The words landed softly, yet they stirred something bright and unsteady in Eleanor’s chest.
“A thoughtful gesture, indeed,” Eleanor managed to say without stuttering as her heart hammered in her chest.
Frances smirked. “He does have a habit of attending to matters before one thinks to ask.”
The gesture seemed small, so easily overlooked among grander acts, but it carried a weight that lingered. He had thought of her. He had arranged for this before she had even stepped into the shop.
Heat rose beneath her skin, warm and unexpected.
The modiste giggled lightly.
“She looks like a woman well cherished,” she overheard one assistant whisper the other just behind her.
Eleanor smiled to herself, unable to deny the swell of pride that accompanied the remark.
They took luncheon as the modiste, and her assistants, gathered their supplies and departed the townhouse. The horses set off toward the Royal Menagerie not an hour later, and Frances leaned back against the seat with a satisfied sigh. “There,” she said. “Now you are properly prepared for the Season.”
The menagerie rose before them in a flurry of movement, voices, laughter, the shuffle of feet, and the distant calls of creatures whose shapes were only partially understood by most who came to gawk at them.
“This is the ‘crowd’ I alluded to at breakfast, my dear. The early crowd,” Frances remarked, nodding toward a cluster of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen gathered near the entrance. “Those who arrive before the crush.”
Eleanor watched them with mild fascination. “They look like they are here to be seen as much as to see.”
“Precisely,” Frances said. “It is its own sort of display.”
They moved through the exhibits at an unhurried pace.
Leopards lounged behind iron bars, their eyes bright and watchful. Hissing snakes that all looked none too pleased to be in a glass box. A hyena laughed a strange, rasping sound that drew startled glances from the nearby crowd.
Eleanor lingered by a placard that readThe Lion’s Provider, describing the small foxlike creature lounging in the exhibit, completely unbothered by the spectators.
“It is all rather… wild,” Eleanor murmured.
Frances nodded thoughtfully. “Thetonis not so different.”
Eleanor turned and chuckled. “Not at all, Aunt Frances.”
“No, not at all,” Frances said, smiling faintly. “It is its own jungle. Everyone watching. Everyone circling. Everyone waiting for the moment to pounce.”
Eleanor considered that as she watched a pair of elegantly dressed women glide past, their eyes flicking briefly toward her before moving on.
“I suppose I am one of the new creatures on display,” she said.
Frances squeezed her arm lightly. “And you are doing very well so far.”
They wandered on, stopping to admire a pair of sleek black wolves and a brightly plumed bird whose colors seemed almost unreal.
Time slipped by unnoticed.
They spoke of small things and larger ones, of Frances’s travels, of Blackmere Park, of Eleanor’s hopes for Arabella, of the peculiarities of thetonthat Frances described with amused candor.
By the time the early Spring light had begun to fade through the windows, Eleanor felt something not so familiar settle within her.
Ease.
CHAPTER 16
Lady Tamblyn departed with the same brisk authority with which she had arrived.
