Chapter 1
Excerpt: A Waltz into Wickedness
Lady Eleanore Wingate had begun to suspect that the London Season was less a marketplace for marriage than an elegant means of exposing every deficiency a woman possessed.
By one-and-twenty, a lady still had the luxury of believing herself unlucky.
By four-and-twenty, and three fruitless Seasons in, she was expected to become instructive.
She was to smile through disappointment, dance through mortification, and listen with gratitude while older women explained, in tones of perfect sympathy, all the ways in which she might improve her prospects: a little more animation, a little more confidence, a little more sparkle.
Never enough to suggest that she had failed, of course.
Only enough to imply that if she had not yet inspired a serious offer, the fault must lie somewhere in her own arrangement.
Eleanore sat in her mother’s blue morning room with her hands neatly folded in her lap and her expression schooled to pleasant attentiveness while Lady Wingate delivered precisely such counsel.
“My dear,” her mother said, with the soft gravity of one imparting unwelcome but necessary truth, “you must see that something in your approach requires adjustment.”
Eleanore kept her gaze on the sunlit window rather than on her mother’s face. Outside, Berkeley Square looked serene beneath the pale wash of morning, as though no woman in London had ever been pitied over tea.
“I was not aware,” she said, “that I had an approach.”
Lady Wingate sighed and set aside the letter she had been holding, smoothing it once against her knee. “That is exactly the difficulty. You are always agreeable, always composed, always ready to yield the center of a conversation to someone brighter or louder. You make yourself easy to overlook.”
The words were not new. Only newly sharpened.
Eleanore lowered her eyes. “I had not realized I was so obliging as to disappear for other people’s comfort.”
“Do not be arch.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Her mother softened at once, which was somehow worse. Lady Wingate was not cruel. She was merely anxious in the devoted way of loving mothers who believed a daughter’s future could be secured only through marriage.
“You know I wish only to see you happy,” she said.
Eleanore nearly smiled at that. Happiness had not been mentioned in earnest for months. Settlement, security, prospects, prudence—those had all appeared regularly. Happiness was usually brought out only when the harsher words required lace around their edges.
“Of course.”
Lady Wingate leaned forward. “This is your third Season, Eleanore. One cannot pretend that means nothing. You are very lovely, my dear, but loveliness alone is not always enough. Men must be engaged. They must be made to notice.”
Not enough.
There it was.
Not ugly. Not foolish. Not impossible to like. Merely not enough.
Eleanore felt a pressure begin beneath her ribs, sharp with humiliation and tiresomely familiar.
It pressed upward, hot and tight, until even the bones of her corset seemed to object.
She had spent years being told not to take society’s judgments too much to heart, while also being reminded that those same judgments would decide the shape of her future.
“And what would you have me do?” she asked. “Throw myself more energetically into their line of sight?”
Her mother’s mouth tightened. “You know perfectly well that is not what I mean.”
“No,” Eleanore said, and kept her tone gentle only by force. “I am not certain that I do.”
Lady Wingate drew herself up. “You are determined to misunderstand me this morning.”
“I am trying very hard to understand. That is the difficulty.”
Silence fell.
Lady Wingate's fingers tightened once on the arm of her chair.
It was not yet a quarrel, but it stood near enough to one that Eleanore knew either she must retreat or the day would worsen.
Lady Wingate seemed to recognize the same thing. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“There is a musicale at Oakford House this evening. Clara gathers an excellent company, and the atmosphere is always warm. A smaller event may suit you better than a large ball. Try to be open, Eleanore. Try to receive the attention that comes your way.”
Eleanore could almost have laughed.
Receive it. As though attention were a shawl one failed to catch because one had not been holding one’s arms properly.
But she was too tired to continue.
“I shall do my best.”
Her mother reached out and pressed her hand. “You know I love you.”
The tenderness of it almost undid her. Her throat tightened so suddenly that she had to press her tongue to the roof of her mouth before she trusted herself to speak.
A colder mother would have been easier to withstand. But Lady Wingate did love her. It was merely that her love arrived burdened with fear, and that fear had made every drawing room feel like a test Eleanore kept failing.
“I know,” she said quietly.
