Chapter Eleven
It’s one of the things I love best about her.
The words had been floating about Kate’s head for the last week, sliding through her thoughts at the most inconvenient of times.
It wasn’t so odd, really, Elliot’s use of that particular word.
They had been the closest of friends for most of their lives.
Of course they were fond of one another. They always had been.
But soon—provided she fulfilled the task he had set before her—he would be fonder still of another.
He wanted a wife he could love, one he would love.
And that would necessarily change things, wouldn’t it?
Some other lady would supplant her in his affections; not because he would become less fond of Kate, but because those two kinds of love simply could not be compared.
He would have less time for her, to be certain. Less time all around, once he had married. Once he and his wife had had those children he wished for. Surely the bulk of his time and attention would be reserved for his family. For his children. For the wife he would love.
Probably, she mused silently, he would purchase some distant property in the countryside. He would need a proper house for his family, wouldn’t he? And with a home of his own, there would be no need for him to stay indefinitely at Longthorpe Manor when he was away from London.
There was no guarantee his new home would be in Northampton.
No guarantee it would even be within a day’s ride of the place they had both called home all of their lives.
She might never again drive her sheep out to pasture to discover him sleeping in the fields.
Might never again have the opportunity to chide him with that familiar blend of exasperation and amusement for having caught him in such a state.
The thought caused a peculiar wrenching ache in the vicinity of her heart, as if she were already looking back upon days that had long passed and would never return. Like a chunk of her heart had been torn out at the very thought of it.
A rap upon her wrist pulled Kate from the miasma of her strangely morose thoughts.
“You are going to mangle your dance card,” Rebecca warned as she drew back the fan she’d used to deliver the tap.
“Are you well, Kate?” she asked, as a flicker of concern flitted across her face.
“You were ever so quiet in the carriage.”
Kate managed to produce a weak smile. “I’m a bit nervous,” she confessed.
“I feel as though I’ve hardly had time to catch my breath.
” Between the society events she’d endured this last week, the morning calls which had been paid upon her by various ladies who had hoped to learn how Elliot’s wife-hunt was progressing, and the dutiful transcribing of notes that had followed each encounter, she had had little enough time that had been just her own.
“That’s as to be expected,” Rebecca said, with a vague little wave of her hand.
“London moves at a maddening pace. I do love the Season, but it has got the tendency to leave one breathless from time to time.” She paused to turn to her husband, whispered a few words into his ear, and sent him striding off through the crowd with a little wave.
“Richard will procure you a new dance card and a glass of champagne,” she said.
The champagne would be welcome, but the dance card— “I don’t think I’m much at risk of being asked to dance,” Kate said.
“What?” Rebecca said, with a light trill of shocked laughter. “Of course you will be asked to dance. You’re a fresh face in London, and you look just lovely in that gown.”
Yes; a gown that felt as though it was cut to her navel. It was the fashion, Rebecca had assured her, but she had never felt so exposed. Or out of place, for that matter, in a room full of people so sophisticated and glamorous that it nearly hurt to look at them.
Kate had attended a fair few country dances before, but they had tended to be more celebratory affairs.
Community events, for the most part, meant to commemorate a wedding or a birth or even a particularly good harvest. But none of the women in attendance had ever come in anything that could be termed more than their best gowns—and such sumptuous fabrics and colors would have been entirely out of place.
For years, Kate’s best had been a simple brown muslin that buttoned up to her throat. It had seen her through at least a dozen such occasions. Never in the whole of her life would she have imagined herself here in London, in a sweltering-hot ballroom, dressed in daffodil-yellow silk.
The colors were dizzying; the scents cloying. They had arrived perhaps a quarter of an hour ago, and Kate’s senses had been overwhelmed from the very first moment. But Rebecca’s relentless and comfortable chatter had gone some way toward soothing her frazzled nerves.
“Here we are,” Rebecca announced as Richard returned at last. “Hold out your wrist, Kate, and I will tie on your dance card—and you are not to mangle this one.”
Dutifully, Kate extended her right hand to Rebecca and took the glass Richard offered her with her left, though the weight of her reticule made it somewhat awkward to drink.
