Chapter 2
“Oh, Louisa, you must go at once. Else… I shall push you.”
Eleanor’s fingers closed around Louisa’s wrist. Three Seasons of watching her dearest friend orbit the same man from across the same ballrooms had evidently worn her patience to nothing.
“Eleanor, I cannot simply walk over there and...”
“You can. You will. He has been standing near the pillar for five full minutes with no one beside him. Miss Cavendish has gone to the retiring room. Lord Williston is dancing. This is the clearest path you will have all evening. If you do not take it, I shall tell Lady Booth that you wish to discuss her collection of pressed ferns, and you will spend the remainder of the ball trapped in a conversation about lichen.”
Louisa’s stomach dropped. “You wouldn’t.”
“I absolutely would.” Eleanor released her wrist. “Louisa. You have admired this man for two years. Two years of watching from corners and rehearsing conversations you never have. For once in your life, walk across a room toward what you want.”
The words landed between her ribs, sharp and accurate.
Louisa looked across the ballroom. Frederick stood alone near the marble pillar, his dark hair catching the chandelier light, a glass of champagne held loosely in his fingers.
He was studying the orchestra with a quiet half-smile, his weight settled comfortably on one heel.
Her pulse hammered against her collarbone.
“What shall I say?”
“Ask him about the music. He played the pianoforte at Lady Booth’s musicale last month, remember? Tell him you admired his performance.”
“I told him I admired the weather.”
“Then tell him you admired his performance instead. Louisa.” Eleanor caught her eyes. “He is kind. He will be polite. The worst that can happen is a dull conversation.”
The worst that could happen was far more creative than Eleanor imagined, but Louisa pressed her gloved fingers against her skirt, drew a breath that filled her lungs without steadying a single nerve, and walked.
The crowd parted with the indifferent ease of people who did not notice her passing. She counted the steps. Fourteen from the refreshment table to the marble pillar. Fourteen steps to cross the distance she had spent two Seasons measuring from the safety of shadowed corners.
Frederick saw her at step eleven.
His smile widened. Genuine, warm, the kind of smile that made his brown eyes crease at the corners. Louisa’s knees softened.
“Miss Fairchild. How lovely.” He inclined his head. “I was hoping to see you this evening.”
He was hoping to see her. The words scattered through her body, bright and disorienting. She curtsied. Her balance held. A small mercy.
“Lord Langley. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your performance at Lady Booth’s.” The sentence left her mouth intact, every word in the correct order, and she could have wept with relief.
“That is very kind.” Frederick’s expression softened. “I confess I was rather nervous. The Booth pianoforte has a temperamental middle C, and I spent half the sonata praying it would cooperate.”
Louisa laughed. “It seemed effortless from where I stood.”
“Then the deception was successful.” He leaned closer, conspiratorial. “I have been told that performing music is half technique and half the ability to pretend you are not terrified.”
“I imagine that applies to most activities during the Season.”
He laughed at that, a bright, surprised sound that drew the attention of two nearby matrons, and Louisa felt warmth bloom through her ribs. This was working. She was speaking in full sentences. He was smiling. The conversation was going well.
“Do you play yourself, Miss Fairchild?”
“A little. Poorly.” She hesitated. “My younger cousin once told me that my playing reminded her of a carriage going over cobblestones.”
Frederick laughed again. His hand came up to touch the lapel of his coat, a habitual gesture she had catalogued from a thousand watchful evenings. “Children are ruthless critics.”
“The most honest critics.” Louisa felt the smile settling into her face. “She also told me that my singing sounded like a cat trapped in a wardrobe, so I have placed considerable trust in her judgment.”
He was grinning at her, his champagne forgotten in his hand, his attention fixed entirely on her face. Two years of watching this man from the edges of ballrooms, and here she stood, holding his focus as easily as breathing.
Then Lady Thornton passed behind them, trailing a cloud of jasmine perfume so thick it caught in Louisa’s throat, and she coughed.
“Forgive me,” she managed, pressing her gloved knuckles to her mouth. “The air is rather warm this evening.”
“It is, yes.” He straightened. The slight distance returned, so subtle she might have imagined it. “The Bancrofts do tend to overcrowd their events.”
“They do.” Say more. Say anything. “Although the flowers are lovely.”