When her mother had gone, Eleanore remained in the blue room a moment longer, staring at the pale silk walls as though they might contain the instruction she had somehow missed. Then she rose and crossed to the window.
Below, a carriage rolled past in dignified silence. A pair of ladies crossed the square with parasols tilted against the brightness. Somewhere out of sight, a child laughed.
It was not tragic to be four-and-twenty and unmarried.
It was not even unusual.
But it had become wearying to feel herself forever under assessment. Pleasant, but not memorable. Pretty, but not arresting. Good, but not compelling.
Why had no one chosen her?
The question slipped in before she could stop it, and because no one else was there to hear it, she let it stand. It lodged low and mean inside her.
She had once believed that love, if it came, would come naturally. That some decent gentleman would one day see her across a room and recognize—not some heightened performance of charm—but her.
The world, it seemed, preferred strategy.
By evening she was almost too weary of her own thoughts to face company, but she dressed for Oakford House with care.
If she could not inspire admiration, she could at least avoid inviting concern.
Her gown was ivory gauze over palest rose silk, elegant without excessive hope.
Her maid arranged her hair with soft curls at the temples and set pearls at her throat and ears.
When Eleanore studied herself in the mirror, she looked as she always had: well-bred, pleasing, composed.
Perfectly suitable.
A dangerous phrase.
The journey to Oakford House was mercifully short. Lady Wingate spoke of Clara’s taste in music and of the excellent company expected; Eleanore answered where she must and watched the city pass in a blur of stone facades and lamp glow.
Oakford House shone when they arrived, its windows spilling warm light into the street. Within, everything was candlelit elegance and polished order. Footmen moved with smooth efficiency. Voices rose and softened. Flowers scented the air.
Clara, Countess of Oakford, received her guests at the entrance to the music room with effortless grace. She wore deep blue silk and diamonds at her throat, and she greeted Lady Wingate and Eleanore with a warmth that made even politeness seem almost personal.
“How delighted I am to see you both.”
“Your evenings are always a pleasure,” Lady Wingate said.
Clara turned to Eleanore, her smile brightening in a way that felt genuine rather than merely hostess-perfect. “And you, my dear, are looking particularly lovely tonight.”
“Then I chose the correct gown, after all,” Eleanore said.
Clara laughed softly. “A triumph for both judgment and dressmaker. You must not disappear too quickly. Lydia is here, and I believe she means to abduct you for conversation at the first suitable moment.”
That alone improved the evening.
Lydia Hallworth stood near the far side of the room, composed and quietly lovely, with her husband beside her.
Marriage had lent her not softness but ease.
As for Edward Hallworth, he leaned just near enough to his wife to suggest that devotion suited him rather more visibly than he might once have preferred.
Nearby stood Lady Eden Langley with her husband, Gabriel, Marquess of Blackstone—Eden elegant and poised, Gabriel watchful and self-contained.
And beside them, speaking with Crispin Hallworth in that dry, controlled way men of intelligence often did when they wished to appear less amused than they were, stood Thomas Thornton.
Eleanore felt the sight of him before she fully let herself think it.
He stood with one hand loosely at his back, his dark evening coat fitting his broad frame to dangerous advantage, his head slightly bent as he listened. Then he smiled at something—only briefly, only enough to change his mouth—and her breath caught.
Thomas looked up.
His gaze found her at once.
That was the trouble with Thomas. He had always looked directly at her, as though she were not incidental to the room but central to whatever portion of it he presently occupied.
She had long since ceased to question the comfort of it—until this moment, when comfort tipped without warning into something far less safe.
His attention sharpened, warmth followed, and it passed over her face, her gown, and returned to her eyes with such certainty that, for one ridiculous moment, she felt precisely what her mother had accused her of never expecting to feel:
noticed.
The sensation passed through her like a breath she had not known she was holding.
He excused himself from the group and came toward her.
Not hurriedly. Thomas was never hurried. But there was purpose in the line of his body that made her suddenly aware of the fact that he was a man in his prime and not merely the safest person in her life. The knowledge unsettled her so swiftly that the tips of her fingers tingled inside her gloves.
“Lady Eleanore.”
“Viscount Trumbley.”