Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
This was, perhaps, the most foolish thing she had ever done.
Betsy took a deep breath and smiled as elegantly as she could manage. How did she smile when she was calm and relaxed? How was it that in this moment of intense stress, she had entirely forgotten how to smile!
But strangely, no one seemed to notice.
At least, not that she could see. The ballroom was large, the ceiling high, and the gentle conversation that murmured around the room was just enough to cover the sound of her frantically beating heart.
At least, she was almost certain it was.
Betsy swallowed, but she could still hear her own pulse in her ears. She had got this far, had she not?
Managed to stride past the footmen at the door who were checking invitations, with just enough determination that prevented them from calling her back and asking to see hers.
She had also managed to navigate the rather strange corridors she had encountered—designed, it seemed, to confuse—to find the ballroom.
And now she had—
“A wonderful soiree, don’t you think?”
Betsy started. she had not noticed that she had been approached by a tall gentleman with a sneer and a moustache. He was standing far too close for comfort.
She stepped back slightly, but tried to smile. She did not recognise him, and in this particular place of all places, it was likely that he was a very important person.
Just one that she did not know.
It would not do to offend him. “Yes. Yes, wonderful,” Betsy said hastily, trying her best to smile.
Smile naturally. It was once such an easy thing!
But she had taken her wits, her very life perhaps in her hands when she had concocted this plan, and if it all went wrong, then she could find herself in a great amount of trouble indeed.
What happened to a person if they broke their way into a royal palace.
The gentleman grinned, the sneer slowly disappearing. “I do not believe we have had the pleasure of being introduced.”
Betsy smiled weakly, eyes darting about the ballroom at the Brighton Pavilion. It had been madness to come here, absolute madness—but then, George had been right.
“If your friend is determined to have reparations, however, surely the best thing to do would be to approach him.”
If she wished to see Rupert again, there would be very few opportunities to do that, and so she had had no choice, really.
no choice but to hire a carriage that drove the horses as fast as they were able, from London to Brighton.
No choice but to stride into the nearest modiste, demand their most expensive gown, and walk out of the place wearing it.
No choice but to trick her way into one of the royal residences, surely some sort of offence if she was caught…
Betsy’s heart skipped a beat. All in the attempt to speak to a man who she had roundly offended the last time she had seen him.
“The moment you saw you could escape, you snatched at it.”
“My lady?”
Betsy blinked. The stranger was still smiling at her, but there was a little more coldness about the eyes than before.
“You will have to excuse me,” she said as delicately as she could manage, waving at the other side of the room as though she had finally caught sight of someone. “I have just seen the person I came here to meet. My apologies…”
Betsy allowed her voice to trail away as she strode, purposefully to the other side of the ballroom, its great chandeliers glowing with hundreds of candles above her. She would have to hope that she could blend into the crowd and not be immediately made out to be a liar.
She had come here to meet someone, yes, but Rupert had no idea that she was here; in truth, she should not be here at all.
Betsy’s lungs tightened as she purposefully lost herself in the gaggle of chattering ladies, evidently eager for the royals to emerge at their own soiree.
This was ridiculous! she should not have been so bold as to come here, all the way from London, with no invitation…and no sense that Rupert would have any interest in seeing her, after her outburst.
Oh, how ashamed she was now of how she had spoken!
“Well, Your Grace, I think I am quite done with this particular scandal with a sovereign. No one will believe you, by the way, I would imagine my name is quite ruined.”
It had been embarrassment, that had made her say such awful things; but they were spoken now, and if she ever wished for Rupert to regard her well…
Betsy’s eyes darted about the place, hoping to see him, wondering what on earth she would say once she did. Would an apology be enough? How would she apologise for something that was so visceral in the moment, and what would his response be?
A strange pain in her heart told her precisely what she wished he would say. That he did care for her. That he wanted to love her…
“—such a dastardly man, I heard,” came the voice of someone from just beyond her. “And he calls himself a Prince!”
Betsy stared. The woman was older than her, perhaps closer to her mother’s age, and was looking meaningfully at her companion, who tutted.
“He gives royalty a bad name.”
