to settle upon her own garb.

      India nodded her agreement. “The main problem will be to find something clean,” she said, “but I suppose Nelly does her best to keep up with our wild Fortune.” Then India laughed. “No one can make me angrier than Fortune, Mama. She does not seem to care at all, but I do love her!”

      “I know you do,” the duchess replied, and then together the two hurried upstairs to seek out a wardrobe, India’s elegant new silk skirts rustling as they went.

      Impressed by the exquisite clothing she had seen at the French court, India Lindley had returned from France determined to have a new gown, nay, a dozen new gowns fashioned in the same manner, of the finest materials, sewn all over with jewels and gold thread, with fine brocade petticoats that would show through the gown’s front opening. She thought the farthingales and bell-shaped skirts of her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother’s day far more elegant than the skirts of today that fell to the floor in simple folds, with the fullness toward the back. It was somehow sloppy, India thought, but it was the fashion now. Opulent fabrics, India thought, would take the curse from this less elegant mode.

      India had therefore raided the O’Malley-Small trading company warehouses where there were incredible fabrics stored that her mother had brought from her homeland nearly twenty years ago. There was so much fine stuff that India knew even if she and her sister were completely outfitted in dozens of new gowns each, there would still be enough of the beautiful materials left over. She had picked carefully, colors and fabrics that would flatter her skin. Then she had personally overseen the making of the garments, which were far richer than those normally worn now in England. Satisfied that her gowns were every bit as good as those that would be worn by the queen and her French ladies, India looked forward to going to court.

      The king and queen had been remarried at St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, and had then made their way to London, coming into the city by barge as there was plague about. It was not the official state entry that Henrietta-Marie had expected. Still, the young queen waved at the crowds through the open window of the vessel as they stood there along the Thames bank in the wind and rain to greet her. The king was more sedate, waving regally, his face somber. Afterward, however, the queen had retired to rest from her long journey. It was just now at the end of June that she felt ready to attend the formal proclamation of her marriage.

      The ceremony took place in the Great Hall of Whitehall Palace. The king and his queen sat upon their thrones while the marriage contract was read aloud to the assembled dignitaries and the court. Looking about her, India was quite satisfied that she was the best dressed Englishwoman in the hall. Fortune, of course, had rolled her eyes as India had been laced into a small corset, but India knew it was worth it, for her small breasts swelled discreetly over the low, square neckline of her gown, pushed up by the corset. The gown itself was of claret-red silk with a wide, ivory lace collar that extended low on the shoulder. The sleeves reached the elbow, and showed ivory-and-gold brocade through their slashes that matched the tantalizing glimpse of petticoat through the gown’s skirt opening. The duchess had refused to allow her daughter to wear her own famous rubies, believing pearls more suitable to the occasion. India’s hair was as fashionable as her gown, her dark locks being fixed into a flat, coiled knot at the back, with a single lovelock tied with a gold ribbon draping itself teasingly by her left ear.

      “Damn me if that ain’t the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” Adrian Leigh, Viscount Twyford, said to his friend, Lord John Summers.

      “Too rich for your blood,” Lord Summers replied dryly.

      “You know who she is, Johnny? And why should I not aspire to such a magnificent creature?”

      “Because she is the stepdaughter of the duke of Glenkirk, and the sister of the marquis of Westleigh. A virgin, and an heiress far beyond your reach. You don’t want to marry, Twyford. You want to seduce. Seduce that beauty, and you’ll end up very dead. Whatever they have planned for Lady India Lindley, it isn’t you.”

      “I’ll be earl of Oxton one day, Johnny,” Viscount Twyford replied,

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