“Thank you,” she said as she sipped, “for acting as chaperones this evening.” Mama, who tended toward headaches with the turn of the weather, had not been quite herself since the dawn had brought with it a dark and dreary sky, and had not recovered herself before it had become necessary to leave for the ball.
“Of course,” Rebecca said. “Elliot could not have escorted you on his own, and we couldn’t let you be disappointed.” She tied a knot in the ribbon, securing the fresh dance card to Kate’s wrist. “No reason a perfectly lovely ball gown ought to go to waste. Yellow suits you enormously, by the way.”
“Does it, really?” The color of the gown had been rather jarring to her eye when first Rebecca has suggested it, but given that the palette of Kate’s life had long been natural hues—the green of new grass in spring; the brown of the dirt after a hard summer rain; the blond of the wheat in the fields just before harvest—a yellow of this particular vibrancy had felt like an assault on her senses. “I don’t appear hopelessly provincial?”
“Not in the least,” Rebecca said, as she slid back into her place beside her husband. “And don’t worry; we won’t let any known rakes make off with you.” She canted her head to peer up at her husband. “Will we, Richard?”
“Elliot would have my head if we did,” Richard said. “Where is Elliot, anyhow?”
That ribbon affixed to Kate’s wrist began to itch. “Could we not say that I have turned my ankle?” she offered. “That is, in the event that anyone should ask me to dance.” Which she still held very much in doubt.
“Kate, of course you must dance,” Rebecca said, laying one hand upon Kate’s arm. “That gown was made to move. It would be an utter shame if no one were to see it at its full potential.”
Kate felt a flush burning her cheeks; one she could not attribute to the near-stifling heat of the ballroom. “It’s just that—that I’m not very skilled at the dances favored in London,” Kate said fretfully. “And I shouldn’t like to step on anyone’s toes.”
“Nobody would be crass enough to mention it, even if you did,” Rebecca assured her absently as she scanned the ballroom. “Hm,” she said. “Elliot will be beyond fashionably late soon. Wherever could he be?”
“Probably,” Kate admitted wretchedly, wringing her hands before her, “he is icing his toes. I did not take as well to the waltz as he had hoped.” Which was not to say that he hadn’t tried to teach her.
Richard tried—and failed wretchedly—to disguise a bark of laughter with a cough. “Is that so?” he asked, amusement saturating his voice.
Rebecca jabbed him in the stomach with the point of her elbow to quell his laughter. “Perhaps Elliot is only a poor teacher,” she said, with a sugary sweet smile that hid the grit of her teeth.
No; it was just that Kate had never attempted a waltz in her life until just recently, and despite Elliot’s best attempts across the last few days, she still had not managed it with anything that might have been even generously termed graceful.
To her utter chagrin, Elliot had been possessed of far more grace than she had ever learned.
He seemed to have an instinctive sense of rhythm, could keep the count in his head as though it was second nature.
His steps had been seamless and consistent, while hers had practically tangled her feet in her dismal efforts to match him.
She had stepped upon his toes no less than a dozen times this afternoon alone, and that was to say nothing of the days prior.
Still, she had shown no notable improvement.
Despite Elliot’s endless patience for her halting, awkward attempts, she had been forced to concede that waltzing would be forever beyond her ability to manage.
A loathsome thing to admit, as she considered herself more than passable at the country dances with which she was most familiar.
“Ah, there he is at last.” Richard gave a gesture across the ballroom, where Elliot had just come through the doors. “And he looks none the worse for the wear, so you can’t have done all that much damage to his toes, Kate.”
At least Elliot wasn’t limping, which was something. Kate had half-expected him to appear with a pained stride, perhaps wearing a constant grimace given the amount of torture she had put his poor toes through these last few days.
His blond hair was immaculately combed and styled.
The rich blue wool of his coat contrasted sharply with the yellow of his waistcoat.
Probably he would have stood out anyway amongst the gentlemen present, but at this moment he looked particularly eye-catching.
Riveting, almost—like a Greek god descended from Olympus.
Adonis in the flesh, come to grace this gathering of mere mortals with his presence.