Chapter Two
LADY DUNLEY WAS UNDULY PROUD OF HAVING STAIRS DOWN TO HER ballroom, a feature she claimed put every entrance on display.
It was at the top of those very stairs that Harriet discovered an unfortunate truth.
Not only had she expected tonight to be different, she’d expected herself to be different.
And for others to take note. Until she experienced the distinct lack of reaction, she didn’t realize she’d been anticipating one.
No one looked up. No one dropped a champagne glass. No one pointed or even whispered. What would they have even said? “The third Bancroft sister—what’s her name again? Looks a little better tonight. A tad unfortunate to have to stand beside the other two, but good for her.”
God, she was a muttonhead. Three ladies entering a ball—no matter how lovely they were—was common, arguably the very point of the event. She felt her face flame with the embarrassment of her own vanity and the disappointment of discovering that even with a corset, she was still herself.
And her sisters were still her sisters.
Philippa had recently finished the half-mourning period for her late husband Reginald, the 14th Baron Ellerton, and was thrilled to be back in the world as a widow.
Caroline was, by virtually all accounts, the loveliest creature to ever grace a London ballroom and thus—despite being four years younger than Harriet—was the Bancroft daughter next in line to marry.
She was positively swarmed with suitors, something no chaperone had had to contend with while watching Harriet.
As a widow—and a young, beautiful one at that—Philippa tended to abdicate her protective duties for more important things like champagne and sexually frustrated marquesses, leaving Harriet to watch their younger sister in her stead.
Thus, Harriet often ended up alone at balls.
A genuine wallflower. Although the flower part always seemed a little generous: She felt more like a wall-potted plant.
There for ambience but not adding any particular beauty to a ballroom.
Harriet let out a rueful snort of laughter at her fanciful ideas of the evening.
“Are you all right?” Caroline asked, ever concerned with how people around her were faring. She gripped tightly onto Harriet’s arm as they descended the steps.
“Certainly, just sharing a private joke of sorts with myself.” Harriet focused on not letting Caroline falter.
Philippa was rather occupied with swanning down the stairs herself, likely garnering the precise reaction Harriet had imagined for herself.
If she did, Harriet missed it in favor of steadying Caroline.
“Do you need your eyeglasses?” Harriet whispered as Caroline stumbled a bit.
“No, no, I simply haven’t worn these slippers in ages. I’m not used to them.” The two of them continued down the steps in Philippa’s wake. At the bottom, Caroline relaxed. Philippa turned back to them, thrumming with the excitement of being among so many people.
“Shall I fetch us some ratafia?” Harriet asked, ready to be useful.
“Harriet, darling, that’s practically the only thing a man’s good for,” Philippa replied, scanning the room.
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying three glasses.”
“Yes, but a man likes to do little tasks for women. It makes him feel ever so good. Why rob him of that? I’ll go find us one.” Philippa left them alone. Nothing like a ball to remind Harriet that male attention was both a game and a certainty for her elder sister.
“If you have to go off and get a gentleman, isn’t it just as easy to go off and get a refreshment yourself?” Harriet muttered.
Caroline smiled pleasantly at the exchange, as she gazed out on the dance floor, making a clear effort not to squint.
Harriet noticed this because she watched her sisters quite closely and also because she had no interest in looking around the ballroom herself.
What was there to see? The entire ton staring in awe at Caroline’s beauty?
A man walking toward her only to dip away when he realized she was Harriet and not Philippa?
“Would you like to take a peek, Caroline?” Harriet whispered. Caroline started, having been lost in a daze of her own. After a moment of reluctance, she nodded.
Harriet led them over to a tall houseplant and then turned back to face the ballroom.
Behind her, halfway in the foliage, Caroline fished her eyeglasses out of her reticule.
The entire charade was silly, as no one ever looked Harriet’s way very long.
Her invisibility was her greatest gift when it came to ballrooms. This reality was incomprehensible to her dear sister, however, no matter how many times Harriet tried to assure her.
“Is anyone looking at us?” Caroline asked.
“Yes, rather, I think I’ve caught the eye of the Duke of Grange. Oh dear. He’s walking this way. Our fortune is changing! I think he’s quite taken with me. Imagine, I’ll have forty thousand a year or more!”
