Chapter One
London, 1866
Eleanor Piper wishedshe had her practice string. It wasn’t a string so much as a length of cotton rope, which sounded even worse for a young lady to be toting around a ballroom. Instead, she smoothed her wide, pale yellow skirts and looked into the sea of brightly colored finery. Very few faces looked familiar, but she likely knew their names from the society columns her mother had foisted upon her in the last few months. No one ever looked like their scandal column sketch.
“Don’t fidget,” her mother hissed. She smelled strongly of mint and rosewater, which shouldn’t have been eyewatering, but somehow, on her mother, it was.
That’s why I need my string, Eleanor sulked. Her father wanted Eleanor to make a Society match, given that the queen had passed him over for special recognition for service to the Empire. While the British had theoretically not taken sides in the American Civil War, some shipping companies had aided the Confederacy in hopes of maintaining good cotton prices. Piper Shipping & Co. did not. After the war, the Americans had forced the British government to pay reparations for the ships that aided the rebels. Mr. Piper thought he should have gotten a medal, if not a title, for that fact that his company had saved the Crown money that would now be handed over to the Americans for the other companies’ tomfoolery.
“May I visit the retiring room, Mama?” Eleanor asked. The women in their bell-shaped gowns and the men resembling black ship masts felt overwhelming. The mingling of musky ambergris perfumes, lemon-and-beeswax polish, and wine suffocated her.
“Return soon. I don’t want you hiding all night,” her mother said, snapping her fan open. It was not yet warm in the crowded room, but her mother seemed to always be “glowing.”
Eleanor escaped, unsure if she should meet the gaze of other women, or keep her eyes demurely cast down. She’d had a governess and finishing classes, but the best parts of her days had been spent down at the docks in her father’s offices. Smythe, her father’s business partner and former ship’s captain (before he lost his eye), amused her with new and ever-increasingly difficult knot-tying challenges. It was he who gave her the practice rope, and it was he that understood her nervous energy. While her governesses and elocution instructors had threatened and cursed her constant movement, Smythe just gave her harder problems, capturing her attention.
A body appeared in her path, forcing her to look up. And up. And up. Distracted by his height, she ran straight into him. Her heavy crinoline cage, covered in petticoats, swung into his legs, and she almost fell over as the momentum pulled her first toward him and then away.
She emitted a very unladylike grunt. Her coiffure—the same silly braids as Queen Victoria favored, pinned and looped—fell out of place, and a curl tumbled over her eyes. She fumbled for words as she pushed the errant hair out of the way. “My sincere apologies, I—” but her mouth stopped working.
He was beautiful. Not the dangerous kind of beautiful a man could be, but the sighing angel kind of beautiful. He was golden-haired, golden-skinned—more sun-kissed than most of her countrymen. His blue eyes were the color of her father’spaintings of the sea, the opposite of her brown hair and brown eyes. He was a study in contrasts, while she was a study in... brown. Muddy, basic, forgettable brown.
“No, my fault entirely, my dear Miss...?” He looked at her, apparently sincere, for she wanted to believe whatever came out of his golden god-like mouth.
But her voice had not yet resumed its duties. And they were jostled again, this time by two young misses.
“Tristan, must you always be in the way?” one of the girls, matching his golden hue, hissed.
He rolled his eyes at her, annoyance obvious. Their family resemblance was not subtle. Eleanor smiled, as she had no siblings, and had always wished for one. But alas, her mother’s health was always on the brink of failing. She fired the visiting physicians, one after next, who declared her in perfect health.
“I am speaking with someone,” the golden god, apparently named Tristan, said.
“Well, speak to her elsewhere; this is the entrance to the Ladies’ Room. Haven’t you some other way to meet women?”
Tristan seemed to ignore the jab, turning towards his sister, forgetting about his trespass against Eleanor completely. Which was understandable, since Eleanor was eminently forgettable. “What are you in such a hurry for? Will you force me to call for pistols at dawn again?”
“You are such a prig,” declared the other girl, whose deep, glossy auburn hair was shining and perfect. Eleanor recognized her from the caricatures on the scandal sheets. That was Miss Justine Brewer, orBad News Brews, as she was nicknamed. Beautiful, impetuous, and wealthy, she was the object of every man’s dreams and nightmares both. “I can’t believe you’re still whinging about that. Now, out of the way, we have an emergency.”
As the two young ladies swept into the retiring room, Eleanor crept in after, not bothering to excuse herself from the presence of the man called Tristan. He’d already forgotten her anyway.
“I can’t believe we are an hour into a ball and my dress is falling apart,” wailed Tristan’s sister. She pulled off her long white gloves and fussed with a tear in the ruffled gown. “How am I supposed to look like I can lead if my veryclotheswon’t follow directions?”
Eleanor agreed the dress was not hanging correctly. The light blue ribbon trim was meant to encircle the gown and return to a pin at the waist. Two ends of the ribbon hung limply halfway down the belled skirt.
Miss Brewer stepped back and eyed the misbehaving ribbon, her mouth canted over to the side in a perfect pout. It should have wrinkled her face into a terrible scowl, but that was Justine Brewer—cute as a button, no matter her expression. Eleanor wished her face was half as pleasing in even one attitude.
“I could tie it into a bow,” Miss Brewer suggested.
“That’s too last season,” Tristan’s sister complained. “What am I going to do? I have to get back out there.”
This was a problem she could fix! Eleanor took a step forward. “May I make a suggestion?” Her boldness surprised her, but after all, these were just other young ladies, and not ones that would judge her for forwardness.
“Please,” the sister wailed. Even Miss Brewer looked relieved.
“Could I just show you?” Eleanor stepped closer.
The dress’s owner huffed in frustration. Miss Brewer gave her a skeptical once-over. “Of course, Miss...?”
“Piper. Eleanor Piper. How do you do?” She gave a slight, reflexive curtsy because she didn’t know the rank of the other woman.
