Chapter 3
There was no doubt about it: Calliope Hart had somehow found herself much too deep in her cups.
Her head was swimming, while the rest of her body no longer felt like much of anything at all.
Or perhaps it felt like the gelatin dessert Cook liked to make back home, the one that wiggled with just the slightest prod.
Yes, that was exactly how she felt.
Gelatinous.
Calliope laughed, although she wasn’t quite sure what was so funny. She reached her hand out to grasp the column in front of her, but her fingers only met air. She toppled slightly into the fern, only just managing to regain her balance before her hands splayed into its cool, dark soil.
Thankfully, no one was watching her.
She chose to lean against the wall instead, which was most certainly not proper, but far less embarrassing than taking down a fern the size of Manhattan.
She breathed deeply, but the scent of roses and gardenias was suddenly overpowering, the moisture in the air from the crush of bodies heavy and cloying.
She was very much in danger of making a fool of herself. She needed to find her mother so they could make their excuses. She pushed away from the wall, brushing aside an overly friendly branch, and—
Smacked right into an ivory waistcoat.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Her eyes trailed up the waistcoat to the gentleman’s cravat, his neck, his square chin—goodness, he was tall. “I mean, my lord. I did not see you. I—”
But suddenly she could not think of what she was going to say, for her gaze had roamed over his cheekbones, high and prominent, and up his slightly crooked nose, before finally meeting his eyes.
Oh, and what beautiful eyes they were. The deep blue center of a sapphire.
His slashing brows only made the blue richer, to the point that Calliope had to physically stop herself from reaching out, petting his cheek, and whispering, “How pretty.”
“No harm done,” the gentleman said, one side of his mouth curving into a half smirk. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Edward Chase, the Earl of Hayward.”
The host of this ball and the owner of this property.
She had seen him at dinner, but he had been seated at the other end of a very long, very full table, and all she’d been able to make out was the broad chest of an athletic build and dark hair slicked back with pomade, although not nearly as garishly as Lord Wellesby’s had been.
She felt the earl take her hand and knew she should say something, anything, but all she could do was stare as his lips pressed against her silk gloves. He looked up at her from beneath his lashes.
“And you are?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “Miss Calliope Hart.”
“Well, Miss Hart, would you do me the honor of this dance?”
“Oh, um—” She fumbled for her dance card before realizing it must have slipped off her wrist when she’d fallen and now resided at the base of the fern.
Without it, she could not say if another gentleman had claimed this dance, nor could she see any way to politely bow out from the earl’s invitation, even though doing so was, undoubtedly, the wisest course of action. “Of course, Your Grace.”
His brow arched. “While I cannot say I mind being called ‘Your Grace,’ proper etiquette forces me to concede that only a duke is to be addressed in such manner.”
She winced. “I knew that. I don’t know why I said that.”
“It is an easy mistake to make,” he assured her, but she felt ridiculous anyway, knowing firsthand from Madame Dupré and the odious Lord Wellesby how important these things were to the gentry. “Shall we?”
He led her to the center of the room, her heels sliding a bit on the marble.
She shouldn’t be doing this. She did not feel like herself. She was bound to say or do something stupid.
But then the music started, and the earl’s hand was pressing against her waist and, before she could utter another word, they were gliding across the ballroom, the couples around them blurring until they were nothing but a swirl of colors, like something in a dream.
“You are very light on your feet, Miss Hart,” Lord Hayward complimented her.
“Thank you, my lord.”
She was suddenly very grateful for the earl’s impressively strong frame keeping her upright, as well as for the copious dance lessons her mother had forced upon her in her youth.
The steps had become habitual after spending so many hours repeating them, enabling her body to move without thought.
Which was a very good thing at the moment, for all she could focus on was the fact that her stomach was suddenly sloshing in a most peculiar manner.
And his eyes.
She couldn’t stop staring at his eyes.
He seemed to notice that, too. He swallowed and stared at a point over her shoulder. “Where are you from?”
“New York,” she answered. “Manhattan.”
“I have always wanted to visit New York. I hear it is like no other city in the world.”
“I had always wanted to visit London, although I never thought I’d be coming here for a—” She stopped herself from saying “husband”, but his shoulder tensed beneath her palm, and she was certain he knew what she was going to say regardless.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Lord Wellesby glaring at her from the crowd and, with a slight hiccup she prayed the Earl of Hayward could not hear, she quickly turned her gaze away.
“And how do you like it?” he asked. “London?”
She hadn’t been able to see much of it. She’d spent the last three months studying with Madame Dupré whilst her mother made the rounds through all the fashionable houses in Mayfair, leaving her calling card and prying her way into every drawing room in the city, letting it be not-so-subtly known that there was a new American heiress in town.
Little did her mother realize that not everyone was willing to stoop so low as to marry outside their kind, no matter their financial straits. Calliope may have been richer than the lot of them combined, but she was nouveau riche, still a commoner in most aristocratic eyes.
