Berkeley Square
“It’s insupportable you shouldn’t have danced at all tonight, Hyacinth. Every single gentleman in this ballroom should be horsewhipped.”
Isla flopped onto one of the tiny gilt chairs lined up on the side of the Hayhursts’ ballroom, but jumped up again at once, and turned around to glare at it. “My goodness. That’s the most uncomfortable chair I’ve ever sat on.”
Hyacinth sighed. It was even more uncomfortable if you’d been sitting on it all night, as she had. “Perhaps the chairs are Lady Hayhurst’s way of encouraging the young ladies to dance.”
Isla snorted. “Or to punish them for being wallflowers.”
Hyacinth glanced down the long row of chairs lined up along the wall, many of which held a glum-looking young lady. “One would think being a wallflower would be punishment enough. I don’t think any of us would choose to be here if we could help it.”
Isla plopped back down into the chair with a long sigh of her own. “No, I suppose not. These English gentlemen are easily intimidated, aren’t they? Why, if we were in Scotland, you wouldn’t be permitted to sit out a single dance, no matter what scandal followed you.”
That the scandalwasfollowing Hyacinth was now beyond question. If she’d held out any hope Lady Bagshot’s ball was an aberration, it was dashed the moment she set foot in Lord Hayhurst’s ballroom this evening. Aside from the sneers and whispers, thetonhad made a great show of ignoring her.
But thensomeonemust be punished for the scandal, mustn’t they? One couldn’t simply go about accusing innocent gentlemen of murder and face no consequences for it. Wasn’t there something, well…unseemlyabout that youngest Somerset girl’s hysterical swoon?
No, it simply wouldn’t do.
Thetonwas obliged to take someone to task for the debacle. It stood to reason it would be the Somerset chit. If Lord Huntington and Lord Dare weren’t in London to witness the girl’s disgrace, so much the better. One didn’t like to make an enemy of them—if one could avoid it—but the way was conveniently clear in that regard.
Hyacinth was still invited everywhere, but once she arrived, she was roundly shunned. Not just by Lady Joanna and her set, but by all of London.
She’d been a fool not to have seen at once how it would be. After all, all the signs were there. No one had spoken a word to her at Lady Lovell’s musical evening two nights ago, and she hadn’t been invited to play at bowls or shuttlecock with all the other young people at Lady Otis’s picnic yesterday.
It wasn’t until tonight, however, that she’d been made aware of the extent of her punishment.
Fully, painfully aware.
It might have been bearable if everyone had simply dismissed her, but she wasn’t even permitted to suffer her disgrace in private. Her skin was crawling from all the cold stares aimed in her direction, and her ears burning from the scathing comments whispered behind her back.
She was both spurned and notorious at once. It was her worst nightmare.
“Now the Scottish lads,” Isla was saying. “They know a worthy lass when they see one, butthislot.” She waved a disdainful hand toward the dance floor. “Honestly, they only need the white woolly bits to be mistaken for a herd of sheep.”
Both Isla and Hyacinth burst into a fit of giggles. It was the first time Hyacinth had laughed all night.
Thank goodness for Isla.
It would have been easy enough for all of the Ramseys to forget her entirely. She was isolated in a lonely corner of the ballroom with all the other wallflowers and spinsters, whereas they were welcome in Lady Joanna’s much livelier crowd of fashionable young people on the other side of the room, closer to the dancing.
Much to Lady Joanna’s dismay, Ciaran didn’t seem at all interested in being fashionable. He’d spent most of his evening wandering from one tiny gilt chair to the next, and leading each neglected young lady to the center of the ballroom for a dance. When he wasn’t dancing, he chatted and laughed with these forgotten ladies, and made himself so charming and agreeable he was earning a heroic reputation among London’s wallflowers.
All three of the Ramseys had been unfailingly loyal to Hyacinth. Isla popped in every chance she could to entertain her with some amusing nonsense or other, and Lachlan prowled about like an overprotective bear, turning that black scowl of his on anyone who dared glance twice at her.
She’d danced twice with him this evening.
Of course, he’d also danced twice with Lady Joanna.
Not that Hyacinth was keeping track of his dances. Because she wasn’t. Lachlan could do as he pleased, and after all, it was hardly a surprise he admired Lady Joanna. She was beautiful and clever and audacious—just the sort of lady a vigorous man like Lachlan should admire.
The fact that she was also a poisonous viper was neither here nor there—
“Of course, there are worse things than being a wallflower,” Isla murmured, with a quick glance at Lady Chase to make certain she wasn’t overheard. Lady Chase was on Hyacinth’s other side, well within eavesdropping distance, but she was busy chatting with Lady Atherton. “Much worse things,” Isla added, with a meaningful raise of her eyebrows.
“What sorts of things?” What could be worse than being a wallflower and a scandal at once?
Isla lowered her voice. “Well, for instance, I’d prefer an entire evening of being perched on this unfortunate chair to another dance with Lord Clement.”
