One
London, 1843
Although no one would believe her at this point, the truth was that Hannah Williams hadn’t planned to ruin her life when she’d kissed a near-stranger in front of a room full of people that fateful Tuesday evening. On the contrary, it felt to her as though everyone else (more specifically, her mother) had been ruining her life for ages, and her actions were nothing but a necessary form of self-defense. Inevitable, really. If Mama didn’t want her to run away in the middle of the evening to seek out compromising situations, she should stop bringing Hannah to terrible places and forcing her to meet terrible men!
The terrible place where they’d begun their evening just a few hours earlier was Mrs. Anwar’s town house. It might not seem too bad from a distance—sitting just south of fashionable Berkeley Square and hiding behind a deceptively pristine plaster facade replete with Corinthian columns—but what made it so terrible was the fact that it was filled withpeople. And not the sort of people that one might enjoy spending time with, such as a small group of dear friends. No,this house was filled with strangers! Hundreds of them! Roughly a quarter of whom were eligible young men that Hannah might be expected to dance with.
If Dante had shown the slightest care for accuracy in drafting hisInferno, he would have included a crowded ballroom as one of the circles of hell. A step or two above the circle reserved for murderers, but certainly below the ones for such trivial problems as treachery or waste.
“Why is it considered a mark of success to stuff one’s home so full that no one can move?” Hannah reflected, blowing away an ostrich plume rooted in a neighboring lady’s hair, which had drooped to tickle her nose. “If I had my own house, I should be very glad to invite exactly five people over to see it, and no more.”
“I believe they do it to provide us with an excuse to explore the gardens for some air,” Hannah’s friend, Annabelle Danby, mused aloud.
“Never! Youknowhow dangerous gardens are.” Set one foot onto the green at the same time a member of the opposite sex was present, and you were liable to find yourself engaged. Hannah’s older brother, Eli, had learned that the hard way a few years ago. Though he’d managed to escape the worst of it, Hannah had never forgotten the lesson. Gardens and libraries and secluded nooks were strictly off-limits if she didn’t want to find herself trapped.
Which she most certainly didn’t. As far as she could tell, marriage only made people grow to detest one another.
“I was only joking,” Annabelle replied, a touch defensively.
“Forgive me, but I cannot find any humor in such things. You know my mother would seize on any excuse to marry me off.”
It made no difference to Mama who the man was, so long as there was one. In the four years since she’d come out, Hannah’s life had been a dizzying carousel of introductions, each more repugnant thanthe last.
As if on cue, Mrs. Williams materialized from behind the lady with the ostrich feather. “There you are, poppet. I was wondering where you’d got to.”
I was hiding from you.If there was one advantage to the size of the crowd—and only one—it was that Hannah had managed to tuck herself out of sight for a full half hour.
“Let me see your dance card. Who has engaged you this evening?” Without waiting for a response, Mama helped herself to a look at the little card secured to Hannah’s wrist with a yellow ribbon. Her face fell as she took in the empty space beside each song. “Why, you’ve made no effort at all! We’vetalkedabout this.”
This was not strictly true. A more accurate description would be to say that Mama had talked—primarily about the fact that Hannah was doomed to die a spinster, as if it were a fatal disease that progressed from untreated shyness—while Hannah let her eyes glaze over and imagined she was someplace else. In fact, that might be a good strategy now. She would try to remember her favorite walking path back home in Devonshire. The one that wound down to the little stream where she used to dip her feet in the summer.
“Fortunately for you,” Mama continued, “I’ve found a lovely young gentleman who would be pleased to ask you for a dance. I know his mother, Mrs. Horvath, and we both agree you would suit. Come along. Let me introduce you.”
Hannah tried to shoot a pleading look to Annabelle, but she was already being bodily shuffled away (quite a feat, given the crowded state of the room). Once they had jostled their way past several innocent bystanders, Hannah saw the object of their search, a skinny gentleman of about thirty years with a pinched face and a premature stoop to his shoulders.
“Mama,” she whispered. “Stop it. I don’t want to dance with Mr.Horvath.”
“Then you should have found your own dance partners,” Mama hissed back. “You cannot stand idly by and wait for the right man to appear. Every year that passes leaves you with fewer options. It’s past time for you to show some initiative.”
Though probably true, this was of no real consequence to Hannah. She looked forward to the day that everyone deemed her a hopeless spinster and left her in peace. The precise date of this happy event seemed to be forever shifting, as Mama vowed that each season would be her “last chance” every spring.
Hannah wasn’t even sure how there could still be men left in England she hadn’t already driven off. She’d never had a talent for making sparkling conversation. Nor was she especially pretty. She had an ordinary sort of face, with a nose that was a touch too pointed and plain brown hair that never held a curl for more than a minute before flopping limply on her too-long neck. With raw materials like these, it should have been easy to escape matrimony!
But though she spent most of these evenings hiding behind the nearest potted plant, Mama always managed to dredge upsomeone.
The three-thousand-pound dowry attached to Hannah’s name probably had something to do with it. While not a vast fortune, it was enough to tempt the sad, faded bachelors who turned up at her morning calls.
I’m being sold off at a very depressing auction.
“Mr. Horvath, may I present my daughter, Miss Hannah Williams?” Mama said on cue. “She was just telling me how much she loved the grand march earlier.”
A blatant lie. Hannah would never tempt fate by saying anything complimentary about the dancing at a ball.
“How do you do?” Mr. Horvath bowed deeply, wobbling a bit on his way down. He smelled strongly of brandy. There was a veryreal possibility that Mama had gotten him drunk in order to secure his consent to this meeting. Her mood was more desperate this season than it had ever been before. It made Hannah uneasy. “Are you engaged for the next dance? It would be my”—he broke off to hiccup into his hand—“my pleasure.”
“She is not,” Mama answered for her, tugging Hannah’s dance card off of her wrist and thrusting it at Mr. Horvath.
Should I argue?Hannah didn’t like to make a spectacle of herself, but she’d had no choice but to overcome her reserve these past few seasons. She’d pretended to be a political radical when Mr. Brown came to call last month; then told Mr. Bailey that she’d taken a vow of chastity; and finally spilled her tea in Mr. Moore’s lap. Her efforts had yielded resounding success: not one repeat caller in the lot!
