by Fran Baker
“Stunning, Miss Hampton, truly stunning!” declared Lady Spencer with another tinkling laugh. She took Francie’s hand and led her back to a row of seats lining the wall. “Now we must have comfortable coze before I release you to all the beaux who are no doubt wishing me to perdition. Tell me all about your school, my child, and whether you are happy.”
Both her tone and look were unexpectedly serious, but Francie sat beside Lady Spencer and did her best to relate three years’ worth of experiences in as many minutes. While speaking, she caught a glimpse of Mary dancing with Mr. Harvey and smiled. But her smile vanished as her eyes fell upon Sir Thomas chatting amiably with Miss Louise Benton, a young miss whose blond locks struck Francie as sadly insipid and whose character was obviously outrageously fast. Suddenly she realized she had fallen silent and returned her attention to Lady Spencer, a pink flush slowly covering her features.
“I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Lady Spencer appeared to be watching her closely. “But you were busily looking at that scamp of a son of mine and did not hear.”
Francie dropped her gaze to her lap and knew a burning shame. To be caught staring at him! She was filled with self-revulsion, but Lady Spencer passed over her humiliation as if it were nothing, repeating her query casually.
“I asked if everything was in order for Friday night, my dear. Is there anything I might do to aid you in the last minute preparations?”
“Thank you, but I believe there is little left to do. You need only arrive at the ball and enjoy yourself,” Francie replied as she strove to regain her composure. “Mama, of course, is quite worn out with merely thinking about it.”
“And how is your mother? Is she at home?”
“No, she is in the card room, playing for pennies with the same enthusiasm she plays for pounds. Card playing is the one activity in which Mama exerts herself.”
“Then I must go in and see her,” Lady Spencer announced, rising as she spoke. Her hand fluttered and, as if in response to some signal, Sir Thomas appeared. “Ah, there you are, Thomas. I think perhaps it is time Miss Hampton enjoyed herself. I’ve monopolized her to a shocking degree when I’m certain she would far rather have been dancing.”
“Oh, no, Lady Spencer,” Francie protested. But her words fell into empty air. Her ladyship had sailed off, leaving Francie staring up at the one man she most wished to avoid.
She had not seen him since yesterday’s confrontation in the sitting room and was uncertain how to respond to the warmth in his eyes. Her own mood was somewhat less than cordial, for she very much resented his ability to reduce her heartbeat to a mere echo with only a look. Moreover, she knew that if she succeeded in putting a stop to his betrothment before the ball on Friday, she would be leaving for Norfolk within the week. And though she told herself that should be cause for rejoicing, she simply felt more dispirited than ever.
“Would you care to dance, Miss Hampton?” he asked with a formal bow contradicted by the twinkle in his azure eyes.
“I—er, I—,” she sputtered, twisting her hands over the sticks of her fan.
“Indecisive, Miss Hampton?” he murmured as he put out his hand. “How very unlike you, my dear.”
She did not take the proffered hand, but wound her fingers more tightly around her fan. “Of course not!” she said peevishly, looking about the rooms as if seeking an avenue of escape. “It’s just that—just that I’ve already promised this dance to someone else.”
“Oh, and may I ask to whom? Your partner seems lamentably late in coming to claim his dance,” Sir Thomas said with the suggestion of a laugh.
Francie’s head snapped up, but her anger, her will to resist, faded before the intensity in his dark gaze.
Rescue materialized in the form of Mr. Harvey, with Mary on his arm. Although she saw the unusual color mantling her sister’s woeful face, Francie did not take the time to consider the cause. She stood up and forced a laugh. “But here is my partner, Sir Thomas. I had begun to think, Mr. Harvey, you were going to forget my dance.”
She took his arm and whisked him away before he could utter a disclaimer. As they moved toward the set forming, however, Francie noted that her escort held himself even more stiffly than usual. Casting a swift glance at his profile, she saw a swarthy stain upon his skin. As he looked down at her, the cleft in his chin seemed more deeply graven. She paused, then stopped altogether.
