“It seems absurd that you have not met our youngest daughter, Mr. Mainwaring,” the countess said in her grand manner. “May I present Helen to you?”
Mainwaring smiled with something more than mere politeness. So this was the skeleton in the closet. The girl was so very different from her very proper mother and sisters. He held out his hand for hers and prepared to bow over it. And it was only at that moment—he could never afterward imagine how he could have looked at her for what must have been almost a whole minute without realizing—that he knew her.
For one moment he was caught in a feeling of unreality—almost the feeling one would get if one walked out of a room only to find that one was walking into it. The girl who was raising that clenched jaw and staring with such controlled fixity into his eyes was Nell! She raised her hand and placed it in his.
“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” she said. The sound came through her teeth. It was her voice indeed, yet different. The accent was more clipped. She curtsied, a stiff, ungraceful gesture.
William Mainwaring had missed his cue by perhaps only a couple of seconds. No one seemed to have noticed. He bowed over her hand, which still lay in his. “It is my pleasure, ma’am,” he said.
* * *
Robert and Elizabeth were entering the ballroom to begin the dancing. It was time to excuse himself in order to claim his first partner. He bowed to the family as a whole and turned away.
The Marquess of Hetherington took his wife’s arm and linked it through his. He led her in the direction of the adjoining room, where the refreshments were set out.
“Come and have some lemonade,” he said. “I do not much care if you are thirsty or not, my love. My only objection to balls—and unfortunately it is a major one —is that one rarely so much as sets eyes upon the person with whom one would wish to spend the whole evening. I have not spoken with you since the opening set, and that was a country dance.”
She laughed. “I seem to remember that you used to go and sulk in the library when such a thing happened,” she said.
“Ah, but one cannot be so rag-mannered, my love, when one is the host,” he said. “One must smile and smile and pretend that the desire to dance with one’s own wife is the furthest thought from one’s mind.”
“Robert!” she said, glancing through her dance booklet as he took a glass of lemonade from a footman.
“You have reserved the second dance after supper with me, and it is a waltz too. You have a mere two hours or so to wait.”
He pulled a face and then waggled his eyebrows at her. “My main consolation must be that after all these people have left, I shall have you alone for the rest of the night,” he said.
She tapped him on the arm with her fan. “That is at least four hours in the future,” she said. “We will just have to be patient, Robert.”
“We?”
“We,” she repeated, smiling conspiratorially at him. Then her expression sobered. “Robert,” she said, “the next set will be starting soon and I promised myself, that this time I would see that that dreadful little Wade girl was partnered. I am not sure, but I could almost swear that she has not danced even once. For the last two sets she has been sitting among the chaperons, her chin in her hand.”
“I had noticed,” Robert said. “In fact, I asked for the last set myself. Do you know what she said? She said her feet were sore from wearing new slippers. She has not been on her feet long enough to develop even the smallest blister.”
“Oh dear, I must go and see what I can do,” Elizabeth said, depositing her half-empty glass on a tray and walking determinedly back toward the ballroom. “What on earth can be wrong with the girl?”
William Mainwaring reached Helen a few paces ahead of his friends. The set that was forming was the first for which he had not previously solicited the hand of some other lady. He bowed formally before Helen, who was still sitting, one leg crossed over the other, foot swinging, one elbow resting on her knee, her chin in her hand.
“May I have the honor of this dance, Lady Helen?” he asked, his voice sounding strained to his own ears.
She raised her eyes to him without lifting her chin or slowing the motion of her foot. “No,” she said, and looked out across the ballroom again.
“May I fetch you something?” he asked. “A glass of lemonade perhaps?”
“I am not thirsty,” she said, not bothering to look up at him.
Mainwaring hesitated and glanced at the empty chair beside her. “If you will not dance,” he said, “may I sit and talk to you?”
She too glanced at the empty chair. “I cannot stop you from sitting beside me,” she said. “I do not own the chairs here. But if you do, I shall move away.” She looked up at him then and smiled. Her foot still swung slowly back and forth.
Mainwaring bowed, looked at her intently as if he were about to say more, and moved abruptly away.
Elizabeth Denning, several feet away, looked indignantly up into her husband’s face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I am lost for words. If it would not cause a dreadful scandal, Robert, I would order that horrid little girl from my house. Her manners are quite, quite uncouth. I am so angry I could scream.”
Hetherington smiled. “Later, my love,” he said. “You can scream and throw things at me in the privacy of our room. For now, smile! I believe your next partner is approaching, and Miss Fitzpatrick will be thinking that I am about to make a wallflower of her.”
* * *
