“Olivia!”
She turned toward the first welcome voice of the night, her sister’s. “Oh, Mariana, what a relief to see you.”
Upon their presentation at court,“Milk and Honey” was the moniker the Regent had bestowed on the Earl of Surrey’s twin daughters, Ladies Olivia and Mariana, in reference to their respective, un-twinlike appearances. Olivia’s clear, milky complexion had been the perfect complement to Mariana’s tawny hair and eyes.
“Lady Olivia,” Mariana purred, not unlike the intonation of a jungle cat settling in for a feast of minced rat. “Sir Edwin, here”—She indicated the rather pugnacious-looking man at her side—“was inquiring about The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.”
“Oh?” Olivia smiled and began to back away. No good ever came of crossing Mariana when her lioness purr coupled with that particular glint in her eye.
Most gentlemen of thetonregarded The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds to be a complete waste of time and resources for the needless education of daughters who were best married off as soon as could be decently managed. It was clear as day that Mariana was spoiling for a row.
“I’m uncertain how I can be of more help than my sister. If you will pardon me—”
Mariana slipped her hand into the crook of Olivia’s arm, securing her to her side. Olivia was caught. “Sir Edwin,” Mariana began, turning a dazzling smile onto her prey, “has difficulty believing our daughters’ feeble female brains are capable of progressing mathematically beyond tallying the number of stitches on a sampler.”
Olivia heard in Mariana’s tone the familiar stirrings of a righteous and one-sided debate. Sir Edwin would have no hope of getting a word in edgewise once Mariana warmed to her subject.
Herein lay the difference between herself and Mariana: Olivia was no crusader. While she believed that her daughter needed amaleeducation—the very reason she and Mariana had founded the school, after all—she had no interest in converting the Sir Edwins of thetonto her way of thinking.
Thetonsimply wasn’t ready for The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds. And it wasn’t Olivia’s mission in life to make them so.
“Sir Edwin,” Olivia conceded, “I suggest you bring your daughter for a visit if your curiosity has gotten the better of you.”
Sir Edwin’s nose darkened into an unattractive shade of aubergine. “I can assure you that curiosity about such a school does not in any way outweigh my good judgment. Curiosity, indeed.” The man harrumphed. “More like turning my daughter into a curiosity with these outlandish—”
Olivia was spared the remainder of Sir Edwin’s scold when his voice died away and the volume of the room hushed to a dull murmur. Her eyes shifted from Sir Edwin’s florid face and followed the collective gaze.
At first glance, it appeared to be nothing more than the announcement of yet another couple standing at the top of the ballroom’s grand staircase. A closer examination revealed that the pair was no couple, rather a man and a girl a few years shy of her debut.
The girl was both the man’s opposite and his equal at once. Where she was dark, he was light. Where he towered impressively, she stood modestly. Their connection, however, was apparent in the intangibles: a similarity in their composure and in the quiet way they took in the scene before them.
Mariana pulled Olivia close. “It appears the night’s gossip trump card is being played. You, dear sister, are old news.”
Olivia tore her gaze away from the new arrivals and lent an attentive ear to her sister.
“The newly minted Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban,” Mariana whispered. “Rich as Croesus and tonight’s guest of honor. A shipping heir, if the gossip is true.”
Olivia couldn’t resist the tug of another glance. They were an impossibly gorgeous and arresting pair. His golden head of hair was the finest mixture of red and sun-kissed blond she’d ever seen, which contrasted sharply with the girl’s hair, the deep, complex black of a crow’s wing. It would be a challenge for any painter to get the colors right, especially a novice like herself, but she would love to try.
She heard someone say, “She’s his daughter. Haven’t you heard?”
Mariana squeezed Olivia’s arm. “Oh, the gossips will have a field day with this.”
Olivia nodded once, taking Mariana’s meaning. The girl’s parentage, specifically on her mother’s side.
The resemblance to both her Asian and European ancestries clear, the girl’s features came together in flawless synthesis: a heart-shaped face, a full rosebud mouth, and the most beautiful eyes Olivia had ever beheld, oval but angled in the exact same line as high cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, appearing to be not brown, but the changeable gray of a black pearl. It was as if Nature had taken the best from both lines of descent to illustrate for the world its capacity for perfection.
The ladies formed a tight, exclusive circle, and whispered snippets of conversation flurried around Olivia.
“Rumor has it that the mother is Japanese,” she overheard.
“A servant, do you think?” came the scandalized reply.
“And he acknowledges her?”
“Oriental women have secrets, don’t you know?” came a giggly whisper from her left.
“Which ones did they teach him?”