“Would you rather sit out this dance, Mr. Harvey?” she asked in a quiet voice. “I do not truly wish to dance, you know.”
He appeared not to care, responding to her inquiry with a monosyllable that could well have passed for a grunt. They retired, instead, to a sofa, where they settled in silence. Across the room, Francie saw her sister sitting beside Sir Thomas. She still looked unaccountably ablush, far more so than could have been attributed to the exertion of the country dance.
Keeping her eyes fixed on her sister, Francie remarked calmly, “Mary does not look herself this evening, Mr. Harvey. I do wonder if she is feeling out of sorts.”
“I would not know,” he responded shortly.
“Would you not?” Francie faced him. “But I think perhaps you would. She did not look so cast down before your dance.”
Though she would not have thought it possible, the gentleman sat more rigidly than before. When he did not comment, Francie swept her gaze over the ever-changing kaleidoscope of dancers and said evenly, “If, perhaps, my sister has behaved with impropriety—”
His head jerked around and he cut in with suppressed rage. “Miss Mary has made known her opinion that it is I who have acted indecorously!”
“Oh,” Francie said, taken aback. After a moment she ventured cautiously, “May I inquire as to the nature of her . . her exact comments?”
He emitted a short, butter laugh. “I make no doubt she will shortly favor you—perhaps everyone!—with her views, ma’am. She believes that I have allowed—no, encouraged attentions from yourself, Miss Hampton. It is her opinion that I am little better a blackguard out to break your heart.”
“Did—did she actually say that?”
“Not in so many words,” he admitted through clenched teeth. “But her meaning was clear enough, ma’am. Vividly clear!”
Francie paled. This was a complication she had never envisioned. That Mary should be jealous of her! She leaned toward Mr. Harvey and gently laid her hand upon his tense arm. “Perhaps if I were to speak with her, explain to her that you have never given me the least cause—”
“Oh, there is no need to put yourself out, ma’am. It does not matter to me what she thinks. If she chooses to believe me such a pretty sort of fellow, it is all one with me.”
His tightened jaw and his furious gaze belied this impassioned declaration. But Francie had no chance to point this out to the gentleman, for it seemed that, once loosened, his intemperate tongue had no wish to stop.
“As if she has any room to criticize others! She cares only for wealth and luxury. True love means less than nothing to her. No, she chooses a man whose reputation casts the worst indiscretion of mine in the shade.”
It occurred to Francie that she had never heard Mr. Harvey speak so fervently, with such little care for the propriety of his words. It dawned on her as well that jealousy and wounded pride had acted powerfully upon him, and she turned a thoughtful eye upon her sister across the way.
Just then both Mary and Sir Thomas happened to look in her direction. Francie seized the moment. She pressed more closely to Mr. Harvey, gazed soulfully up into his wrathful face, and begged him to becalm himself. Artfully unfurling her fan, she hid their expressions from view and said quite briskly that if he wished to make so great a cake of himself, it was all very well and good, but she would have thought he would have done better to show Miss Mary a thing or two.
“What do you mean?” The angry glint in his hazel eyes sharpened to a suspicious curiosity.
“Why only that if Mary thinks you such
a womanizer, then you should act the part! She would soon realize that you are not the man to be so insulted.”
Swallowing her impatience, Francie held her breath while he considered her words. He was obviously torn between the dread of behaving improperly and the desire to show Mary Hampton how little her words could wound him. He was still visibly wavering when a shadow fell over them.
“I trust you enjoyed your dance,” Sir Thomas said dryly.
Francie’s fan descended slowly, revealing a pair of flushed faces. Her lips curved and she said airily, “Oh, we enjoyed ourselves vastly, I assure you.”
A sharp hiss of breath brought Francie’s gaze round to meet Mary’s accusing stare. Her cornflower-blue eyes were darkened by a disbelieving hurt, and at last Francie felt as if she were making progress. Telling herself it was for Mary’s good, she forced a bright smile to her lips. “We had no wish to step out in a Scots reel when we might be more together here, did we, Frederick?”
