by Julia London
“Well, then?” Ava asked. “Am I not at least as desirable?”
“Obviously, you exceed her in looks and bearing,” Greer said thoughtfully, receiving a small but grateful nod of acknowledgment from Ava, for Elizabeth did indeed have a rather spectacular nose, “but everyone expects her to be the Season’s favorite. And you, dearest, have been out for three years now and remain quite unmarried.” She wiggled three gloved fingers at Ava to press home her point.
Ava grabbed those fingers and squeezed playfully. “Not from a lack of opportunity,” she said. “I’ve had more than my fair share of offers, just like you, dearest.”
She did not look at Phoebe, who’d not had an offer since her coming out last year—the poor dear was painfully shy around gentlemen. Greer, on the other hand, was so clever that gentlemen always sought her partnership in parlor games. And Ava—well, Ava was quite happy to enjoy the courtly attentions of a variety of gentlemen, and in fact, encouraged it. “I happen to enjoy being unmarried. Life is far more exciting with the attention of many handsome men and I suspect exceedingly dull with the attention of only one.”
“Then you and Lord Middleton must be very much alike,” Phoebe opined. Greer laughed roundly at that, and Ava inadvertently glanced at the entrance of the ballroom again. Unfortunately, her fantasy had disappeared along with Harrison into the crowd. Worse, Sir Garrett was closing in on her, striding as quickly as his corseted girth would allow.
“Oh how divine,” Greer said cheerfully. “Now you may enjoy the attention of Sir Garrett.”
Ava groaned; Sir Garrett was a very large and gregarious man with thick lips and a tuft of hair on the crown of his head. He had, over the course of two Seasons, developed great affection for her. Lately, he’d begun to make a nuisance of himself—he sought her out at every opportunity and had begun to monopolize her at every event.
Yet Ava took pity on the man. He’d never married and seemed to be rather lonely. She could hardly deny him a dance now and again, but the poor thing was rather thick when it came to her gentle rebuffs. He did not seem to understand that agreeing to dance with him was her way of being polite.
As he arrived at her side, Ava heard Phoebe giggle and felt her elbow at her waist, yet she smiled graciously as Sir Garrett reached for her hand. “Lady Ava,” he said, bending over it.
“Sir Garrett, what a pleasure,” she said, dipping into a curtsy.
He grinned broadly, bumped the back of her hand with his lips, then turned his grin to Phoebe and Greer as Ava pulled her hand free of his bearlike grasp.
“If I may be so bold,” he said, turning his attention to Ava once more, “I would remark that you are by far the fairest of all the many ladies in attendance tonight,” he said, sweeping his arm wide to indicate all the ladies, and obviously forgetting Greer and Phoebe.
Ava reminded him with a small inclination of her head.
Sir Garrett instantly realized his faux pas; his florid face flushed even more. “That is to say…the three of you, ah…Fairchilds, all of you…are quite…fair,” he stammered, turning hopelessly redder.
Phoebe and Greer smiled demurely and thanked him for his kind words, as they had on at least two previous occasions.
He removed a kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead, his gaze on Ava again. “Miss Fairchild, would you do me the honor of standing up with me on the next dance?” he asked, dabbing at his temple. “I believe it will be a quadrille, and I assure you, I have endeavored to learn the steps in the correct sequence so there will not be another incident as you had the misfortune to endure at the Beltrose ball.”
The misfortune being that Sir Garrett had mashed her poor toes quite flat on a quadrille. But Ava felt that old tug of sorrow for the hapless knight and smiled. At least she would get the dance over and done with. “I’d be delighted, sir.”
His face lit up with his pleasure. “Oh!” he exclaimed, and clapped an arm across his barrel chest, the kerchief waving like a little flag between his fingers, “you do me such honor, Lady Ava!” He quickly stuffed the kerchief in his pocket and offered his hand, broad palm up.
Ava reluctantly slipped her hand into the paw he offered and shot a look of helplessness at Phoebe and Greer as Sir Garrett marched her toward the dance floor.
