“Why not?” he asked. “Apart from the fact that you are not feeling too kindly about balls at the moment, that is.”
“Because,”she said.
“Hmm.” He frowned in apparent thought. “Becauseis not a reason. Try again.”
“Colin!” She looked at him in exasperation. “Just consider how the last ball ended. It was less than a week ago.”
“Have you met Mrs. Ormsbridge?” he asked her. “Do you like her?”
“I have no personal acquaintance with her,” she said, “though I recall that she was one of Jessica’s friends last year when they made their debut together. I remember her as a pleasant, unaffected girl. I have seen her a few times this year. She seems happy.”
“Make her happier, then,” he said. “Make her ball the most successful, most talked about of the Season. It is bound to be just that if we attend, you know. We will be the sensation of the hour—probably of the week. Maybe of the month. After this morning’s announcement, thetonwill be agog for their first sight of us together as a betrothed couple.”
“Oh dear,” she said, and bit her lower lip before laughing despite herself. “I am very much afraid you are right.”
“I often am,” he said agreeably, and grinned down at her. “Are you going to attempt to make yourself respectable again by attending teas and soirees? Or are you going to face the music and dance to it?”
“Oh dear,” she said again, and stared at him. And she had a sudden memory of Viola when she had come here last year for Alex’s wedding and did not want to be seen by theton.It had seemed too soon to her after her marriage to Cousin Humphrey had been exposed as bigamous. And Wren did not want to be seen by thetoneither because she had worn a veil almost all her life and had only recently begun to leave it off in private. But the two of them had challenged each other and went off to the theater together one evening, brazen and unveiled. What they could do, she could surely do.
“I will write to Mrs. Ormsbridge to ask if she would prefer that I stay away,” she said. “The last thing I would want to do is ruin her ball.”
His eyes were smiling into hers and he was looking despicably handsome.
“This is madness,” she added.
“Will you reserve the first waltz for me?” he asked.
Seventeen
Lady Hodges’s eyes were glittering with gaiety by the time the last of her guests had taken their leave. It had been a merry afternoon during which she had entertained numerous persons, including several young ladies whose mothers knew no better than to allow them to attend one of her afternoon teas without the proper chaperonage, and several young gentlemen who came to pay homage to the goddess and flirt outrageously with her and a little more suavely with the other ladies. Conversation had been lively and had involved much laughter from the men and blushing and tittering from the ladies. A young poet, whose hair was too long and too wild and whose coat was almost threadbare at the elbows while his shirt points wilted from too little starch, had read aloud a sonnet to the curl that brushed my lady’s cheek, claiming afterward that he had composed it upon the spot.
“I do not doubt it,” Lord Ede had muttered, opening his snuffbox and examining its contents.
“Be kind, Ede,” Lady Hodges had replied in her sweet voice, offering the back of her hand to the poet as a special favor and smiling graciously upon him.
She had participated in the conversation, moving among her guests, smiled sweetly upon the blushing young ladies and archly at the gentlemen who flirted with them. She had laughed lightly and preened herself and protested at all the compliments and flattery and protestations of adoration that were poured upon her. She had slapped a fan across the wrist of one gentleman when he recoiled and expressed astonishment after it was revealed to him that Blanche, Lady Elwood was my lady’s daughter, not her elder sister, as he had assumed.
“You will apologize immediately to Lady Elwood for the insult,” she had told him. “Though everyone makes the same mistake, or pretends to, when they meet her for the first time. Everyone is a flatterer. Come, admit she is lovely.”
Lady Hodges sank into her chair when she was at last alone—apart, that was, from her usual retinue. Blanche sat close to her while Sir Nelson Elwood, who had been absent through much of the party, stood behind her chair. Lord Ede was over by one of the windows, though he could not see out since the pink curtains that covered them and filtered a dim and flattering light into the room were not on any account to be touched. Four young men, who did not live at the house and were not officially servants, though they were not considered guests either, hovered about her chair, one taking charge of her peacock fan, another holding a lace-edged handkerchief that she might conceivably need, a third fetching her a glass of lemonade, and the fourth merely hovering because there was nothing much else to do for the moment.
The lady’s gaiety was brittle. All the occupants recognized that and awaited the outburst of sweetness that must inevitably follow.
“You read the notice of my son’s betrothal in the morning papers, I daresay, Ede?” she asked.
But it was a rhetorical question. He could hardlynotknow about it. Someone had mentioned it earlier and congratulated Lady Hodges. She had smiled dazzlingly upon the speaker, called him kind, and tapped him on the cheek with her closed fan. Any possibility that someone else might join him in his congratulations had died when the other guests had noted the red mark left behind on the unfortunate gentleman’s cheek.
“I did,” Lord Ede said. “She is a lady to be reckoned with. She did not flee to the country as almost any other lady would have done.”
“I am curious,” she said. “Why is he betrothed to the widow instead of to Miss Dunmore?”
“Clearly someone talked who had no business talking,” he said.
“Perhaps,” she said, “it was you. Perhaps you were careless.”
“I am never careless,” he informed her. “Perhaps you have met your match in the widow.”
She looked long and hard at him while the one young gentleman fanned her face. “We shall see,” she said. “How many years older than Colin is she?”
