Chapter Sixteen
The suggestion arrived first from Fletcher, delivered with his usual careful diplomacy over the estate ledgers one morning several days after Isaac's return from London.
"A ball, My Lord," Fletcher said. "The estate has hosted nothing of the sort in a generation. It would go some way toward establishing Rowan Hall's return to prominence, and toward settling, once and for all, whatever gossip continues to circulate regarding the manner of your succession."
Isaac's first reaction to the proposal was less than enthusiastic.
"I'd sooner take twelve rounds in the ring than spend an evening making polite conversation with strangers," he told Tom later that same day, with a bluntness he had not bothered extending to Fletcher.
"At least in the ring a man knows exactly where he stands with his opponent.
All this business of dancing and small talk with people who'd rather not be seen speaking to me at all—I don't see what good it does anyone. "
"It does you a great deal of good, whether you see it or not," Tom said.
"You want society to accept you, Isaac, whatever you tell yourself about not caring for their opinion.
And like it or not, this is how the game's played among people like Fenwick and his set.
A man who hosts a successful ball—flowers, music, a table worth talking about for weeks after—that's a man society decides is worth taking seriously.
Refuse to play along, and you'll spend the rest of your days as the curiosity they whisper about rather than the lord they respect. "
Isaac considered arguing further, and found, in the end, that he hadn't a genuinely compelling counterargument to offer. And so it was that Rowan Hall, over the following days, began the considerable transformation required to host its first grand ball in a generation.
The change was thorough.
Chandeliers long dulled by years of disuse were taken down, polished until they threw fractured rainbows of light across the ballroom's newly cleaned floor.
Flowers arrived by the cartload from neighbouring estates, filling the entrance hall with a fragrance so thick Isaac felt faintly light-headed passing through it more than once.
Musicians engaged from York arrived two days early to rehearse in the ballroom, and the kitchens, under Cook's increasingly harried direction, produced a parade of dishes so elaborate that Isaac privately wondered whether half the county might attend solely for the meal.
The whole staff laboured under the preparations with an intensity Isaac had not seen from them before, and he noticed, more than once, Nell moving through the chaos with a quiet, capable efficiency.
She oversaw the arrangement of place settings with an eye that caught errors before Mrs Ellis herself noticed them.
She directed the placement of flowers with an instinct for balance and colour that struck Isaac as beyond ordinary servants' training, and moved through the whole elaborate business of preparing a ball for London's better society with the ease of someone who had, at some point in her life, watched such preparations unfold a great many times before.
In the weeks since the market, Tom had asked around town about Nell, but nobody seemed to know anything about her—other than that she appeared in town one day and was then employed as a maid at Rowan Hall.
Isaac was secretly pleased that Tom had found nothing and had decided that the gentleman had obviously just made a mistake.
That afternoon, he was in the ballroom with Mrs Ellis when he caught Nell's eye and she nodded to him.
At once, he felt the familiar stirrings deep within, a feeling that had grown stronger since finding her in the stream.
In truth, he had thought of that moment a lot in the past couple of weeks. More than he knew that he should.
He had wanted to talk to her so often about it, but Nell, for her part, had grown more formal rather than less, addressing him with a correctness that felt, to Isaac, less like respect than armour.
It was as though she believed the surest way to survive whatever had passed between them at the stream was to bury it beneath enough careful courtesy that neither of them would ever be obliged to name it aloud.
And maybe she was right. Maybe forgetting about it was better, but Isaac still could not help but find the whole arrangement frustrating.
***
The evening itself arrived with a clear autumn sky and a chill that made the manor's newly lit fires and blazing chandeliers all the more welcome.
By the time the first carriages began rolling up the long drive, Isaac was standing in the entrance hall in a new coat that had arrived from the tailor's in York. And as he waited to welcome his guests, he was surprised by how much composure he felt.
Soon, guest after guest arrived in a steady procession.