She faced Mr. Harvey with a smile still plastered to her mouth, but with her hard eyes commanding him to fall in with her plans. Her body felt limp with relief when, after an infinitesimal hesitation, he said, “No, we did not . . . Frances.” Valiantly he infused his voice with a vestige of warmth.
“How touching,” the baronet commented in tones of iron. “But I believe this is my dance, Miss Hampton—unless you wish to sit this one out with me.”
“I do not think she wishes to do either,” Mr. Harvey said with rare belligerency.
Taking in the sudden blanching of her sister’s previously crimson cheeks, Francie immediately disagreed. “Oh, but I would welcome a dance. I do feel the need of some exercise.”
Jumping to her feet, she put out a hand to Sir Thomas while Mr. Harvey committed himself wholeheartedly to his part by rising beside her, glowering at the baronet and saying truculently, “I shall await your return to my side.”
“Oh, la, Frederick, you say the most precious things,” Francie trilled. Catching the shock upon Mary’s face, Francie became instantly certain she had missed her true vocation. Should the school fail, she would turn to the stage.
Abruptly, her hand was clamped to the baronet’s side, and she was hauled firmly away. Before she could remonstrate, he swept away her very breath by stating harshly, “I applaud you on your admirable performance, Miss Hampton, and can only wonder that you waste yourself on so small an audience.”
With remarkable restraint, she contented herself with a glare at the baronet’s handsome profile as he led her into the quadrille. Since Lady Jersey had introduced this French dance at Almack’s the year before, it had become one of the most popular and was considered a must at every dancing class. Miss Hampton, however, needed no lessons, for she executed the steps with her usual light grace, which, considering the turbulent state of her emotions, was no insignificant feat.
Uncertain whether to give herself up to the joy of simply being near Sir Thomas or the sorrow of counting the moments of what in all likelihood must be their last dance together, Francie’s feelings changed from laughter to tears with each turn of the dance. And all the while Sir Thomas’s taunting comment plagued her, making her dizzy with worry.
If he suspected her regard for Mr. Harvey was a sham, it would ruin everything. Somehow she must convince him—and Mary—otherwise. Tonight and tomorrow were all she had left in which to bring her sister to her senses. After several wordless turns, she finally addressed her partner.
“You think, then, that I overplayed my hand.” A thread of a sigh escaped her.
His brows shot upward; his lids drew downward. “You never ceased to amaze me, my dear. No other lady of my acquaintance would have admitted her deception.”
“But, you see, I do so for selfish reasons. I wish to ask your advice.”
From beneath the fringe of her lowered lashes, she saw to her satisfaction that she had his full attention. A quizzical caution stole over his features as he inquired tonelessly, “Indeed? And how may I be of service?”
“You may recall that I spoke to you of . . . of my affection for a certain gentleman.” At her reminder, his face went taut, his mouth became set in an uncompromising line, and she went on in a rush before courage failed her altogether. “I told you then that he did not care for me in return. Well, tonight he has at last . . . favored me with a show of regard, and I fear I may have put him off being . . . too forward. But I was uncertain, you see, how best to encourage him.”
The last words sounded a little desperate even to her own ears, for as she spoke, the baronet’s grip upon her hand tightened until she felt certain she had been bruised. Her speech rang with compelling distress, and Sir Thomas reacted as if he had been slapped. He dropped her hand without ceremony and turned his back on her, leaving her standing in midstep. She raced after him, catching his arm and trying vainly to act as if nothing untoward were occurring.
“What on earth are you doing? Do you want to cause a scene here of all places?” she hissed in his ear, then grinned foolishly at Mrs. Benton Bonds in passing, hoping the grande dame saw nothing amiss. “Well? Answer me!”
