Wasn’t it also true that he no longer knew what happiness looked like? He’d been under his father’s thumb for so long he’d forgotten it.
But he’d been happy, once. In Kent, all those years ago, when he’d lay under the beech tree with Hattie. All those years ago, when she’d been his best—his only—friend.
If she hadn’t come to London when she had, he would have gone ahead and married Lady Laetitia. If she hadn’t come, his life would have gone on much as it had been since he’d become the Earl of Windham.
He would have continued to float on the surface of it, not a part of it but not free of it either. He would have gone on gaming and drinking and brawling until the tidal wave took him at last, the water closing over his head.
The life his father had created for him would have drowned him.
But Hattiehadcome. Not for the Horticultural Society lecture, as she’d claimed, and not to hear Sir Joseph Banks.
Not for the season, either, no matter how much she insisted otherwise.
She’d come for him. How had it taken him so long to realize it?
Hattie had come to London forhim, because even now, after twelve years of absence and dozens of unanswered letters, she was still the best friend he’d ever had.
He left Laetitia with a frowning Lady Tremblay and went off in search of Hattie, but he didn’t find her. He circled the ballroom once, then again, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually he found Hayward near the double doors that led into Lady Dumfries’s ballroom, his avid gaze following Lady Sarah as she took to the floor with Lord Eustace.
“Where the devil is Lady Harriet, Hayward?” He paced to one side of the double doors, turned on his heel and paced back again. “I don’t see her anywhere.”
“Perhaps she went to the ladies’ retiring room. She can’t have gotten far. For God’s sake, Windham, will you cease that pacing? All your flailing about is giving me motion sickness.”
Cass snapped his pocket watch closed and stuffed it into the pocket of his spotless black Weston coat. Watching the tiny gold hand ticking off the passing of each minute was driving him mad. “She’s been gone for nearly half an hour.”
“Perhaps she’s dancing again. Who can tell, in this crush?”
“I despise balls.” The ballroom was far too hot, and the entire company was stuffed together cheek to jowl, and there wasn’t a breath of fresh air to be had. One young lady had already succumbed to a swoon.
“Everyone despises balls. The gentlemen, anyway. But I shouldn’t worry, Windham. Lady Harriet will turn up.”
He’d hoped to have a word with her before the dancing began, to warn her once again to be on her guard with Egerton, but Lady Fosberry had arrived rather late, and God knew if Laetitia had been obliged to sit out even the first half dozen notes of the opening waltz the tantrum that would have followed would shake London’s foundations.
The belle of the season must not be made a wallflower, not even for a matter of seconds. In any case, he was meant to be a gentleman, and a gentleman didn’t leave his partner waiting, no matter how disagreeable he found her.
He had to see Hattie and tell her…tell her that he…damn it, he hadn’t any idea what he needed to tell her, yet it was surging like a tidal wave inside him all the same, and holding it back was like trying to contain the ocean in his clenched fists.
He searched the ballroom for a flutter of a blue gown, but there were too many bodies surging this way and that, and all of them too close together?—
“Windham.” Hayward nudged him and nodded toward the door. “On the other side of the ballroom.”
There, near the gilt chairs placed around the perimeter of the ballroom were the Parrish sisters, and with them Lady Fosberry, who was so overflowing with satisfaction she looked like a cat who’d just devoured a bowl of cream.
Her three charges were, by every measure, a stunning success, and she knew it.
They all looked breathtaking. Sarah was as sweet and fresh as a rose in a pale pink silk gown, and Margaret wore a flattering primrose gown that put him in mind of the splash of yellow tucked between the frothy white petals of a summer daisy.
But there wasn’t a lady in the ballroom who was as breathtaking as Hattie.
Laetitia had been right about one thing. That was no ordinary Celestial blue she was wearing. This was a blue both darker than Celestial blue and brighter than it at once, a deeply saturated, eye-catching blue that verged on purple without quite going over the edge.
It wasn’t a shade of blue one often saw on a young lady, and certainly not a lady attending her first London ball. It was too dramatic for that, too bold to be strictly appropriate, but she was so lovely in it, so utterly resplendent it was as if the vibrant color had been created especially for her.
She hadn’t worn the purple ostrich feathers. She hadn’t worn any feathers at all, and the smooth, pale skin of her bosom was bare of jewels. Her only decoration was a narrow, blue silk ribbon around her neck. A modest headband with a blue silk flower that matched her gown held back a thick cascade of faircurls. Her white silk gloves were tight to the elbow, and tiny, sparking sapphires dangled from her ears.
He forgot about the Sussex Waltz. He forgot about Egerton and Lady Laetitia, and the purple ostrich feathers he and Hattie had laughed about atLe Maison des Dames.
