Gladys tried not to cry. “What does that mean?”
Mother sighed. “It means, try to look like someone that a gentleman might want to marry, for once!”
Gladys clenched her teeth behind a painful smile and nodded tightly.
She was always trying to “look approachable”. Had spent one-and-twenty years trying to look approachable. It had never worked. No one ever approached. Gladys repelled eligible bachelors as if she were covered in thorny sprigs.
“Can I try the punch?” Kitty whispered. “And each of the cakes?”
Gladys closed her eyes. Oh, to be seventeen and carefree again, when all of this was new, and seemed like the start of a fairy tale adventure.
“Of course,” said Mother. “Come with me. Shall we bring something back for you, Gladys?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. With luck, I’ll be busy dancing by the time you return.”
Mother didn’t look as though she believed that fantasy to be any more likely than Gladys did, but she inclined her head and led Kitty off toward the refreshment stand.
Gladys assumed her usual position against the long, blank wall facing the dance floor. This was where the wallflowers stood. Within arm’s reach of the action. Short a partner for one of the country dances? Grabbing an eager soul from the wainscoting was as simple as plucking a petal from a flower.
Or would be, if anyone ever bothered to do it.
The orchestra had finished setting up, and launched into a rousing reel—the first dance of the night. Couples flooded the dance floor. Even more streamed in from the nearby pleasure gardens.
These assembly rooms were across the street from Marrywell’s enormous, sprawling botanical gardens. Although much smaller and less frequented, the land behind the assembly rooms boasted plenty of natural beauty of its own, with several walking paths through a pretty statue garden behind the assembly building.
Not that anyone was out there now. Easily a thousand bodies had crammed into the hall, most of which were hurrying toward the dance floor. Including… Gladys swallowed a gasp.
Her sister.
Kitty was twirling on the dance floor, punch and cakes forgotten, her arm locked with that of a handsome gentleman. Absolute delight radiated from Kitty’s upturned, smiling face.
Of course. Of course Gladys had spent four long, humiliating years waiting for her first dance, and Kitty was already in the midst of hers, after being out for all of four minutes.
It wasn’t a surprise. For her whole life, Gladys had been told her younger sister was the pretty one. The charming one. The desirable one. Though no one used those precise words, Gladys had understood the corollary to be true as well: She was the ugly one. The undesirable one. The unlovable one.
Four interminable seasons in Polite Society had given no evidence to the contrary. Kitty’s four minutes at a celebrated matchmaking ball only served to underscore the stark differences between their inevitable fates.
Gladys tore her gaze from her happy sister, and tried to smile at her fellow wallflowers instead.
The others were either too terrified to smile back, or as uninterested in Gladys as everyone else at the ball. After several fruitless minutes, she clenched her fingers and let out a frustrated breath. Looking approachable was absolutely impossible.
If this was how the entire week was going to go, she might as well—
Her breath caught at the sight of the handsomest man she’d ever seen and Gladys’s mouth fell open. Good God, was he real? His radiance eclipsed the many chandeliers sparkling overhead. Gladys took an involuntary step forward, away from the infernal wall, in her eagerness for a closer look. Her heart sang.
Impeccable evening wear, trim shoulders and hips, decidedly untrimmed golden hair tumbling carelessly across his forehead. White, with slightly flushed cheeks. Tall, but not gangly. Fit, but not hulking. Clearly moneyed, but not vulgar. Elegant, but… approachable, damn it. He flashed a roguish smile that said, I’d be delighted to show you a good time.
His sensual brown eyes met hers and time froze to a stop. It was love at first sight. Gladys was wholly, irrevocably, smitten.
Wait—his eyes didn’t meet hers. They skated over the wall exactly where she stood, but neither paused nor flickered in interest… or even acknowledgment of her presence. She was as invisible to him as she was to every other unmarried bachelor.
Her spirits crumpled. Complete obliviousness to her existence was exactly the reception Gladys had always garnered, and therefore it should neither surprise nor hurt her.
Somehow, it always did anyway.
One of the other wallflowers caught Gladys staring in longing and jerked her arm back toward the wall.
“Yes, that’s the finest man in England,” the girl hissed. “No, he is not interested in you. Or any of us.”
