“Did he pass behind us?” Minnie demanded. “What is he doing, sneaking about the edges of the room?” She held out her fan to Lucasta.
“Because the alternative is to get plowed down by the dancers.” Lucasta waved the fan, trying to ease the sudden heat in her face. Just her luck that when she decided to speak her mind, she would be caught out at it.
“Perhaps he didn’t hear us,” Selina said. “It is quite noisy, with the chatter and the music.”
“And that dratted second violin who can’t keep time.” The candles and lamps poured an overbright heat into the room, and the stomacher of her gown constricted her chest.
Aunt Pevensey lectured relentlessly on this point. With no beauty, no wealth, no birth, and no accomplishments, Lucasta would always be an object of pity. She must not add to the insult of these deficiencies by being forward, unpleasant, or a fool.
Lucasta, of course, could run and bury her shame in Bath. It was not as if she had prospects anyway. But she had insulted a man who held the power, with a few words, to shatter this world, not just for her friends but for Cici.
She squeezed the words out of a tight throat. “The question is not whether he heard me, but rather, having heard me, what does he mean to do?”
CHAPTER TWO
No better than he was.
Jem paused beside the lemon tree, a vantage point that let him survey the room and its avenues of escape. It also allowed him to glance about with seeming casualness and identify the young woman who had at last voiced what he suspected everyone in the entire upper classes of Britain had been thinking of him for months.
He found his hand resting over his racing heart and forced his fingers to relax. Mustn’t crush his cravat. His valet would give notice if Jem were careless with his work.
The four young women stood clumped like a stand of exotic flowers in a field of cultivated English blooms. Heads close, sharing whispers, they laughed as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Particularly her, the slim, quick-witted one who held herself like a queen in that awful green lutestring sack that was two decades out of fashion. What else did such girls have to do with their time but loiter at fashionable London soirees and dole out jests and insults?
It was the game everyone in this room played, including himself. He was trapped in this world now, like it or not.
Judith was going to get tangled in it, too, despite his best efforts. And girls like those, who mocked and derided—they would destroy his gentle sister. Like carrion crows that pecked a carcass to clean bone.
He ought to leave now, Jem thought, before his mood had a chance to worsen. He’d accomplished what he intended. He’d acknowledged his debt to Lady Clara by appearing at herconversazione. He’d admired the cut of the Duchess of Hunsdon’s gown and gave the Duchess of Highcastle some discreet hints about replacing her turban with something moreà la mode. Wise to leave before he could overhear further insults, or worse.
But against his better judgment he headed toward his friends, who stood where they could catch the footmen circulating with trays of drinks and ignore the hopeful stares of young ladies who wished to dance. His friends were the reason Jem had survived thus far in the gladiatorial field that was British high society when he was nothing but a tradesman, a draper’s son, suddenly vaulting into the position of marquess’s heir.
“It was the balloon flight at St. George’s Field,” Plimpton was saying. “She told me I was shaped like one.”
“We were at Astley’s when she told me the bear danced better than I did,” Ashley said.
“Who did?” Jem asked. If his friends, who were considered prime catches, collected insults from the assorted company, then he had even less reason to feel rankled by the supposedly clever epigram one spiteful girl had composed about him.
Yet for some reason, rankle it did.Handsomer than he should be, she’d said. At least he’d achieved the handsome part. Little else he was good for in the eyes of anyone in this room.
“Who else lacks the ability to appreciate such fine gentlemen?” Ashley glared across the room at the same knotof girls Jem had just overheard discussing him. “Apt that you named them the Gorgons, Rudyard. A greater set of antidotes I’ve never seen.”
“I did?” Jem startled as a passing footman, one gloved hand clasped above the tails of his coat, bowed and offered him a tray of champagne flutes. Such ceremony belonged at the marquess’s house, a place Jem had never felt comfortable. He hurried to collect a glass so the footman could straighten and move away.
The man’s suit of livery was a size too large, and his silver stockings had a snag. Jem would have to ask Lady Clara what service she had used to hire extra servants for the night, then stop round the office with his card.
As if summoned, their hostess glided into place beside him. She twirled gracefully to give Jem a look at her open robe of heavy cream over a petticoat of golden silk, fabrics straight from his warehouse.
“You invented the name, Rudyard,” she reminded him, confirming his suspicion that, as was rumored, Lady Clara heard everything that went on in a room. “You said it at the Queen’s levee.”
“The Luneburg snubbed Ashley,” Plimpton said helpfully. “And then me.”
“And when Mallory said they were the set calling themselves the Gregory girls, or what not, you said we might as well call them Gorgons,” Ashley said.
“And it appears the term has caught on.” Lady Clara smiled. “They’re considered quite odd andoutré, so of course I had to invite them.”
Jem’s shoulders itched inside his coat, and he knew the blame was not the fine cambric of his shirt. Good Lord, he’d said one thing in passing, a jest to lighten the mood of his friend, and now it would stick for the Season?
The same way he’d been christened Smart Jeremy. He rather suspected Lady Clara was responsible for that sobriquet.
