Page 4 of The Luckiest Lady in London

Deftness at flattering said gentleman’s mother and sisters

The understanding that no matter how much interest a man professes in a young lady, he is still more interested in himself

The understanding that if a young lady is seen to be having a good time, she is much less likely to be thought of as scheming

A coherent strategy before the beginning of the Season and tactics in place before each engagement. Time is limited. Preparation is critical.

The understanding that—God help me—I must not fail

* * *

By the time Louisa walked down the grand staircase at her first ball, she was twenty-four, well past the first bloom of youth. But all her extra years of practice—she didn’t simply make a list and consider her task done—had paid off and London was quite taken with her. Or rather, with the Miss Cantwell she presented to Society. She was warm but not overfamiliar, sweet but not cloying, and appreciative of her moment in the sun without the least whiff of graspingness or, worse, desperation.

Best of all, Miss Cant well, it was generally agreed, was a beauty.

For a beauty, one hauled out a different set of adjectives. Her neck was praised as sylphish or swanlike. Her eyes, hitherto simply blue, were now either azure or aquamarine, and sometimes nothing less than cerulean. And apparently no one in London had ever heard of that decent, hardworking word brown. Her admirers insisted her hair was mahogany, chestnut, or any other arboreal hues that struck their fancy. A few, bent on ever more poetic rubbish, called it Titian or coppery, preferring to give emphasis to the flecks of reddish gold embedded therein.

All this linguistic extravagance sometimes made Louisa laugh at night, under her blanket. And it sometimes made her quake—for surely the illusion couldn’t last the entire Season. Soon people would realize that her hair was glossy only because of all the mayonnaise she’d put in it over the years, that her trademark closemouthed smile was to hide several crooked teeth, and that, of course, the bodices of her dresses would look awfully concave if it weren’t for the artful and stalwart bust improvers in her wardrobe.

But all in all, things were going very well for this early in the Season.

Gentlemen flocked to her, as attentive and eligible a group as she had hoped for in her most ambitious dreams. Perhaps too much so: Among them were a number who paid court to popular girls by habit; a few were in her vicinity simply because it was where their friends gathered. This crowding of the field worried her, as the two gentlemen she most wished to encourage were not forward enough to compete with the more exuberant swains who did not interest her, and she dared not be any more obvious in her encouragement when surrounded thus.

Viscount Firth and Mr. William Pitt, the latter heir to Baron Sunderley, were her choices. Both were prosperous, kind, solid country gentlemen. Both were earnestly looking to settle down. Lord Firth was in his midthirties, more rugged than handsome, but not displeasing to view. He was, by all accounts, an excellent fellow, if rather straitlaced in his views. But he seemed to be of the nature to be open to a woman’s persuasion, provided he believed that the woman essentially agreed with him.

Mr. Pitt, bespectacled and a bit rotund, was an even greater favorite with Louisa. In him she sensed a much more malleable nature. His income would be less than Lord Firth’s. But in the end, what mattered most was not the gross amount, but the percentage she could command.

Mr. Pitt would make a supremely acceptable spouse, Louisa was certain. Unfortunately, he happened to be a most awkward suitor. He didn’t dance, lacked a commanding presence, and was minimally accomplished at the art of small talk, which relegated him to the periphery of her circle, a place he uncomfortably yet obdurately occupied.

Her heart rather went out to him. There was much she could do to help him better negotiate a crowd, if she were his wife. Or, once they married, they could settle in the country and he wouldn’t have to socialize at all, if he didn’t wish to. But before any of those ameliorations could take place, she must become his wife.

So toward that noble goal, she redoubled her effort on the night of Lady Savarin’s ball. “Will we have a wet summer? What do you think, gentlemen?” she asked as thunder boomed audibly in the distance.

“That won’t be fair,” a young fop protested. “Rain, if it must come, might as well come in winter, when it’s miserable anyway. The English summer is short enough as it is.”

“Right-ho,” his friend seconded. “A crying shame.”

“What do you think, Mr. Pitt?” Louisa reached out to her quarry. “I understand that you take a keen interest in meteorology. Have you observed any signs of soggy months to come?”

Mr. Pitt cleared his throat with flustered happiness. “As a matter of fact, I have. I have been going over some records. The current atmospheric conditions, I believe, combined with…”

“What is this? A session at the Royal Society? Did I stumble upon the wrong gathering? But lo and behold, Miss Cantwell, it is you. Why do you let fellows bore you with such trivia? Who gives a tuppence for atmospheric conditions?”

Mr. Pitt shrank promptly before this onslaught of delighted ignorance. Louisa groaned inwardly. But it wouldn’t do to openly offend Mr. Drummond. He was, incomprehensibly enough, one of the so-called “arbiters” of Society, presumably because everyone cringed to be on the receiving end of his ostentatious rudeness.

“Mr. Drummond,” she acknowledged him with unexceptional cordiality. “We are having a discussion on the weather and Mr. Pitt was just about to give us some very informative—”

If she had hoped to subtly chastise him, she failed utterly, for he interrupted her, too. “I say why talk if you can’t do anything about it.”

Poor Mr. Pitt was now flame red. Louisa gritted her teeth. Mr. Drummond didn’t so much court her as he displayed before her his skills at the game of courtship. And to everyone’s detriment, he was of the belief that to make himself appear superior, others must suffer in comparison.

“Well, I for one do believe there is intrinsic value to the study of meteorology,” said an unfamiliar voice somewhere to Louisa’s right.

Interestingly, Mr. Drummond, instead of dispensing with yet another one of his acerbic remarks, accepted this rebuff without any protestation. “Oh, if you say so, Wren.”

Wren? Could it be…

Mr. Pitt exhaled with relief. “Thank you, my lord Wrenworth.”