Countess Dracula by Guy Adams

for you?’
    Elizabeth lifted the maid to her feet and, starry-eyed, the girl looked back at Patience as if she was seeking permission. What right had she to offer an opinion either way? Patience had no doubt that nothing good could come from the mistress’s mood but she could hardly say so.
    She just nodded and watched the girl being led away.
    *
    ‘We could go out,’ Elizabeth was saying, though Georgina, the maid, barely heard her. She simply couldn’t believe what was happening to her and everything had taken on the distant, dislocated feeling of a dream.
    ‘Have drinks somewhere, then back here for dinner, something special … something fabulous!’
    ‘There’s really no need,’ Georgina insisted, utterly overwhelmed.
    ‘Oh, bless you.’ Elizabeth pulled her close and kissed her on her unwounded cheek. ‘There’s every need. I’ve treated you terribly and I simply couldn’t live with myself unless I made it up to you.’
    She led the girl into her dressing room, a place bigger even than her bedroom, a mirror-lined chamber of concealed wardrobes. The outfits contained therein formed a museum of her public appearances: gowns and frocks, skirts and blouses, many of them worn only once and then filed away as a memento.
    ‘You’re a little more petite than me,’ Elizabeth noted, ‘but I’m sure we can find something that will work.’
    Georgina could barely hold still in the room, shifting awkwardly from one foot to another as she turned around and around, being chased by her ever-present reflection. She was an animal utterly removed from her environment and with no idea how to adapt. ‘I’m sure nothing here would be right. I wouldn’t know how to wear it.’
    ‘Oh darling, any woman can wear anything. Now, get rid of that uniform and let’s see what we can find.’
    ‘Get rid …?’
    ‘Don’t be shy – you can hardly wear a frock over the top of it, can you? We’re all girls together.’
    ‘I suppose so.’ Reluctantly, Georgina reached behind her and began to untie her pinny.
    ‘Besides,’ continued Elizabeth, ‘today that is no longer who you are: no more service, no more uniform, just the beauty beneath it.’
    ‘Beauty?’ Georgina looked at her reflection and scowled at what she saw. ‘I’m no beauty.’
    Elizabeth had to agree as the girl unzipped her black dress to expose a pale, thin body underneath.
Just look at this creature
, she thought,
with her hairy arms and legs, her jutting knees and flat chest, her mismatched underwear and her skin like curdled milk. What loss was such a thing? What a small price to pay in a world where beauty was everything
.
    Out loud Elizabeth was the consummate actress: ‘Nonsense! The waif look is the next thing. I’m so jealous! Look at my pudgy body compared to yours, so lean and toned.’
    ‘Toned?’
    ‘Fit, supple.’
    ‘Oh, that’ll be the sweeping, I suppose. It really takes it out of you, especially on the hot days.’
    ‘I just bet it does.’
    Elizabeth pulled out a red satin dress. She had worn it for the premiere of
Starlings
, a Southern Gothic where she had played an abandoned orphan looking after younger children in the cruel home where they had been abandoned. She had lost weight for the role: the director had been determined to capture the look of a young woman who had survived off little but oats and raw potatoes for most of her life. She had hated the movie but the critics hadn’t and that had been the important thing. What she saw as unnecessary torture had been lauded as ‘dazzling commitment to the role’. Fabio had been quick to release to the papers how she had been eager to experience the discomfort of the many real-life unfortunates who grew up in a state of abuse and fear, and hinted that a portion of her fee was going to a local orphanage. It hadn’t, naturally – Elizabeth would never have stood for such waste. But the press had done her no end of favours, even when she had been photographed gorging herself