On the opposite side of the ballroom, Harrison had kicked Jared onto the dance floor so that he might have a moment with a young woman who seemed more interested in Jared than him. Jared had obliged Harrison’s interest in the woman by asking Mrs. Honeycutt, a woman whose personal company he had enjoyed for three full weeks one summer while her husband was in Scotland, to stand up with him for a quadrille. He preferred the quadrille for old lovers, as the dance was performed with four in a square, which meant there was really no place with sufficient privacy to talk about hurt feelings over old news, as women were wont to do.
A waltz, on the other hand, was a very private dance and lent itself to the whispering of amorous suggestions to women he had not yet had the pleasure of knowing.
Mrs. Honeycutt was determined, however, to tell him what she thought. “I have missed you,” she whispered as he took her arm and twirled her around. Jared said nothing, just smiled, let her go, and moved around the square to Lady Williamson. But when he turned to face Mrs. Honeycutt again, she looked at him like a sad little puppy that was not permitted to go abroad with its master.
Jared smiled charmingly, bowed his head, and stepped forward, took her hands in his, went round, and let her go. And when he stepped back to his position, he collided hard with someone at his back.
“Oh dear!” Lady Williamson exclaimed, looking over his shoulder.
Jared quickly pivoted about; the person who had collided with him was an attractive young woman with dark blond hair and startlingly pale green eyes. She was, unfortunately, in the hands of Sir Garrett.
“I do beg your pardon, my lord,” Garrett blustered, and groped awkwardly for the hands of his dance partner as a bead of perspiration ran down his temple.
The woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Jared in a funny way, as if she was perhaps a bit mortified, but far more amused to have been swung so violently into him. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she gave him an apologetic shrug of her shoulders before turning her full attention to Sir Garrett again.
As well she should have. Her very life was at stake.
Jared turned back to his square and fell easily into step once again. But as he passed around the circle, he caught the eye of the woman again. She smiled fully at him, and it struck him that there was no vanity or guile—or perhaps more important, no avarice—in that smile. So many women looked at him with the gleam of want in their eyes.
But this one had green eyes full of laughter, and he realized, watching her be manhandled by Garrett again, that she was not attempting to gain his attention as he might have expected, but was genuinely amused by the clumsy dancing she was being forced to endure.
That, he thought, was refreshingly different. He knew far too many members of the fairer sex who would have been quite appalled by Garrett’s handling and would have said as much. The man was a war veteran and fiercely loyal to the crown, and what he lacked in social finesse he made up tenfold in courage. Jared respected the woman’s ability to see beyond her partner’s bumbling dance.
He had no notion of who this woman was, but he was mildly intrigued.
When he came around to the side where he might see her again, Sir Garrett’s body shielded her from view, and he did not have occasion to catch sight of her again on the dance floor, and for that he was sorry.
Two
S ome time later, at the back of the ballroom, partially hidden by a massive palm, Ava, Phoebe, and Greer frowned at the slipper Ava held in her hand.
“It’s hopelessly broken,” Phoebe declared, flicking the heel with her finger. The offending piece clung to the rest of the shoe by an alarmingly small sliver of silk. “And I worked so hard to bead it,” she added with a bit of a pout.
&
nbsp; What Phoebe lacked in self-confidence she made up in creative endeavors. She was a master at taking their purchased gowns and shoes and accoutrements and enhancing them with embroidery and beading to make them truly original. She had beaded the slippers Ava was wearing over a fortnight this winter, painstakingly creating tiny suns that matched the dark gold embroidery she’d done on the blue silk gown Ava was wearing. She’d also strung small, glittering beads together that the three of them wore wrapped in their hair.
“Clumsy Sir Garrett,” Ava sighed. “He hadn’t the slightest notion of the steps, and he moved forward instead of backward as he ought to have done, and pushed me right off the edge of the dance floor.”
“Poor man,” Greer said. “To be so hopelessly besotted with a woman who shall not have him.”
“Of course I shall not have him,” Ava muttered as she studied her shoe. “If he were to offer, I’d politely decline and suggest he set his sights on Miss Holcomb. She would be delighted to receive an offer from a knight.”
