"The Corset Diaries" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAlister Katie)

If I do get the job (and I won’t; I’ve seen pictures of Consuelo Vanderbilt and all the other dollar duchesses— almost all of them were skinny little things), I’m going to be extra-special nice to the poor people downstairs.




Everyone in Worston Old Hall has a place set down for them by hundreds of years of societal norms and mores—everyone from the duke in his smoking room to the third footman as he carries out the slops will keep to his place. Join us for four scintillating weeks as we examine how this group of modern-day freethinkers change into their Victorian counterparts. Will A Month in the Life of a Victorian Duke prove to be heaven . . . or hell?




“Holy cow!”

The woman next to me, a nice elderly English lady who chatted very politely with me for the first twenty minutes of the trip then pulled out a book and left me alone for the duration, moved restlessly. Most of the passengers on the plane were asleep by this time, the lights dimmed, blankies and pillows having been handed out, but I had remained awake to read the packet of info Pierce had sent. I angled my reading lamp away from my seatmate so I wouldn’t disturb her while I read, but I guess my exclamation must have been louder than I thought, because she sat up and cast me a questioning glance.

I tilted toward her the eight-by-ten glossy that had been shuffled between consent forms.

“Is that your sweetheart?” she asked, making a little moue of appreciation at the photo.

I pursed my lips in a soundless whistle and shook my head. “Just a guy I might be working with.”

Pierce was right; the man was gorgeous—black, black hair that waved back from a not-too-high forehead, startlingly light blue eyes that glittered from beneath his black eyebrows, a nice if slightly rueful smile, and a gently blunted chin that for some reason made my stomach flutter and my legs go a bit weak. For a moment I mulled over that reaction to a mere picture, then chalked it up to not having dated in the three years since Peter died. Lack of sex will sometimes make you a bit swoony.

There was also a photo of a woman; blond, pretty heart-shaped face, big eyes, and thin, thin, thin. In other words, as completely different from my brunette, freckle-faced, large self as she could be. It was Cynthia, the woman originally cast to play the part of wife to the drool-worthy duke, a woman who looked absolutely perfect for the part, a woman who would look even more perfect next to the black-haired Adonis. Seen together, it would be infinitely believable that the duke would have chosen her from all women to be his wife, the woman to bear his children, mother to his daughter, friend, helpmeet, lover. She was, in a word, flawless.

I really want to go home.









Tuesday again

August 31

Nine in the morning U.K. time—post-breakfast

Still on the plane (will this flight never end?)




Breakfast was a dismal affair—potted meat and black bread and a pastry and yogurt. Not that I expect haute cuisine in tourist class, but still! Some fruit might have been nice. And of course, my breakfast tray was thrown to me over Mrs. Hargreaves (my elderly seatmate) by the Hun. She also deliberately tried to spill coffee on me when she poured it, but I was too quick for her. Ha! Triumphant at last. Just wait until the head of the airline gets my letter about her.

Mrs. Hargreaves turned out to be a gold mine of information. Seems when she was a “little gel,” her parents had servants galore. She had a nanny, of course, and she remembers the housemaids smoking and chatting in the servant’s hall. I asked her questions about how her mother dealt with the servants, but she was less helpful there.