“The cad!” he said without heat.
“Oh no, it’s quite all right. He’s a good brother, and at least he came to find me and didn’t leave me standing at the edge of the dance floor as we did at Amity’s ball.”
“True. The cad is forgiven.”
“I can understand the cad’s sister fainting, too. It’s become warmer and warmer in this room, and they ought to open some windows.”
“If it weren’t nearly the end, I would find one of those floor managers and demand he allow some thick, sooty London air in here at once.”
They both laughed, and it was the best moment he’d had all evening.
“May I have this dance since you are without a partner?” Greer asked it before he considered, but more than anything, he wanted to take her in his arms and to breathe in her vanilla fragrance.
“I would not allow you to make the same error twice, Mr. Carson, not for all the world. Even though this is a decidedly different group of dancers, word will spread and you will get a reputation as a bad partner. Ladies will stop allowing you to put your name on their dance cards. Then you truly would be considered a cad.”
“You are correct, as usual, but I hate to leave you here.”
“I shall return to our table, but you’d best move quickly. The music has started.”
Feeling like an oaf for turning away, he hurried to find his latest partner awaiting him near her table.
“Oh, you gave me a bad turn, sir. I thought you meant to abandon me.”
Silently thanking Beatrice for her wisdom, he swept the young woman onto the dance floor and caught up with the others. When he looked back to where she’d been standing, she was gone.
At the next ball, he wouldn’t be so foolish as to deny himself her company entirely. He would pencil his name in on her dance card. After all, there couldn’t be any harm in a dance?
***
AT TWO IN THE MORNINGas they rode home, Beatrice and Charlotte compared their dance cards and discussed with their mother the overall manners and quality of their partners. Each had danced with at least one man with whom they wouldn’t mind doing so again, but not if they had to endure such a venue as Sandrall Hall. It had been overly warm and far too crowded.
“We were like fish in a barrel,” Charlotte said.
“Such a pity,” their mother said. “To think people used to vie for tickets to that assembly.”
“Mr. Carson probably had very little luck,” Beatrice added. “I think most of the young ladies were not titled any more than we were. But I did encounter one or two lords.”
Her mother pursed her lips with disapproval.
“Why do you look like that? What’s wrong?” Beatrice asked her.
“I think those men went precisely because you girlswerelike fish in a barrel, easily caught. In that place, a man need only mention himself the lowest level of aristocracy and the girls were falling over themselves to secure a dance.”
“What’s wrong with that, Mother?” Charlotte asked.
Beatrice and Felicity eyed one another. “Because, dear daughter, those men might use their position to lead a gullible girl down the garden path.”
“The garden path,” Charlotte repeated softly. Then her rich brown eyes widened. “Oh, and with no good intention, I suppose. No promise of marriage.”
“Exactly,” their mother said. “At most of these events, there will be no mixing of the classes, which is as it should be.”
“Mother!” she exclaimed, thinking it out of character for her own mother to believe in such a division.
“For the sake of the more vulnerable,” Felicity clarified. “In a room with all nobility and daughters of such, unscrupulous lords would not be able to take advantage.”
“If the girls weren’t out to snag a title,” Charlotte pointed out, “they would be in no danger of going into the garden with the wrong man.”
They all pondered that, trying to decide if the bulk of the blame for a young woman’s ruin could be placed at the feet of a man taking advantage or of a woman trying to use her feminine wiles to climb her way into the next class.
