“A room full of revolutionaries,” Lord Kirke said on a hush. “Who would have guessed? I won’t let on.”
“We vote every night here,” Dot told him shyly. “I’m good at it.”
“Do you, now? And does your candidate win, Dot?” Lord Kirke asked.
“Well, it usually does. My candidate isThe Ghost in the Attic.” She said this somewhat defiantly. She was loyal, Dot was.
“I see. Are there other worthy candidates?”
“That brings us back toThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” Mrs. Pariseau said. “We have read and enjoyedThe Ghost in the Atticcountless times. We’d like to propose a temporary moratorium onThe Ghost in the Atticand readThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainmentsinstead for the next month.”
Dot looked suspicious. “What is a morta—”
“An end,” Mrs. Pariseau said bluntly.
Dot uttered an inarticulate cry of protest. “Doeseveryonewant a mortatory?”
“It’s time, Dot,” Captain Hardy said gravely.
Lord Kirke leaned toward Dot, his hands clasped, and fixed her somberly with the full force of his dark eyes until she blushed. “You enjoy ghost stories, is that so?” he asked her. “Supernatural beings?”
She nodded.
“Dot, in one of the stories Scheherazade tells, a genie, which is a sort of magic being, emerges from a lamp and grants wishes. When the lamp is rubbed.”
Dot’s fingers curled tight on the arms of her chair. “Never say a magic lamp,” she said faintly. She looked almost ill with hope.
“I wouldn’t lie about something so marvelous,” Lord Kirke said somberly. “More marvelous than Castlereagh riding a winged horse.”
The tension in the room was palpable.
“Perhaps we should read a few pages of it,” Dot said, with attempted casualness. Magnanimously.
The tension gathered into something like excitement.
“Shall we vote?” Mrs. Pariseau suggested gently. “Everyone who would like me to read fromThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainmentstonight, please raise your hand.”
Every hand, including Kirke’s, shot up for the vote.
Chapter Seven
Like so many of the young ladies present, Catherine wore white muslin to the Tillbury ball. Her bodice was scattered with little embroidered blue flowers and a wide blue ribbon wrapped beneath her bosom and tied behind. Three rows of ribbon of the same color traced her hem and trimmed her short sleeves.
The dress was pretty but surely unremarkable—the sleeves were not puffed, they were not fancy at all—but perhaps that would also be a problem? She hoped no one would tell her whether they were.
She wore her pearl necklace, too. She touched it, for luck and reassurance.
Lady Wisterberg had once again delivered Lucy and Catherine to the refreshment table, tossed back two glasses of ratafia, and melted away, heeding the siren song of the faro box.
Leaving the two of them alone.
The somewhat fraught mission of the season—to get themselves husbands—had introduced an unexpected note of tension between Lucy and Catherine. Neither of them overtly acknowledged it, but they both tacitly understood and regretted it. They were compensating by being too nice to each other. But Catherine suspected Lucy would be crushed if Mr. Hargrove transferred any particle of his attention to Catherine, and they both remained insuspense about whether he would ask Catherine to dance again.
And Lucy was terribly embarrassed about her godmother, Lady Wisterberg.
“I’m so sorry, Catherine, truly. She’s only like this at balls where a gaming room has been arranged.”
Neither said that it seemed likely that every ball would feature a gaming room, because what else would one do with all the adults who weren’t dancing?
