But, again, her name was written nowhere within its covers.
Which might’ve been a tell in and of itself.
If she’d mattered one jot in society.
So, panic subsided, she’d gotten on with it and purchased a new journal, spending precious coin she nearly didn’t have.
Now, from her perfect nook, she noted that Lord Oxnard had danced twice with Miss Barclay, while Lady Oxnard, a known hand at Macao, was otherwise occupied in the card room.
Beatrix’s immediate impulse was to find Artemis and share a snicker.
Except she couldn’t.
Artemis was in Yorkshire, and she had to accept the possibility that Artemis might not return to London at all. While she didn’t need or desire a wide circle of friends, it was nice having the one with whom she could share a gossipy giggle at a ball. A letter once a week wasn’t the same.
Maybe she could make a new friend. Except…she wasn’t sure how precisely one went about it. She’d only been lucky enough to happen upon her friendship with Artemis.
Really, though, how did one make friends?
She could venture from her protective stretch of wall, she supposed, and stand at the periphery of the dancing floor with the other spinsters and wallflowers. From there, she could strike up a conversation with one or two of those spinsters and wallflowers and—possibly—have a new friend.
At least, that was how the sequence of maneuvers followed in her mind.
Except…
She was likely a good five years older than the oldest spinster who yet harbored the hope of being picked, and she was a good ten years older than the wallflowers.
She would have nothing in common with any of them.
There was the further fact that she didn’t dance, so it would be awkward to stand there with a silly, hopeful smile on her face, as if she were waiting for a gentleman to pick her.
Her reason for not dancing wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy dancing.
She did—immensely, in fact.
The freedom of being swept into the flow of music and whirled around and around and around, giddy delight buoyant in one’s chest, was the closest humans came to flying.
Or, at least, that was how she remembered it from eight years ago.
She didn’t dance for two reasons.
First, she had a reputation to uphold. These last eight years, she’d adopted a manner of, well, indifference to gentlemen and frivolities like dancing—and it had succeeded. No one suspected a single, solitary truth about her life. Society assumed she held herself above such things and, mostly, let her be.
Her second reason for not dancing was loosely related to the first. These last few seasons a merry-go-round of unmarried gentlemen had been making sport of her refusal. At every ball, several would seek her out, discovering her private nook, and asked her to dance. She refused each and every one. Yet they seemed either too caught up in their own interests or, plainly, too stupid to realize she understood what was happening.
With absolute certainty, she knew a betting book was involved.
It was the only explanation for the, frankly, insulting behavior.
Tonight, however, she’d only been asked once and thus had only to refuse once, able to cite her injured ankle. Really, it might be worth feigning a permanent limp, for the strict truth was her wrist and ankle were mostly healed, which was, of course, down to the physician sent by Mr. Deverill.
In the end, when her knocker had sounded, she’d done as he’d commanded and opened her front door, both appendages thoroughly throbbing by then due to her additional excursion to Shepherd’s Market to procure Cumberbatch’s castor oil.
Before she could even greet the man, the physician had briskly informed her there was no point in refusing his services as he’d already been compensated. From there, he’d efficiently determined nothing was broken and wrapped her limbs, all the while teaching her how to do it herself. He’d even asked if she had castor oil, as it was known to settle the inflammatory tendencies of injured muscles. She’d assured him that, as it happened, she did have castor oil on hand.
Just now, a silver tray bearing a dozen coupes of bubbly champagne floated within arm’s reach, and on impulse, she lifted one. Though she didn’t usually imbibe libations at society events—after all, her livelihood depended on her mind being sharp—she decided tonight could be an exception.
By the time the coupe was half empty, her ankle was barking its displeasure less stridently and she ventured from her protective stretch of wall. Who knew champagne possessed healing properties?
