“If additional pay is the issue,” Lady Beasley began, causing Alice’s cheeks to heat.
“No, my lady.” Although shewouldaccept any extra wages since she saved every penny. The sooner she had enough, the sooner she could retire to the country — in twenty years or so.
“I only ask because I will, in fact, pay you well to attend my Susanne. I trust you implicitly, Mrs. Malcolm, not to be foolish or flighty or let my daughter take the smallest of risks.”
Alice tried to breathe steadily. Even if she could bear the reminder of her life that once was...
“I have nothing to wear to a ball,” she pointed out. The two women in the room would be surprised to see the wardrobe she had owned merely two years earlier.Gowns of satin and fine silk for dancing with dukes and dining with earls and even for falling prey to a debauched viscount.
“We shall take care of that,” Lady Beasley insisted. “If one of Susanne’s dresses does not fit you, then we shall go to the dressmaker on Pulteney Bridge. She nearly always has something already sewn that can be tightened with a ribbon or two at the waist. Luckily, you are neither unusually short nor unbearably tall, but as perfectly proportioned as my own girls.”
The comparison wasnearlyaccurate except for two items. The Beasley females were on the daintier, less fulsome side of the scale, whereas Alice took after her own mother, who was exceedingly shapely when it came to her bosom.
In any case, at the mere thought of entering a ballroom, she was beginning to feel queasy.
“Is there not a close friend of yours, my lady, who would be more suitable, someone accustomed to the social life of Bath?”
“I wish there was, but on short notice, I can think of no one I can ask. Susanne could attend with a friend, but I do not trust that another girl’s mother will look after her as her own. She might become distracted. Worse, I have heard of someone letting a young lady stray with the specific intent of her ruin.”
Alice gasped as if she’d been found out. Susanne gasped at the awful notion.
“Mother!” she exclaimed. “Who would do such a thing on purpose?”
Lady Beasley sighed. “You are so lovely and naïve, dear girl. And you have a titled father and a large dowry. You can have any man in Bath or, next year, in London. Many others cannot say the same thing. Thus, your competition may try to get rid of you in any manner they can.”
Alice could barely breathe. Then, all at once, she blurted, “I shall chaperone her!”
Indeed, she would. Lord and Lady Beasley had given her employment on the basis of a fraudulent letter of recommendation and treated her with kindness. What’s more, Lady Susanne was all wide-eyed innocence. Alice would rather be flayed alive before she let the girl experience anything like what had happened to her.
The matter was settled. When she climbed the stairs to the salon, she could hardly credit she was going to attend a ball at her age, in her circumstances, as a chaperone!
Adam alighted froma sedan chair in front of his mother’s friend’s townhouse on The Paragon, a street running parallel to the River Avon. He thought the river itself, one of five Avons in England, to be an interesting phenomenon, winding narrow and long for seventy-five miles, yet only traversing nineteen miles westward from its source to its mouth, all the way to Portishead. It spilled into the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel.
Adam considered life to be much like the River Avon, or at least he hoped it would be — taking him through many and varied places and, of course, being many long years, like his grandparents, all four of whom were still living.
In any case, he liked to try new things, such as the wretched sedan chair, a box suspended on two poles. His mother had told him the chair used to be much in fashion in Bath when she was a girl, not only for the infirm but as a for-hire conveyance. Its popularity was currently giving way to a wheeled version. Thus, the Countess Diamond had advised him to try it before it vanished forever like the unfortunate dodo bird.
“You will feel like a foreign emperor from India or China,” she’d said.
He felt like a damn fool!
Arriving at Lord and Lady Beasley’s home after a far shorter journey than the River Avon’s, he vowed never to climb into such an embarrassing, uncomfortable contraption again. The two chairmen had been quick enough after he’d hailed them outside his residence on the Royal Crescent, but the journey made him shake like a dried pea inside a baby’s rattle. Not only did histeeth clack together, but his head banged side to side every time the shorter chairmen took a step.
Besides, the whole experience of being carried by two other chaps — yelling to everyone to move aside with “Chair, ho!” — made him feel like a pompous arse the entire way.
At his mother’s request, he had agreed to a visit with the Beasley family, and naturally, there were daughters involved. An honest woman, Countess Caroline Diamond had confessed her old friend had three of them, although only one of them was of marriageable age.
Lady Diamond’s friend from her youth, Lady Beasley was attractive and intelligent, and his mother assumed the eldest daughter would have at least those traits. Thus, he had dropped off his calling card days earlier upon his arrival in Bath and been invited to tea.
A rap on the door gained him entrance by a short butler, who ushered him into the drawing room. His hostess would be with him shortly.
Adam surveyed the room, grandiose with robin’s egg blue wallpaper and enough white painted molding to fell a forest. It looked rather like his own parents’ house. Then he heard music, not the pianoforte that his sisters played but a richly resonant violin. A tad introspective and solemn, rather than bright and lively, however.
Unable to help himself, he followed the music through the doorway at the far end of the drawing room into a smaller salon set up for reading and then into another. The violinist had her back to him and was staring out the window, playing from memory.
Wishing he hadn’t been so forward, since now he was alone with a female, Adam suddenly knew he’d seen her before. By her hair, he believed she was the lady from the street whose packagehe’d recovered. And at once, he also realized she must be the eldest daughter.
His mother had done him a good turn. He admired Lady Susanne already. Besides being lovely, she must be clever indeed to play so well.