Rich or poor, Calliope was simply not good enough to marry into their families.
Although this was not the first gathering to which Calliope and her mother had been invited since they’d set up their Mayfair residence, Calliope could count the number on one hand.
Mrs. Hart had been so giddy to receive the invitation, she hadn’t even cared that it was out in the country, or that it meant several hours of travel by train.
“The estates that need the most help won’t be found in London,” her mother had told her. “We must go to them.” And then, with a sudden, concerned air, she’d added, “Please don’t do anything to embarrass me.”
Calliope had sighed. “Mother, please. Have you ever seen me do anything unladylike whilst in the company of polite society?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” her mother began, counting off Calliope’s indiscretions on her fingers.
“Laughing so boisterously in front of Charles Drummond that you both fell over and were seen lying in the grass together at the Founder’s Day picnic; running through Mrs. Cartwright’s gardens with one leg tied to Thomas Daily; not to mention betting on a horse race—a horse race, of all things!
—with the both of them and that troublemaker, Lenore Hastings. ”
Calliope rolled her eyes. “Charlie, Tommy, and Lenore are my oldest friends—they hardly count. And since I won’t have a single friend in England, I don’t believe you will have anything to worry about on that score.”
Her mother arched a brow. “Rolling your eyes is also forbidden.”
For a moment, Calliope wondered if she should go into that much detail to answer the earl’s question, knowing such a prolonged and somewhat circuitous answer would serve to hasten his departure, but after her interaction with Lord Wellesby, she feared she would not be able to speak of her friends back home without crying.
So instead, she replied, in a rather flat tone, “London is lovely.”
“Where will you go next?” he asked. “Or will you be staying there for the duration of your visit?”
“We’ll stay wherever my mother deems fit, I suppose.”
His smile turned knowing as he dipped down to whisper, “Don’t you mean wherever your prospects of finding a husband are greatest?”
Calliope blinked. “What did you say?”
The earl chuckled. “Oh, come now, Miss Hart. You can be honest with me. We both know why you’re here. Why any American heiress of a marriageable age comes here.”
Her heart stopped as the earl repeated the exact words the viscount had said earlier.
Her gaze instantly snapped to Lord Wellesby, watching them from the edge of the crowd.
Was that anger she saw in his face, or retribution?
He must have shared his conversation with the earl, who had taken it upon himself to mock her.
She gritted her teeth and replied, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
He winked at her then, confirming her suspicions. “Of course you don’t.” Darting a glance at the other couples spinning around them, he lowered his voice, “I see no reason to make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
To make what more difficult than it had to be? Ridiculing her? Deriding her? Making it clear that she and her kind could not be more unwelcome on English soil if they tried?
The earl continued, “I require the assistance a marriage to someone such as yourself would provide, and my understanding is that you are looking for a husband who can provide you a distinguished title.”
Calliope’s breath caught. Surely she couldn’t be hearing him right. Was he . . . proposing?
“So instead of wasting our time courting one another and lying to one another about what this really is,” he said, “I am going to be very upfront with you so there will be no confusion.”
They spun again, and Lord Wellesby’s sneer came back into view.
Noticing her attention was fixed elsewhere, the earl cocked his head into her line of sight, his determined gaze meeting hers with steely resolve. “I intend to marry you, Miss Hart.”
Calliope stopped.
Another couple nearly collided into them, but she didn’t care.
Her head, which just moments before had been light as a balloon, was growing heavier, and the room was spinning.
The viscount turned and whispered something to the gentlemen next to him, and that was when she knew for certain.
This proposal was nothing short of revenge, a joke Lord Wellesby and the Earl of Hayward would laugh about later as they commiserated over the rush of American heiresses gracing their shores.
What exactly did these men take her for?
“Someone such as yourself.” The words, no doubt chosen to complete Calliope’s humiliation, sounded filthy in the earl’s mouth, as if she were nothing more than some commonplace harlot, and worse, as if he had peered into her very soul and had found her wanting.
As if he had stripped her bare so that the whole of English society could see past her privileged upbringing to the silly little girl playing dress-up underneath.
“I’m so sorry to disappoint you, my lord,” she bit back, wrenching herself from his grasp. “But I wouldn’t marry you if I were marched to the altar at gunpoint.”
And with that, Calliope picked up her skirts and stormed away before the earl could respond, quickly finding her mother and informing her that she didn’t feel well at all and that they would need to make their excuses quickly.
Calliope feared her mother would insist they stay longer, but she must have looked just as terrible as she felt, for Mrs. Hart did not argue but rather rushed Calliope from the room and into their car as if her hair were on fire.
They had just made it past the estate’s property line before Calliope asked the driver to pull over so she could get out, at which point she promptly vomited onto the damp grass on the side of the road, further cementing this as the worst, most humiliating night of her life.