Lords and ladies, several military officers in dress uniform, wealthy merchants whose fortunes, if not their bloodlines, rivalled anything in the room, and neighbouring families Isaac had come to know over the past months through the slow, patient work of tenant visits and shared road contracts.
He greeted each of them with composed confidence. He waited for the correct beat before offering his hand, inquiring after journeys and family with the easy warmth of a man genuinely interested rather than merely performing the courtesy.
And, after all his efforts, Isaac found that the evening was starting off better than any gathering he had hosted since arriving at Rowan Hall.
The guests admired the restored ballroom with evident sincerity. They praised the music, the food, the sheer scale of the transformation the estate had undergone in so short a time.
"Remarkable, what you've managed here in so few months," Lord Abberly remarked, surveying the glittering ballroom with evident approval. "I confess I did not expect it, Lord Rowan, given the circumstances of your succession. You've proven me quite wrong, and I don't say that lightly."
Tom, watching from a discreet position near the edge of the ballroom with a glass of good wine in hand, caught Isaac's eye and grinned, raising his glass in a small private toast that needed no words to convey its meaning.
It was as the dancing began in earnest that Isaac became aware of a different sort of attention gathering around him.
Mothers steered unmarried daughters toward careful introductions with the particular determined subtlety Isaac recognised, even with his limited experience of such gatherings, as the opening moves of a well-practised campaign.
He was introduced to no fewer than six young ladies within the first half hour of dancing.
Each was presented with a warmth that made their mothers' underlying calculations transparent.
He navigated each introduction with the practised courtesy his lessons had built in him, though none of the exchanges stirred in him anything beyond polite, distant interest.
Lady Victoria Ashford proved, almost immediately, an exception.
She approached him herself, without the maternal engineering that had preceded every other introduction of the evening.
Her dark curls were arranged with a careless elegance, and she had the most striking blue eyes he'd ever seen. She met him with a directness that he genuinely appreciated after an evening of careful, calculated approaches.
"Lord Rowan," she said, offering her hand.
She had an easy confidence about her, unlike the nervous curtsies of the young ladies who had preceded her.
"I understand you've made remarkable improvements to the estate since your arrival. I confess I'm rather curious to hear more of it directly, rather than through the secondhand accounts that have been circulating through every drawing room in the county."
"You'd rather discuss drainage and tenant farms than dance, my lady?"
"I'd rather do both, if you're willing."
Her smile carried genuine humour, and Isaac smiled in return despite the general exhaustion the evening's endless introductions had begun to produce in him.
"Shall we?"
He accepted the invitation to dance, drawing on the same lessons that had once left him stumbling over his own feet.
To his considerable relief, he found that the steps had become sufficiently ingrained in him now.
So much so that he could manage them without the constant, careful concentration they had once required.
Enough, at least, to hold a genuine conversation while he did it.
Lady Victoria proved easy company. She was quick-witted and unafraid to ask direct questions about the estate's improvements, the tenant arrangements, even, with a boldness that surprised him, the particulars of his unexpected inheritance itself.
She asked after his opinions on the road repairs he had championed in the House of Lords, seemed genuinely informed about the agricultural reforms currently under discussion among the peers he'd impressed there, and offered her own observations with confidence.
As they danced, Isaac was aware of several guests observing them with quiet attentiveness.
A wealthy viscount's daughter and England's newest, most curious baron, dancing together with an ease that drew eyes from every corner of the ballroom.
He found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he did not mind the attention.
After months of scrutiny that had carried nothing but suspicion and poorly disguised contempt, there was something genuinely satisfying in being observed now with something closer to approval. In being, for perhaps the first time since Harrow had walked into that Hounslow tavern, welcomed.
Lady Victoria sought him out twice more as the evening progressed.
Once for a second dance that several onlookers noted with open interest, and once simply to continue their earlier conversation over refreshments.
Isaac was, by the evening's later hours, genuinely enjoying her company in a manner that felt uncomplicated.
It was easy and pleasant, free of the charged undercurrent that seemed to follow every interaction he'd had with Nell these past weeks.