“George doesn’t love me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, well, he doesn’t love melike a wife.”
“Are you sure? And do you think Thornwick loves you? After such a short acquaintance?”
“No. But he asked me to marry him. And that counts for an awful lot.”
“Yes. I’m sure it does.” Suddenly, Alice’s tone of voice was sad, almost wistful.
Phoebe touched Alice’s elbow. “You’re only twenty, Alice. Every young man we know is bewitched by either you or Lady Olivia.” She nodded at the back of the nineteen-year-old Lady Olivia Radcliffe, the widely-acknowledged beauty of theton. “I’m sure you’ll have your own proposal soon.”
But Phoebe had misread her friend.
Alice chortled. “I have been proposed to dozens of times, Phee. I’m not interested in marriage, you must know that. Not when there is so much fun to be had.”
Again, Phoebe was struck by how kind Alice was. Her friend had received dozens of proposals. Well, of course, she had. It had been quite obtuse of Phoebe to think she hadn’t. Men were mad about Alice. But Alice had never mentioned the proposals until now. It must be because she knew Phoebe yearned for a proposal but had not yet received one. But now that Phoebe was engaged, Alice could tell her without fear of hurting Phoebe’s feelings.
How sensitive Alice was, deep down. Everyone misjudged her, including Phoebe who should know better.
Yes, Alice was wild. Everyone said so. She had done things that would have caused any other young lady in thetonto be shunned forever. But when Alice broke some rule, flouted some long-held dictum regarding proper behavior, the matrons and the mamas and the crotchety old gentlemen just shrugged and said, “That’s Alice.”
And the young gentlemen said the same thing. They said “That’s Alice,” but they said it with waggling eyebrows and leers. It was seen as a rite of passage for young lords to be linked in a scandal with her friend Miss Alice Danforth.
And the list of scandals was long.
Licking an ice from the same spoon as a gentleman. In public, at Gunter’s. That was with a Marquess of Leitchbury and the heir apparent to the Duke of Hindmouth. Shocking.
Riding astride a horse with a man— “The same horse, at the same time!” the dowagers had exclaimed—racing along Rotten Row in Hyde Park, Alice’s small bottom nestled against the groin of the Earl of Temblebury.
Staying out all night on a stranded punt on the Cam with the oldest son of the Viscount Farnborough, causing him to miss an exam. Horrors.
Yes, Alice Danforth was wild.
But Alice Danforth was not pretty. Everyone said so. However, everyone also paused when they said this and more often than not, they would add, “But there’s something about her.”
There certainly was something about her, Phoebe thought, studying her friend. Alice was more than pretty. Pretty was piffle compared to Alice. Alice was vivacity itself. One couldn’t take one’s eyes off her, even if you were another young female of theton.
Many an unfortunate debutante had tried to imitate Alice. Her unfashionable coronet of chestnut plaits, her flat chest and wiry frame, her throaty laugh, her unrelenting stare that men seemed to find more seductive than a downward-cast gaze and fluttering eyelashes. Toward the end of Alice’s and Phoebe’s first Season, a few young ladies had even attempted to draw on their faces an imitation of the unapologetic sprinkle of red-brown freckles that covered the otherwise pale skin of Alice’s nose and cheeks. Alice’s freckles matched her eyes and hair, and Alice had all her gowns made in the same reddish-brown tint.
“God thinks this color suits me,” Alice always said. “Who am I to contradict him?”
And indeed no one else looked well in the color despite going to Alice’s modiste and demanding an exact replica of one of Alice’s gowns. One could see three young women at this afternoon’s gathering wearing an imitation of Alice’s red-brown dress with clearly strapped-down bosoms and looking quite drab. Whereas Alice sparkled.
“Are you sure you’re well?” Alice’s voice broke into Phoebe’s reverie. Alice was looking at her with concern. “You are somewhere else entirely, I think.”
Phoebe linked her arm with Alice’s. “After we finish playing, I shan’t stay for the dinner.”
“So the assignation with Thornwick is tonight?
“Stop.” Phoebe playfully hit Alice’s hand and they laughed and went to find the servant with the silver tray of macaroons.
Alice was half-right, Phoebe mused. The assignation was tonight. But withherself.
Six
Phoebe slid into her seat at the breakfast table only a quarter of an hour late. Not too egregious considering how blissfully occupied she had been this morning. She had to hide the smile that bubbled up when she thought about the bower of pleasure her own bed had become since last night. She knew the smile would come off as a smirk to her mother.
