Which made her smile slightly.
But as they all drew closer to the lights and noise and music and the phalanx of footmen charged with ushering guests inside, her strength nearly failed her.
Chapter Fifteen
Lillias hadn’t fully understood until she’d set foot into this house on this night that her expectations for her future had been as much a part of her as her own skeleton. Her entire being had grown around it. It had determined how she viewed and moved through the world, how she expected to be seen, addressed, read about, talked about.
And now that it had been quite shattered and replaced with something entirely new, everything seemed to require an odd new effort. Walking, seeing, speaking.
Her heart was jabbing away at her breastbone.
“Hold your head high,” Hugh murmured. “Assume they already know. We’ll enter as though we’re the King and Queen of England.”
Well, she could do that.
And soon it was clear that he could, too.
Lillias had made enough entrances into enough thronged ballrooms to understand how the glittering congregation could behave like a tide. How one exceptional person could start up a ripple of murmurs and rustles just by gliding through, like a hand over pianoforte keys. She had more than once been that person.
Tonight, that person was Hugh.
It was almost like a dance.
Postures everywhere straightened and male faces grew stern and alert, fans and eyelashes fluttered, kid-clad hands rose to touch a lip, move a curl behind an ear, touch a jaw, a necklace at a throat. Unconsciously or deliberately meant to point out their loveliest features to the man strolling through. If they were birds, Lillias thought, they’d all be singing their hearts out at the glory of the morning, as if he were the sun.
And then she saw the heads actually turn to watch him. Watchthem, rather. For they were together, and this would be how they entered ballrooms and other rooms together for the rest of their lives.
The tension in her stomach coiled tighter.
And up the fans went, so gossip could be exchanged behind them.
She nodded and smiled, and her parents nodded and smiled, and Hugh, who knew nobody but the people he’d arrived with, smiled and every now and then, nodded.
It was apparent in the dream-like context of The Grand Palace on the Thames that he was different from other men. In a ballroom crammed with the cream of England’s aristocracy, many of whom had known her since she was born, the contrasts became both heightened and distinct. It was instantly clear he was notofthem. He’d been shaped by different forces.
He had the build of someone who’d labored hard and fought hard, who rode and strode over terrain more rugged than England’s soft hills. He had the sensual grace and confidence born ofknowing precisely who he was and what he was capable of. His confidence all but preceded him like a tide. One or two men took an unconscious step back.
“You look well together, at least,” her mother said encouragingly. In a tone one might use to praise the quality paste copy of the family jewel.
She wondered if that “at least” would follow her marriage for the rest of her days.
“So do father’s matched bays.”
“And don’t they get us to where we need to go?” her mother enthused ironically. And rather tersely. Her mother was losing patience with her.
Her mother had liked Mr. Cassidy well enough for someone who wasn’t a gentleman, but she was juggling at least a dozen conflicting emotions as she made adjustments to her own dreams, too.
As through a dream, Lillias moved through the elegant crowd, the tension that had been coiling and coiling in her for two months now pulling ever tighter, until she was nauseous with it, and the voices of the room blended into a high whine in her ears. The final seconds of two months of dread seemed to throb in her ears like the boots of a firing squad advancing.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two...
... One.
She saw Giles.
A ballroom. A battlefield. Was there a difference, really? The uniforms were different, but that’s precisely what they were, whether they were silkand velvet or wool and stained with blood and gunpowder. They were there to indicate rank and status, to impress and intimidate. There wasn’t a context Hugh couldn’t navigate without some degree of competence. But he was never going to love a ballroom like this. An evening of pianoforte and dancing in a parlor suited him better, not this little jungle of gossip and competition, interrupted now and again by very good music and dancing, both of which he liked.
Hugh was no stranger to preening, and he appreciated the efforts on his behalf, and he smiled. So many lovely women. The young men all had a clean sameness to them. He imagined a hothouse full of them, rising out of rarified earth, their gloves and boots glossy as new leaves.