“Indeed. Very fine flowers.”
Silence.
The orchestra shifted into a quadrille. Louisa’s mind went blank in the way a pond freezes, swift and total. She could feel the conversation thinning beneath her feet.
“I have always thought roses were rather…” She groped for the word. “Determined.”
Frederick tilted his head. “Determined?”
“To bloom. Despite everything. Despite the heat.” She heard herself speaking and could not stop. “They simply carry on. Wilting, occasionally. But carrying on.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose that is true.”
Another silence. Longer this time. Louisa’s stomach contracted.
“Well,” Frederick said, and the word had the unmistakable shape of an ending. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Miss Fairchild. I do hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.”
He bowed. She curtsied. He turned toward Lord Williston, who had reappeared near the orchestra with a fresh glass of port, and within three steps the conversation might never have happened at all.
Louisa stood beside the marble pillar, her gloves damp with perspiration, her face burning. Determined roses. Had she gone entirely mad? It was the only explanation.
She needed to leave. She needed to find Eleanor and walk out of this ballroom before the humiliation settled any deeper beneath her skin.
She turned toward the doors.
The collision came from her left. A blur of primrose silk, a startled gasp, a glass tilting in a pale hand. The lemonade struck her bodice at once, soaking through the muslin in a wide, dark stain that spread from her collarbone to her waist.
“Oh! Oh, I am so terribly sorry!” The girl in primrose silk clutched the empty glass to her chest, her face white as a sheet. “I did not see you standing there; I was looking for my mother, and my foot caught on...”
Louisa did not hear the rest.
She felt the wetness seeping through her stays, the cold spreading against her skin. Every pair of eyes in the ballroom was turning to find the source of the commotion. She could feel it, that prickling awareness along the back of her neck that arrived whenever attention found her.
Two dozen faces swiveled toward her. Three dozen. The matrons by the windows. The young officers near the doors. The cluster of debutantes whose whispers had been carrying all evening. Frederick, who had turned back at the sound, his brow furrowed.
Louisa’s legs locked. The stain darkened across the pale blue muslin. She pressed her hand against it and felt the fabric cling to her fingers, ruined beyond any hope of disguise.
She should move. She should laugh, wave a dismissive hand, say how terribly clumsy she was, how dreadfully these things happened. She should do any of the practiced, graceful recoveries that women with more confidence performed as naturally as breathing.
Instead, she stood frozen, her hand pressed to the spreading stain, while the Bancroft ballroom watched.
Then fabric settled across her shoulders.
Heavy, warm, and scented faintly with cedar and a sharper note beneath it, bergamot perhaps. A man’s evening coat, draped over her.
“There.” Oliver Sinclair stepped around her, positioning himself between Louisa and the widest angle of the ballroom’s collective stare. “That should keep you from catching cold. These Bancroft draughts are murderous.”
His voice carried exactly far enough to reach the nearest cluster of onlookers. He was smiling easily.
The whispers started before Louisa could draw breath.
“Is that the Duke of Ashford?”
“He gave her his coat.”
“Who is she? The one in blue?”
Oliver offered his arm. His hazel eyes held hers with an expression she could not read, steady beneath the easy charm.
“Walk with me,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. “Slowly. As though this were planned.”
Louisa’s fingers closed around his arm because her legs had begun to tremble.
He steered her through the crowd as though he expected rooms to rearrange themselves around him.
His free hand rose in greeting to Lord Tyndale as they passed.
A nod to Lady Booth. A murmured compliment to Mrs. Davenport that made the old woman beam.
The crowd parted, but the whispers followed, curling behind them.
He brought her to the alcove near the terrace doors, shielding her from the eyes with his broad shoulders and lowering his voice. The music softened to a distant hum.
Louisa released his arm and turned on him.
“What on earth do you think you are doing?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Rescuing you.”
“I did not need to be rescued,” she lied.
“You were standing in the middle of a ballroom with lemonade on your gown and the expression of a woman contemplating whether the terrace windows are wide enough to climb through. Forgive me for intervening.”
“Your coat.” She gripped the lapels, acutely aware of the warmth still trapped in the wool, the faint scent of cedar pressed against her collarbone. “Everyone saw you give me your coat. The entire ballroom is staring.”