Page 60 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Kate allowed herself exactly four seconds to breathe in deeply, to release a tremulous exhale, and to smother the shrill, agonized sound that emerged upon it with her fingers. There. It wasn’t enough, but this wasn’t the place. The rest would have to wait.

She locked her jaw, set her shoulders, and charged once more down the hall toward the ballroom. So little time left, and she had to make good use of every second available to her. But at least there would be no public scene, even if he did manage to catch up to her before she could make good her escape. He could never risk such a thing. Certainly not where Miss Applegate might be watching.

A set was in progress, and it was easier now to slip through the crowd of onlookers, weaving her way around the outside of the room to the space where she had last seen her mother. Kate cast her gaze about, searching through the press of bodies for a flash of the seafoam green gown Mama was wearing.

There, in the row of chairs against the rear wall. Though her posture was perfectly correct, there was the weight of exhaustion hanging heavily upon her shoulders, pressing them down. Slow blinks behind the lenses of her spectacles. Surreptitiously, Mama lifted one hand to her mouth to smother a yawn.

Good. Mama would be every bit as eager to leave as she was. Kate stifled a sigh of relief, brushing out her skirts as she approached.

“There you are,” Mama said with a weary smile as she caught sight of her. “I had begun to wonder.”

“I’m afraid something I ate must have disagreed with me dreadfully,” Kate said as she smoothed at her skirts, which were more wrinkled than they had appeared within the library. “Would you mind if we left a little early?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Mama said in tones of abject relief as she rose to her feet. “I was ready to retire hours ago. Let us find Lord Elliot and—”

“No!” Kate yelped. “That is, there is no need. I crossed paths with him on my way back from the retiring room,” she lied, struggling to produce even so much as a wan smile to go along with it. “He said we ought to go ahead without him…and it really is quite urgent, Mama.”

“I see,” Mama said, though by the purse of her lips and the wrinkle that had appeared within the plane of her forehead, Kate surmised that she did not. “Well, then. Let’s make haste then, shall we?”

Kate threaded her arm through Mama’s and guided her through the crowd toward the main ballroom doors as her heart beat out a frantic, harried rhythm in her chest. Thirty seconds, more or less, to make her escape. As furtively as she could manage, she turned her head to glance over her shoulder.

Less, then. Significantly less.

Elliot certainly hadn’t waited for a count of one hundred. He had made the ballroom already, and his gaze found her immediately, landing upon her with the force of a blow. She had never seen him wear such an expression of raw determination before, unnerving in its intensity. Her pulse broke into an anxious flutter as he began to move toward her.

She said on a choked breath, “I think I’m going to be ill.”

The desperation rife in her voice must have alarmed Mama enough to redouble her pace, and Kate experienced a small fraction of relief. Elliot would have to round the whole of the dance floor, still, and that would hold him up for some time. The breadth of his shoulders would not allow him to weave and wend his way throughout the room so easily as she had done.

The music faded to a muted, distant melody as the ballroom doors closed behind them. There at the end of the hall, between the staircase leading to the upper floors and the large front door, a liveried footman waited, offering a bow as they approached.

“Shall I send someone for your carriage?” he asked.

“No, no,” Kate squeaked out, squeezing Mama’s arm. “The fresh air will do me good. It cannot be too far.” She hoped. Fervently, she hoped. “If we might hurry, Mama.”

In deference to their wishes, the footman opened the doors to usher them through and out into the night. The street was dark and quiet, lined with carriages waiting to carry their owners home when the ball let out.

“Ah, the luck,” Mama said, patting Kate’s arm as she canted her head to indicate a carriage perhaps thirty feet. “That’s it just there, isn’t it?”

Yes. Yes. The first true bright spot in an evening that had gone so sour, so swiftly. Kate charged toward it, all but dragging her mother in her wake. The coachman had been dozing in his seat, sinking into the fabric of his greatcoat. He startled awake as Kate cleared her throat.

“Miss Littlefield,” he said, gritting his teeth through a yawn as he climbed down to open the carriage door. “Mrs. Littlefield. My apologies, the ball wasn’t meant to let out for another half hour.”

“We elected to leave a bit early,” Kate said as she helped her mother into the carriage. “I am not feeling at all the thing. If you could convey us back home with all due haste—”

“Certainly. And Lord Elliot?”

Somehow, Kate managed to stretch her lips into a grim smile as she took her own seat, sweeping her skirts out of the way of the door. “No need to wait for him. He will make his own way home,” she said, and snapped the carriage door shut.

The carriage shifted as the coachman climbed back into his seat. In a moment he cracked the reins, and the carriage began to move, rattling over the cobblestones.

This time it wasn’t the jarring motion of the carriage that turned her stomach. This time it was heartbreak and humiliation. Kate folded her hands in her lap, digging the nails of one hand into the fleshy palm of the other through the fabric of her gloves. Don’t cry. Not yet. Please, God, not yet.

As the carriage gained speed, heading away from the ball, she thought she heard a fierce, “Katie!” echoing in the distance.

But perhaps it, like so many other things just lately, had been only her imagination.

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