CHAPTER TWO #2
The trouble, she thought, and sighed, was that last night was just the beginning.
Weeks and weeks of this stretched before her, of wishing that she could be invisible.
If only Aunt Chalford had let her remain in Sussex.
There was no point to her coming to London, none at all.
For all that her aunt retained the faint hope that she would find a husband at this late stage, Lady Chalford was deluding herself.
Elizabeth had resolved not to let herself be exposed to the humiliation and hurt again.
At least she thought that she could avoid it, but if Lady Rendlesham and her friends chose to rake up the past, that was what she faced, even 29without falling into the trap of believing the shallow lies that men offered as ‘love’. She shut her eyes.
‘Have you the headache still, Miss Elizabeth? Would you not be better laid upon your bed rather than out in the park in that nasty cold wind? I could burn pastilles if you so wished.’
‘No, Ditcham, it is not a headache, I promise, and the chance to let the wind blow away my foolish thoughts would be welcome. I am visiting Lady Godmanchester this afternoon, so would you lay out the fawn twilled silk and my green spencer.’
‘As you wish, miss. And I ought to mention there’s a nasty mark on one of your satin slippers that you wore last night, and I am not sure as it will come out, for the fabric is damaged.’
‘Oh dear, how vexatious. I had thought it was only my toes that were bruised. I think gentlemen should produce certificates of competence before requesting to dance with one. There was a man last night who is a danger to every toe in London.’ Elizabeth smiled at her maid, who shook her head, but thought that whatever had blue-devilled her mistress would pass quickly enough.
It so happened that Lady Chalford had not been blind to her niece’s failure to enjoy the evening, and whilst her daughter’s palpable success weighed most with her, she did spend some minutes wondering what might have occurred to put Elizabeth out so much.
She had not entertained the false hope that Elizabeth would spend an evening of unalloyed pleasure, but when she had seen her early on 30during the ball, she had seemed in tolerable spirits, and several gentlemen had sought introductions as partners.
Admittedly, one was Colonel Bettison, who had been a friend of Elizabeth’s late uncle Gerald, and another was Lord Farncombe’s hapless heir, a weak-chinned youth inclined to poetry.
The Honourable Gregory Escott had eschewed the normal mistakes of youth; he did not give his mama sleepless nights over heavy drinking or the muslin company, nor was his father forced to advance him his quarter’s allowance to cover his debts, beyond those to his tailor, which was expected.
Instead, he had determined that he was a poet in the Byronic mode, and turned the simplest phrase into a grandiloquent outpouring littered with excessive, and sometimes random, emphases.
He awaited admiration of his poetic talent, but in fact the rest of the Polite World simply tolerated his folly and waited for him to grow up.
He was a pleasant enough youth, and everywhere received, and Lady Chalford had introduced him without any thought but that he might be anything more than a reasonable partner for the cotillion.
Neither of these gentlemen had been seen by Elizabeth as a threat, the one being too old, and the other too juvenile.
Lady Chalford was wise enough to know that her niece now regarded men with the utmost suspicion, but retained the hope that somehow, somewhere, there might be a gentleman who would see past her unapproachable, if not antagonistic, manner, and find a way to make himself acceptable to her.
Elizabeth might talk of living the single life at Dowlands, but her aunt was under no illusions that, once the novelty wore off, such an existence would prove 31lonely and miserable.
Single ladies were difficult to invite to any function, and, with age, generally became eccentric.
She herself had had such an aunt, and it was not the future she wanted for her much-loved niece.
She was sure that none of the gentlemen could have given Elizabeth cause to be upset.
However, at some point in the evening something had happened, something untoward.
The gentle cynicism in Elizabeth’s eyes had been replaced by a ghastly emptiness by the time she had seen her at supper.
She had danced thereafter like an automaton, she who could dance with such vivacity and joy in every step.
Elizabeth herself would certainly not reveal the cause and Lady Chalford saw no reason to ask Amelia if she had heard or seen anything.
Not only had the dear girl been caught up in her own excitement, but Amelia was largely ignorant of what had happened three years past, and how it had twisted her cousin’s view of the world.
She had been but a fourteen-year-old and firmly in the schoolroom when ‘The Disaster’ had occurred, and had been kept from all but the sketchiest details by her mama, for fear that it might make her unnecessarily nervous and cautious at her own come-out.
Lady Chalford was not unfeeling, and it distressed her to think her niece had been made unhappy, but she was at a loss to know what to do about it.
She sighed, instantly dismissed the idea that she might mention it to her husband, and having come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but hope that it was a passing case of agitated nerves, set it on one side to think of more pleasant things.
The most pressing of these were the decisions upon which 32of the invitations that had arrived in the course of the morning should take precedence in the following weeks, and whether attending the military review in Hyde Park was likely to give Amelia an unfortunate predisposition towards young men in regimentals.
They did look so dashing, but none she had ever encountered had a feather to fly with, and they were universally high on the matchmaking mamas’ list of dangers.
It was with thoughts of scarlet cloth and gold tassels, rather than Elizabeth’s disquiet, that she rang for her dresser.