Caroline gave her a small pinch. “You devil!”
“No one is looking,” Harriet reassured her.
Caroline slipped her eyeglasses on and gazed around the ballroom. From behind her, Harriet could hear a small, contented sigh.
“You could wear them all the time, you know.”
“Yes, but sometimes it’s nice not to see things, isn’t it?” This was Caroline’s standard response to Harriet’s standard suggestion.
“It only decreases your beauty by about half, and I think you rather have more than enough, don’t you?” Harriet teased, knowing full well that the eyeglasses wouldn’t decrease her sister’s beauty even an ounce.
Caroline stepped out from behind her and folded up her eyeglasses again most carefully. “Half, you say? Last time it was a quarter.”
“I suppose it’s your new hairstyle. Really unbecoming.
You—” Harriet’s teasing was cut off by the return of Philippa and the arrival of her entourage.
Before she married, Philippa had always been flanked by a large group of friends and admirers.
Widowhood had taken her popularity to new heights.
Though her behavior was sufficiently scandalous to make a lady persona non grata, Philippa was smart enough to matchmake between the awestruck debutantes and the unseasoned young bucks who followed her around, which quite endeared her to the matchmaking mamas.
Besides, her presence at your rout or musicale ensured at least a two-fold increase in male attendance.
“Excellent news! We’ve found just the man for our arduous task!” Philippa exclaimed to them, as if finding a man for beverage-fetching had been a group endeavor, rather than her own undertaking.
“Lord Hartford, may I present my sisters, Lady Harriet and Lady Caroline. They’re ever so parched.
Would it be possible for you to deliver us some ratafia?
” Harriet looked up out of politeness at the introduction—her third to Lord Hartford—which is when she noticed that Philippa, who believed ratafia was beneath her, was already carrying a glass of champagne.
Harriet wondered absently which man had won the chance to deliver the drink.
Lord Hartford looked sick to leave Philippa’s side but dashed off regardless.
“There!” Philippa said. Having satisfied her sisterly duty, she looped her arms through two gentlemen’s and sailed off. Harriet didn’t know enough about men or balls to guess their destination. Another young lord—Lord Pendleton, Harriet believed—took the whittled-down competition as his chance.
“Lady Caroline, would you care to dance with me for this set?”
“Yes, of course, my lord,” Caroline answered, beaming.
And then she hesitated. A small moment that only a sister would notice.
Caroline shot her hand behind her back and Harriet seamlessly took her eyeglasses.
With that, she was off, leaving Harriet in the circle of Philippa’s friends without protection.
Despite her misgivings, and her previous experience attempting to converse with gentlemen, Harriet drew from her deep well of social graces and turned to the man next to her.
“Good evening, Lord Cockburn,” Harriet intoned.
“Good evening?” he replied, phrasing it as a question. Harriet knew what the question was: Why is this woman speaking to me? A lifetime in this role allowed Harriet the patience to offer up an explanation for her existence.
“I’m Lady Ellerton’s sister. We met two weeks ago at the Dunforth musicale. And a week before that in Hyde Park. Your new horse’s name is Kratos. You said you didn’t know why, and I told you Kratos is the Greek god of strength.”
“Oh yes, I remember you. Her sister. Well, the other sister. There’s another, isn’t there?”
“We have two other sisters, yes,” Harriet said with a tight smile. “One is not yet out, and the other is on the dance floor now with Lord Pendleton.”
Lord Cockburn’s neck nearly snapped from his effort to look.
“She’s your sister too?” he asked, wondrously, not taking his eyes from Caroline.
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t in Hyde Park.”
“No, she wasn’t. Excellent memory,” Harriet replied, though the man entirely missed her sarcasm.
“Does she have dances after this?”
“You know, Lord Cockburn, I’m not certain. As she is an entirely separate being from myself.”
The poor man was thoroughly confused, which was quite all right with Harriet.
Men were often confused in her presence, and she did nothing to disabuse them of the feeling.
Still, it stung a bit when he turned to the man next to him and took the conversation back up without even excusing himself from the one he and Harriet had been having.
“Lady Ellerton has a sister,” he informed his companion, rather loudly. “She’s with Pendy now, take a look.”