Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The ball was held at Lambridge House on a Thursday evening in early June. It was, by any social measure, an important event that had been talked about in the days that preceded it.
Women had hunted down the newest gowns, and men had their boots polished until the leather caught the light.
Three hundred candles burned in the chandeliers, throwing a honeyed glow over hothouse blooms shipped in from Holland.
An orchestra tuned somewhere out of sight, a midnight supper waited beyond the doors, and so many guests had been admitted that the entrance hall pressed close with silk and warmth.
It was a crush, but an exceedingly elegant one.
Anne stood in the receiving line beside her fiancé and smiled at approximately one hundred people.
She was in a gown of pale green silk. It was Celia’s choice, over her own more practical neutral tones.
Celia had been right, as she was occasionally infuriatingly right about aesthetic things. The shade truly brought out the color of Anne’s eyes. Her hair was pinned up in a bun, and her gloves were white.
She looked, as several people told her, radiant. She thanked them and kept her smile.
“You are resplendent in that shade,” Lady Hartham complimented as she walked by, planting a kiss on her cheek. “The spitting image of your dear mother.”
“Thank you, Lady Harcham.” Anne fought back a tear at the thought of her mother.
Lambridge stood at her side and spoke to the guests as a man might present his most significant acquisition to those he considered qualified to appreciate it. He touched her arm at regular intervals.
Anne felt it was a possessive touch, light enough to be plausibly attributed to affection, heavy enough to be unmistakably claiming. She kept smiling through it, because people were watching, and Celia was at home, and this was the arrangement.
I can survive this night. Just keep smiling.
She spotted the Duke of Dawnhurst in the room approximately seven minutes into the ball, and her fake smile morphed into something genuine.
She had not been looking for him. In fact, she was deliberately trying not to look for him, which was precisely why she found him.
He was near the far wall, in an area between two columns, slightly separated from the main crowd, and surrounded.
He must have been announced when she was in the powder room.
She watched as three ladies and their mothers—assuming the older ladies were the mothers and the younger ladies were the daughters, as it was difficult to tell from a distance—formed a neat semicircle around him, fluttering their fans and eyelashes.
He stood in the center of this attention with the expression of a man waiting for something to end.
“Miss Barnet.” Lambridge’s hand touched her elbow. “The Marchands are here. Come now.”
She went.
She smiled at the Marchands. She answered their questions. She smiled at others. She drank a glass of champagne and felt it do nothing for her mood.
She had escaped for a moment to speak with an acquaintance of her uncle’s when Lambridge found her again and nudged her toward the dance floor.
“Shall we, my dear?” He held out his hand.
It was a country dance, not a waltz, for which she was grateful. His proximity was intermittent, yet it did not make up for the time she had to spend near him.
“You dance well enough, but you must eat something. You look pale,” he remarked as he twirled her.
“I beg your pardon, My Lord?”
“My Lady Aunt, the Marchioness of Danbury, said you look well enough, but I fear this green dress makes you look ill. You must make more of an effort with her, you know, when you are my wife.”
“Indeed.”
Anne danced. She kept smiling. She looked down at her green dress, and her thoughts drifted to Scotland. She imagined what her life would have been like if they had made their escape.
When the set ended, she was approached by Lord Woodworth. He was a man she knew by reputation, but had not been acquainted with. She understood he was a close friend of the Duke of Dawnhurst.
“Miss Barnet.” He bowed over her hand with the grace of someone who had done it ten thousand times and still found it worth doing. “I have been attempting to make your acquaintance all evening and have been consistently foiled. I’m beginning to feel the universe is against me.”
“Lord Woodworth.” Despite the evening, despite Lambridge’s hand on her elbow, she found herself genuinely smiling. “I have heard a great deal about you, My Lord.”
“All of it accurate, I assure you. I am exactly as charming and not at all as reckless as advertised.”
“May I borrow your fiancée for a brief turn about the room, Lambridge?” he asked as he offered his arm. “Will you walk with me, Miss Barnet?”
“I have someone I must speak with,” Lambridge said with a raised eyebrow. “I will find you for a dance briefly, my dear.”
“I find I prefer the edges of these things to the center,” Lord Woodworth admitted as he guided her toward the Duke.