“Aunt Cassandra said you really must begin to consider all serious offers,” Greer reminded her.
Phoebe and Ava stopped in their examination of the slipper and looked at Greer. Greer raised a brow.
“Did she indeed? And pray tell, what did she say of you?” Ava asked. “You are only a year younger than me, and you’ve had one serious offer this young Season that you refused.”
“My circumstance is quite different from yours,” Greer said calmly. “I cannot possibly consent to marry a man who will not read as much as a newspaper, and Lord Winston, by his own admission, does not enjoy reading at all. In fact, he admitted quite plainly that he believes books are a frivolous expense.”
“There, you see?” Ava asked as she slipped her foot into the offending shoe. “You have made my point. We are not bound to accept offers from gentlemen we cannot abide every day for the rest of our lives. It is the same reason I cannot accept Sir Garrett’s offer.”
“No…but Lord Downey might,” Greer suggested, referring to her aunt Cassandra’s current husband, Ava and Phoebe’s stepfather.
Ava frowned at her cousin. “Fortunately, Mother is not bound to agree with Lord Downey’s preferences. If Mother wasn’t feeling unwell and was in attendance tonight, she would remind you that she would never marry me away to Sir Garrett, as a match with him would be ‘neither convenient nor inspired,’ ” she said, mimicking her mother.
Greer smiled—Lady Downey had told them many times that marriage was strictly a matter of convenience and fortune, and rarely inspired.
Privately, Ava thought her mother’s second marriage to Lord Downey was neither very convenient nor inspired, and really did not see the allure of such an arrangement at all. At two and twenty, Ava was one of the oldest unmarried women among the Quality still considered to be marriageable, and yet she saw no reason to rush into a match—her mother’s fortune was more than enough to keep them all quite happy. Why shouldn’t one hope for compatibility and affection above fortune? What purpose was there in a marriage of convenience if a young lady already had a suitable fortune to provide for her? Ava preferred to wait for an offer from a man she might love.
“I do not think Sir Garrett will offer for you tonight,” Phoebe said. “Nor do I think you will dance another set this evening, as your shoe cannot be repaired. You’d best sit with Lady Purnam until she’s ready to see us home.”
Lady Purnam was their mother’s closest and dearest friend, and had instantly offered to see the three young women to the ball when Lady Downey began to feel unwell. The offer was met with some reluctance by Ava, Phoebe, and Greer, for Lady Purnam believed, by virtue of her close association with their mother, that she had a duty to insinuate herself into their lives and instruct them on all matters to do with propriety. She could be very tiresome in that regard, and the suggestion that Ava might have to sit an entire evening with her was more than she could possibly endure. “Sit alongside Lady Purnam and listen to her chatter all evening while I suffer the undying attention of Sir Garrett? Thank you, but I’d rather walk home.”
“Ava, don’t be silly, you can’t possibly walk. The rain is turning to sleet and your shoe is broken,” Phoebe reminded her.
“I can think of nothing worse than sitting in a chair at a ball while everyone dances past me,” Ava said. “I’ll ask Lady Fontaine to send a footman to attend me,” she said, and suddenly smiled. “Did you see the one with the golden hair and lovely brown eyes?”
Phoebe snorted. “A footman? Now I am convinced more than ever you are daft,” she said, and held out her arm. “Come on, then. To Lady Purnam’s side.”
With a groan of capitulation, Ava took Phoebe’s arm, and listing a little to the left, allowed Phoebe and Greer to escort her across the room.
Lady Purnam was seated in a thronelike chair near the dance floor, closely peering through her lorgnette and studying each pair of dancers that waltzed by. She was delighted to have Ava’s company and waved at a footman to have a chair brought over.
Ava sat, but a little petulantly and frowning at the departing backs of her sister and cousin as they joined Miss Holcomb at the punch bowl.
“A broken shoe, eh?” Lady Purnam said, directing her lorgnette at Ava’s feet. “Happened to me once, at Ascot. The heel broke and I couldn’t possibly make my way to the railing to see the end of the horse race.”