“That he is, I could not have put it better myself,” said the first woman, sighing as she brought out her fan and started to flutter it before her as the heat in the room grew. “I had thought he would be such an impressive fellow, given his family—”
“Oh, you can never tell with family,” said her friend impressively. “Why, I saw his father when he was young, such a gentleman—”
“A gentleman beyond reproof.”
“That is exactly what I would have said,” the lady nodded sagely. “But the son, what a disappointment!”
Betsy could hardly believe that she was hearing these words. A disappointment? Dastardly?
She had not considered Rupert either of those things. Int ruth, though she had not cared to admit it to him, he was perhaps the most impressive, most wonderful man she had ever met.
But if he truly was such a terrible man, then perhaps she had been a fool to follow him here. Perhaps she was better off without him, perhaps her instincts had been true and she would have been better off simply remaining in London, trying to ferret out of George what he had been up to that night.
After all, he had disappeared before the card party had started, just as she had…
“I think Rupert far superior.”
Betsy glanced back over to the two ladies, who were nodding with satisfaction now.
“Oh, yes. Nothing to his cousin, I will freely say that the Crown Prince is far superior.”
“It has always made me wonder, you know,” said the first lady, her fan fluttering wildly as the ballroom continued to fill with noise and people, “why he never married.”
Betsy could not breathe. Breath was impossible, she would never breathe again—
“Too choosy, if you take my meaning,” said her friend with a knowing smile. “That Rupert will never be satisfied until he meets what he calls the perfect woman, you know that.”
“And he believes in love at first sight.”
“Oh, the darling.”
“Well,” she said with a sniff, “I suppose we must let men have some of these daydreams. Come on, Mary, I wish for another glass of punch.”
“Oh, I shall join you…”
Betsy stood, heart in her mouth, hardly aware of what she was doing, only knowing she was standing stock still, trying to take in what she had heard.
“It has always made me wonder, you know, why he never married.”
“Too choosy, if you take my meaning. That Rupert will never be satisfied until he meets what he calls the perfect woman, you know that.”
“And he believes in love at first sight.”
“Oh, the darling.”
And then, only then, did the powerful confusion solidify in her mind and she could see just what a mistake she had made.
Betsy drew in a heavy breath. He was an honest man. Foolish, perhaps, and reckless; he should not have seduced her, not opened the two of them up to scandal, yes, btu he had, and how could she fault him for it? was she not a willing, an eager participant in the whole thing?
Did he not make her feel alive, feel everything she had always wanted to? Had he not captured her heart, kissed her beyond oblivion?
In fact, had he not…
There was nothing she could do to prevent her hand rising to her chest at the sudden realisation. Had he not made her fall in love with?
Trumpets.
Betsy started, their sudden brash noise breaking through her thoughts and making it impossible to think any more, because guests were rushing to the side of the ballroom to leave a space in the middle and a gap by the wide double doors.
Double doors that were opening slowly to reveal Prinny—looking very drunk indeed, Betsy thought privately—alongside an elegant older woman, a gentleman who looked precisely like Rupert but with an additional thirty years or so…
And Rupert.
Betsy did not think. Thinking had gone. She strode forward, pushing past astonished people, into the space made before the royals.
He was dreaming.
That was the only explanation.
Rupert blinked. He blinked again. He blinked again, partly for good measure, but partly because the strange vision that had appeared before him did not seem to be going away, however nonsensical it was.
Because she could not be here. There was no chance, no possibility of Betsy—of Lady Elizabeth being here.
He must simply be wishing to see her, that had to be it.
perhaps he had spoken too long about her to his parents; gone too many times over plans and hopes that he would find her, though as his mother had pointed out, there had to be at least fifty Lady Elizabeth’s int eh Britain.
Perhaps England. How common a name was it, anyway?
But no matter how much Rupert told himself that his eyes had to be deceiving him, the vision of Betsy did not disappear.
She was biting her lip, that same nervous and rather astonished look on her face that he recognised from when she first realised that the library door had jammed. A crinkle in her brow, a wide look in her eyes…
He could not be dreaming this, could he?