“He does as well, it seems,” she commented.
Lord Woodworth’s eyes glinted. “He does,” he agreed. “Though I will say, in my considerable experience, that he hides rather less convincingly when you are in the room.”
She opened her mouth.
“Ah,” he murmured, before she could respond, “here he is.”
The Duke appeared at Lord Woodworth’s left. He looked at his friend, then looked at Anne. His gaze rested on her for slightly longer than was strictly appropriate, a slight flush on his cheeks.
“Miss Barnet,” he greeted.
“Your Grace.”
“The orchestra is beginning something that sounds like a waltz,” Lord Woodworth said, with a complete innocence that fooled no one. “I believe I need to…” He made a vague gesture with his hands. “Do something. Over there.”
Then he left.
Anne watched the spot where he had been standing.
“Would you honor me with this dance?” the Duke asked, and all air left the room.
Anne looked at him. He was so striking and elegant in his suit, and he was looking at her with an expression she was beginning to learn and crave. There was something beneath the controlled facade that only she could discern.
“I would,” she replied.
They went to the dance floor.
A waltz was entirely different from a country dance.
She had always known this as a matter of course.
She understood it more concretely when she placed her hand in his and felt his other hand settle on her waist with the exact right firmness.
It was not too light to be perfunctory and not heavy enough to be possessive. It felt right.
“Lord Woodworth arranged this,” she concluded.
“Lord Woodworth arranges a great many things.”
“And you permit it.”
“I allow him to believe he is more effective than he is.”
She looked up. There was a glint in his eyes that was very close to humor, and it made her smile.
He led her through a turn, and the movement was seamless. He danced well, which she had not expected and probably should have, given the precision he applied to everything else.
“Are you angry?” he asked.
“At Woodworth?”
“No, the girls. For all their plotting.”
“No.” She considered. “I’ve stopped trying to manage them when they want the same thing. It would take an army.”
“Agreed.” A pause. “They are good for each other.”
“They are,” she sighed.
“What is it, Miss Barnet?” He pulled her tighter against him. “Are you all right?”
“I was worried about Celia when we came to London, after our failed escape to Scotland. She had been… Well, she is shy with people she doesn’t trust. She’d had very few friends.
” She looked at the dancers around them rather than at him, because looking at him was something she found herself rationing, savoring.
“That must be difficult.”
“Felicity is the only child who has ever met her where she was, without any adjustment.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Felicity has had very few friends as well,” he revealed eventually.
She looked at him then. He was looking at the dancers, at the middle distance, at something she couldn’t see.
“Then I’m glad they found each other,” she murmured.
He looked down at her. His gaze was brief, but it trailed over her face with the same comprehensiveness as that first gaze in the garden at Kirklow Hall. Then, as if she had imagined the whole thing, he looked away again.
“So am I,” he said.
They danced. Around them, the room moved in its slow, candlelit waltz. They were enveloped by the dresses and coats and gloves and music like a blanket.
For a few minutes, Anne felt something she had not felt in a long time—the serenity of being in the right place. There was only them.
This is not the right place.
She gripped the Duke tighter in reflex.
This is Lambridge’s ball. And Lambridge is across the room somewhere, being pleased with himself, and my uncle is here, and my world is arranged by men like them. And yet—
She halted that train of thought and let herself enjoy the waltz for the next three minutes.
When the music ended, they stood for a moment on the dance floor.
Anne realized they were slightly closer than was required for such a dance.
Yet the momentum of it all had drawn them so close.
She was aware of the warmth of his hand on her back and the fact that neither of them had moved to break contact.
Then someone touched her elbow. Her uncle’s touch, she recognized it immediately.
She recoiled at the contact, and her cheeks heated. Her stomach churned.
“Anne.” His voice was low and firm. “If you’ll excuse us, Your Grace.”
The Duke released her, and she stepped back. The distance between them went from almost nothing to several feet in the space of a moment.
“Of course,” he said, his voice perfectly level.
Her uncle steered her to a corner and turned his back to the room.
“People have been watching,” he whisper-hissed.
“It was one dance, Uncle Benjamin,” she said. “I could not refuse His Grace—”
“You are engaged to another man, girl. I do not care what the arrangement is in private.”