It was being given in her honor, a sort of come-out ball at the advanced age of twenty-one. Aunt Anna had insisted upon it, and Uncle Avery had quelled Winifred’s protest with that bored look of his she always found terrifying. Papa had thought it a grand idea, and Mama, when appealed to for intervention in a hastily written letter, replied that she only wished she could be there with her daughter. Alas, it was not possible, she had lamented, but Aunt Anna would be a wonderful substitute mother for the occasion. Mama trusted her utterly.
Winifred remembered the time when Mama had hated Aunt Anna, blaming her quite unfairly—she even admitted it herself now—for her own loss of status and title and the ending of a betrothal when it was discovered that her father had still been married to an unsuspected first wife when he married Grandmama, making Grandmama a bigamous wife and her children, Mama, Uncle Harry, and Aunt Abby, illegitimate. Aunt Anna, meanwhile, having languished for most of her life in the orphanage in Bath, had found that she was the only legitimate daughter of a father she could not remember and the sole inheritor of his vast fortune, amassed, incidentally, with the help of a large dowry Grandmama had brought to the bigamous marriage.
That feud of the half siblings was a thing of the past. Sometimes—like now, for example—Winifred almost wished it were not. How awful of her.
They would be waiting for her in the ballroom, the duke and duchess, where she was to stand with them in the receiving line. She simply could not do it. Her stomach felt distinctly queasy. But she had no choice.
If she knotted together all the sheets from her bed and dangled them from the window, would they reach within jumping distance of the street below?
Her reflected image smiled briefly and bleakly back at her from the glass.
At least Aunt Anna had not insisted upon a white ballgown, all frills and flounces, the standard uniform of debutantes. She had agreed with Winifred that an ivory silk gown of slim lines and simple design, not a frill in sight, suited her far better. She had, though, persuaded Winifred to choose elbow-length gloves of dull gold and dancing slippers to match. Papa had presented her this morning with a double chain necklace of fine gold—Nothing too elaborate, Winnie. I know you—and with small gold earbobs.
Her hair had been a bit of a bone of contention. The maid who had been sent to style it for her, following definite instructions from Her Grace, had been rather tight-lipped when Winifred insisted upon a different style. Aunt Anna, when she came to inspect the results a short while ago, had tipped her head to one side and suggested that perhaps a few tendrils of hair curled over her ears and about her temples and over her brow would become her without looking too fussy. Winifred had insisted upon leaving it as it was, rather severely drawn back from her face and over the crown of her head and dressed in some sort of twist at the back. It was hernormal look, except perhaps for the twist, which had involved a few braids rather than the simple knot she favored when doing her own hair. She had conceded that issue. She did not want her aunt or even the maid to think of her asdifficultor stubborn, though the maid obviously did anyway.
But she stuck with her choice. She did notwantto be a debutante, open to the critical gaze of half theton—atleasthalf of it—and found wanting. All the frills and flounces and curled tendrils in the world would not make a beauty of her. She did notwantto be beautiful, not in any artificial way, at least. She just wanted to be Winifred Cunningham. Why did people always want you to be what you were not?
There was a tap on the outer door, and it opened a crack to admit Papa’s head. He smiled at her and pushed the door wide.
“Perfection,” he said, looking her over with approval. “You look beautiful, Winnie, as you always do.”
He sounded as if he meant it. Papa was a portrait painter, much in demand by potential sitters. Yet he never flattered his subjects when he painted them. Rather, he spent time with them before he even set brush to canvas, searching out the person behind the appearance. The resulting portraits, which were always true to life, warts and all, nevertheless suggested the unique character and beauty of that person. It was quite extraordinary. Winifred admired him enormously.
He saw her, in all her plainness, as beautiful. Though he was, of course, biased, even discounting his artist’s vision.
“We had better go down,” he said, “before Netherby comes up and turns his quizzing glass on you. You would not enjoy that.”
“Indeed I would not,” she said, laughing. “But I wish I could simply erase the coming few hours, Papa.”
“But just think of how disappointed Mama would be,” he said.
“You win.” She sighed and crossed the room to take his arm.
—
Nicholas declined an invitation to dine with General Haviland and his wife and daughter before the Netherby ball. He was close to being resigned to making a match with Grace Haviland, it was true, but the caution of years warned him against arriving at the ball with the lady on his arm while her parents came along behind, smiling their approval. He used as an excuse a promise already given to dine with his brother.
“You have invited me to dine with you,” he told Owen on the morning of the ball.
“I have, have I?” Owen said. “It sounds like a ruse to me, Nick. We will go to White’s, then? My man might be a bit put out if I inform him with so little notice that I will be dining at home—with a distinguished guest.”
They arrived at Archer House in the middle of the evening after waiting almost fifteen minutes outside at the back of a long line of carriages. When they ascended the red carpeted steps to the front doors and went inside, it was to the sight of the curving staircase up to the ballroom crowded with chattering guests awaiting their turn to pass along the receiving line.
“You fancy the Cunningham girl, do you, Owen?” Nicholas asked.
His brother shrugged. “I am not sure I would use the wordfancy,” he said. “But I like her. I find her interesting. She does not go on and on, rapturizing over bonnets and such. She does not simper. Or giggle.”
A lover’s words indeed.
He had been right in his brief assessment of her at Trooping the Colour, Nicholas thought when they arrived in the doorway of the ballroom and waited to be announced. Miss Cunningham was standing between the Netherbys in a mercifully short receiving line. She was not beautiful. She was slender, with a figure that was neat but in no way alluring. She was at least sensible enough not to try prettying herself up with a frivolous gown. Her hair was dressed more severely than one expected of the guest of honor at atonball, and it was an undistinguished midbrown in color. Her face was plain. Not ugly. But not pretty either. She had perhaps been clever. All the frills and flounces and curls and ringlets in the world would not make a beauty of her. She had not tried. Rather, she had dressed for neatness and comfort, at a guess. Consequently, she stood out from the crowd. He approved of what he saw.
She was the daughter of Joel Cunningham and the former Lady Camille Westcott. Owen had told the latter’s story over dinner. Miss Cunningham was anadopteddaughter, apparently. She was certainly not going to attract an army of suitors tonight with that pedigree, especially when she had neither the looks nor the glamor to persuade any man to ignore the lack. She probably had no fortune to speak of either. Her father made his living as a portrait painter and manager of some sort of arts center in Bath, according to Owen.
She might be just what his brother needed, though. A sensible woman.
She was greeting everyone with quiet dignity. She was not doing a great deal of smiling and absolutely no simpering. Not, that was, until they had been announced and Owen appeared before her and offered his hand. She smiled with bright and open pleasure then, something her peers would doubtless consider a social blunderof major proportions if she wished to indicate an interest in him. A look of haughty indifference was the more accepted tactic to bring a man to heel.
Owen was smiling back as she placed her hand in his and he raised it to his lips.
