Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
"Did you hear what she said to him?"
"I heard she called him lazy. To his face. In front of the other three."
"I heard he asked her name and she refused him outright."
Amelia kept her chin level and her pace unhurried as she crossed toward the refreshment table, though every word of it reached her perfectly well, the way gossip in a crowded ballroom always found its target no matter how quietly it was spoken.
Three young ladies she barely recognized stood clustered by the lemonade, fans fluttering furiously, eyes darting toward her and away again with the guilty speed of women who had been caught discussing exactly the person now walking past them.
"Miss Hartwell, is it?"
Amelia turned to find a young woman she did not recognize, golden-haired and glittering with a fortune's worth of pearls, watching her with an expression of frank, unhurried delight, entirely unbothered by the fact that she had been one of the whisperers not thirty seconds prior.
"It is."
"How marvelous." The woman's smile widened, all teeth, no warmth.
"I confess I did not think anyone was still capable of surprising a ballroom this deep into the Season, and yet here you are, having reduced the Duke of Ravensmere to silence within minutes.
My mother has been attempting the same feat since his christening, without success. "
"I did not set out to surprise anyone. I merely disagreed with him."
"Oh, I am certain that is precisely how it began.
" The woman's eyes glittered with poorly concealed amusement, her fan snapping open with a flourish.
"Do tell me, is it customary now for young ladies to argue with dukes at the refreshment table, or ought I make a special study of you before I attempt it myself?
I should so hate to embarrass myself the way you have not, apparently, embarrassed yourself at all. "
"I have found," Amelia said, keeping her voice perfectly even, "that it requires no special study. Merely the willingness to say a true thing aloud when a false one has gone unchallenged for rather too long."
"How very bracing." The woman dropped a shallow, mocking curtsy, fan fluttering shut again.
"I do hope you have written your will, Miss Hartwell.
Ravensmere is said to hold a grudge with the same discipline he holds his scholarship, and you have just handed him a very public reason to hold one against you. "
She swept off toward her cluster of friends before Amelia could think of a reply sharp enough to satisfy her, already leaning in to report the exchange with visible relish, and Amelia was left standing alone by the lemonade with her face warm and her pulse considerably less steady than she would have liked to admit.
Let them talk. She had done nothing wrong.
She had corrected an argument that deserved correcting, from a man who ought to have been grateful someone finally took the trouble to do it properly.
That was all. That the man in question happened to be a duke, and that half the ballroom now seemed to know her by sight without knowing her name, was simply an inconvenient consequence of being a woman and in the right whilst also being in public.
"Miss Hartwell." Her father's voice, close behind her, carried none of its usual warmth. She turned to find him already at her elbow, his face carrying a gray, stricken look he reserved for moments when the whole of the ton seemed poised to judge him through his daughter. "A word, if you would."
"Papa, I only—"
"Not here." He took her arm, not roughly, but with a firmness that brooked no argument, steering her toward the relative quiet of the terrace doors.
Behind them, she caught another fragment of murmured conversation, someone's low, delighted laugh, the words Ravensmere and extraordinary drifting past in the same breath, and felt her stomach turn over despite herself.
Once they had gained a measure of privacy near the doors, her father released her arm and studied her for a long moment, saying nothing, which was somehow worse than if he had simply scolded her outright.
"You corrected the Duke of Ravensmere," he said finally.
"I spoke to the Duke of Ravensmere."
"There is no difference at all, Amelia, not to this room, and you know it perfectly well.
" He passed a hand over his face, weary in the way he only ever looked after a full day of examinations.
"You dismantled his argument in front of three other dukes and half the guests standing near enough to hear it.
Whatever the merits of your reasoning, and I do not doubt they were considerable, you have made yourself the single most discussed young woman at this ball within the space of a few minutes. "
"He was arguing that women lack the discipline for scholarship. Was I meant to simply stand by and allow it?"
"I am not saying you should remained quiet.
I am telling you what it will cost." His voice gentled, though the worry beneath it did not.
"You have no significant dowry, my dear.
You have intelligence and wit enough for three young ladies, but neither of those has ever once been the currency the ton trades in.
A scandal that might cost a wealthy heiress a single unkind season could cost you considerably more, and I could not bear to watch that happen to you over an argument, however correct you were to win it. "
Amelia opened her mouth to argue and found, for once, that she had nothing ready to say. He was not wrong; he so rarely was. That was the difficulty of arguing with her father.
"I only wanted him to admit he was wrong."
"I know." Something in his expression softened.
"But being right in this room, Amelia, has never once been enough to protect a young woman without means, and I would rather see you safely home tonight than watch you learn that lesson the hard way, in front of witnesses who will remember it far longer than you'd like. "
"You wish me to leave. Now."
"I wish it very much, yes." He glanced back toward the ballroom, where the murmuring showed no sign of abating, several heads still turned in their general direction with poorly disguised curiosity.
"I will make your excuses. A headache will suffice, I think, and no one will trouble to question it. "
"And you?"
"I will follow shortly, once I have smoothed over what can be smoothed.
" He managed a small, weary smile, the kind he had been giving her since she was a girl bringing home reports of some childhood injustice she'd argued her way through.
"Go on. The carriage is waiting just beyond the gates, the second one in the row, I confirmed it with the driver myself.
Have Simmons see you out through the side entrance. Fewer eyes that way."
"Papa, I am sorry, truly, if I have embarrassed you."
He took her hand and pressed it, briefly, before releasing her toward the waiting footman near the terrace doors. "Go now. Quickly."
She went.
The side entrance let out into a cool, blessedly quiet night.
Simmons accompanied her as fas as the gate torches guttering along the drive and a long line of carriages waited nose to tail, drivers stamping against the chill.
Amelia counted them as she walked, skirts gathered against the damp gravel, and found the second carriage exactly where her father had promised, its door already open as though anticipating her.
She climbed inside gratefully, drawing the door shut behind her, and sank back against the squabs with a long breath she had not realized she'd been holding since the moment she'd opened her mouth to interrupt four dukes at once.
Well. She closed her eyes, listening to the muffled sounds of the ball receding behind her, the distant orchestra, imagining the low murmur of gossip she had no doubt was still spreading through that ballroom like water through cracked plaster.
That is quite enough excitement for one evening, Duke of Ravensmere included.
She intended, quite firmly, to put the whole infuriating business, and the infuriating man at the center of it, entirely out of her mind before the carriage had even cleared the gates.