“How unfortunate.”
“It was terribly unfortunate. Lord Purnam was in quite a dither, for his horse held the lead until it was bumped by the king’s horse and faltered.” She turned suddenly toward Ava and said dramatically, “He never recovered.”
“The horse? Or Lord Purnam?” Ava asked innocently.
Lady Purnam clucked her tongue. “The horse, of course!” She turned back to the dancing and picked up a fan, and began to fan her bosom. “To have a broken shoe at a ball is inconvenient, isn’t it? You cannot dance, and you dare not say whyever not when a gentleman inquires. Gentlemen should not hear of such things as flawed garments, shoes, and other personal articles.”
Ava glanced curiously at Lady Purnam. “I cannot mention a broken shoe?”
“No,” Lady Purnam said, shaking her head. “It is uncouth to mention a broken shoe. A gentleman will want to repair it, which would put him in direct contact with your foot, which is connected to your leg, of course, and it will turn his thoughts to forbidden things.”
Ava failed to see how a broken shoe could bring to mind anything other than a broken shoe. “But I—”
“You may politely decline,” Lady Purnam said sternly, with a pointed look at Ava. “But you must never give a gentleman such a personal reason for your decline.”
Dear God. Lady Purnam’s idea of propriety seemed positively medieval and all too meddlesome. But Lady Downey had trained Ava to be nothing if not exceedingly polite, and with a slight sigh, she resigned herself and leaned back in her chair.
“Up, dear,” Lady Purnam said, tapping her knee with her fan. “Up, up, up,” she said with each subsequent tap to her knee.
Ava sat up, her back straight and stiff, her feet tucked carefully under the hem of her gown, her hands folded in her lap. After a moment, however, she was already beginning to feel mad with tedium. She could not sit like a duck on a pond all night, so Ava carefully began to persuade Lady Purnam to have her new barouche plucked from the stream of carriages outside to drive Ava home.
Across the ballroom, near the French doors leading to the terrace, Middleton and Harrison stood near a small side cart that held various spirits. They’d just come from the gaming room, where they had both been successful. Harrison was two hundred pounds richer for his trumping of Lord Haverty, a notorious gambler, and Jared had wagered—and won—a private ride around Hyde Park in his coach in the company of Lady Tremayne. It was an assignation Lady Tremayne had spent several months pursuing, and with a bit of whiskey in him, Jared was happy to oblige her.
As he gave Lady Tremayne the requested half hour to extract h
erself from her friends and, more important, her husband, Jared joined Harrison in the ballroom to have a drink before Harrison returned to the gaming tables and Jared escaped this affair altogether. As he sipped his whiskey and idly watched the dancing, his gaze inadvertently landed on the woman he’d seen dancing with Sir Garrett. She was seated next to Lady Purnam, looking very bothered by something or someone.
He nudged Harrison and nodded in her direction. “Who is she?” he asked. “The woman in the blue, seated next to Lady Purnam.”
“Lady Ava Fairchild,” Harrison said instantly. The man surprised Jared at times with his knowledge of what seemed to be virtually everyone in the ton. “One of Lord Downey’s stepdaughters.”
That was mildly interesting. Lord Downey was not the sort of man Jared could ever call friend.
“She’s been out two, perhaps three years now. Rather remarked for being a bit of a coquette.” He glanced at Jared sidelong. “Why the interest? It’s not as if you have an eye for debutantes.”
Jared shrugged. “I have no particular eye for her or anyone else.” He shifted his gaze past Lady Ava, scanning the crowd, and unfortunately, caught Lady Elizabeth’s eye. She smiled brightly, as did several birds in her little flock. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.
Harrison followed his gaze and chuckled. “Go on, then, have a dance with anyone but her,” he suggested. “Nothing will turn a woman away as quickly as one dancing with another partner. They can’t abide being ignored, you know.”
That sounded like sage advice to Jared, and he handed his glass to Harrison. “Thank you, sir, for a most excellent idea,” he said, and without thought, started in the direction of Lady Ava Fairchild.