He stopped with such abruptness that Francie was thrown slightly off balance as she skidded to a halt beside him. With cold precision, he ran his gaze from the top of her neatly coiled hair to the bottom of her vadyked hem, then back again to rest on her face. His eyes were the blue of a darkly frozen river, and Francie saw nothing but a disgust of her within them.
“You have no need to ask advice on how to encourage a man, my little sweet,” he ground out in a furious whisper. “You have been doing so with rare abandonment since you came out of the schoolroom.”
“How dare you—you of all people!—censure my behavior!” Francie returned in equally irate undertone.
“If you truly want my advice, Miss Hampton—”
“I don’t!”
“—then I suggest you put that poor fool out of his misery before he believes you to be sincere.”
“I am sincere, sir!”
“You, my love, have never been sincere,” countered the white-lipped baronet. He detached her hand from his sleeve as if it repulsed him and paused to throw over his shoulder, “You don’t know the meaning of the word, Francie.”
Then he was gone, leaving her standing alone in the midst of the colorful swirl of dancers.
Chapter 13
Somehow, despite feeling deprived of the power to move or speak, Francie managed to return with carefully measured steps to the sofa where Mr. Harvey awaited. She saw no sign of Mary and tried to pretend she neither saw nor heard the covert glances and furtive whispers of the people around her. All the while her hurt and humiliation festered like an uncleaned wound. Calmly accepting Mr. Harvey’s offer to dance, placidly nodding to this acquaintance or that, Francie burned with a longing to flay all the malicious gossipmongers.
But her fury with Sir Thomas blazed even higher. How dare he walk away from her in the middle of a dance! How could he be so lost to all propriety as to leave her stranded in the center of the ton’s most prattling clique?
Not once did Francie give any indication that she was mentally skewering Sir Thomas Spencer on the end of a pointed spear. With her head high, she danced and chattered with so much animation that what could have easily become a scandalous incident died stillborn.
It was well after midnight before Francie remember her sister. When she did, remorse engulfed her. How could she be so enmeshed in the tangled web of her own problems as to forget Mary? Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and her face colored with shame as she recognized the depths of her own selfishness. As she was at that moment once again at Mr. Harvey’s side, she begged him to excuse her. He did not do so however, but regarded her with a slight frown.
“What is it, Miss Hampton?” he finally inquired. “Do you feel unwell?”
“No, no. It’s just that I need to find Mary.” She twisted the sticks of her fan. “Have you seen her?”
“No,” he said, his face set i
n a hard mask.
She turned her gaze upon the crowd, scanning the belles and beaux whisking through the room in a country dance, then searching the crush of lookers-on. Nowhere was the young miss to be seen, which increased Francie’s anxiety and guilt.
“Where can she have got to?” she whispered, wanting only to find her and retreat from this nightmare.
Then it occurred to her that Sir Thomas, too, was not to be found amongst those in the assembly rooms. Despite her best intentions, a spurt of jealously shot through her. Stiff with new purpose, she faced Mr. Harvey.
“Sir, you were right. I do feel unwell and must retire. Would you excuse me? I shall go now to my mother, then home.”
“But of course,” he answered, his voice expressionless. “Permit me to take you to your mother.”
They had crossed but halfway to the card room when they came upon Mrs. Hampton making desultory progress toward them.
“So there you are at last,” she sighed.
“I was coming to ask you if we might go home,” Francie said. “I feel unwell and . . . I think perhaps Mary has already gone on.”
“Why, yes,” returned her mother, looking surprised. Then her heavy lids drooped over the curiously alert eyes and she added in fatigued tones, “She, too, felt unwell. Isn’t it odd? I trust you are not both catching something. But Sir Thomas saw Mary home quite some time ago. Did you not know?”
Francie avoided her mother’s sharp gaze by turning to bid Mr. Harvey goodnight. He continued on into the card room to find Lady Rockhill while the Hampton ladies departed for home. The carriage ride was unusually silent, with Francie only once coming out of her private reverie to inquire how much her mother had lost at piquet.
