Diary of an Accidental Wallflower

by Jennifer McQuiston

  “The belladonna extract is a temporary fix, at best,” he warned, “and may well do more damage to your heart in the long term. What you need is rest, and plenty of it.”

  “But I am resting.” Lady Austerley offered him a smile, one that showed her false ivory teeth in all their preternatural glory. “You see, I am lying down on the bed while my maid curls my hair.” As if offering testimony to this nonsensical thought, the pink-cheeked maid—who’d been casting him dream-filled glances since his arrival—pulled the curling tongs from her mistress’s thinning gray hair with an audible hiss.

  “And I promise not to dance,” the countess continued, “if you would but leave a draught or two, enough to get me through this evening.”

  Daniel was sorely tempted to leave her laudanum instead, but he wasn’t sure he had the heart to deceive her into sleep. Lady Austerley could be difficult, but she had also been his first substantial client in London. Her remarkable and unexpected patronage had opened the doors of his fledgling practice, and he was only now beginning to attract the occasional notice of other well-connected clients.

  But that didn’t mean she actually listened to him.

  His client might be lying down in bed, but she was also already dressed for her ball, swaddled in a gown of gold brocade that at turns threatened to asphyxiate and dazzle. The room should have smelled of camphor, but instead it smelled of French perfume and the faint, acrid scent of burning hair. “I told you weeks ago you were making yourself ill, Lady Austerley.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “You ought to have cancelled the event then. Instead, you’ve exhausted yourself with preparations.”

  “You did tell me my remaining time fell on the side of months, rather than years, did you not?” At his nod, she shrugged her thin shoulders—unapologetically, to Daniel’s mind. “I am determined to make my last days memorable, and give them all something they won’t soon forget. What was that bit of Latin you quoted for me?”

  Her expectant pause made him want to fidget. “Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu,” he admitted reluctantly.

  It is how well you live that matters, not how long.

  He’d offered her the phrase soon after it became clear her condition was carrying her surely and steadily toward the grave. But he’d meant to encourage her to reflect on the life she had led. He’d certainly not intended it to be a dictum for how she should go on.

  Her frown shifted to a wrinkled smile. “There, you see?” she beamed, quite pleased with herself. “I am just following my doctor’s orders.”

  “Lady Austerley, you must know you are shortening the time you have left by the very choices you make now. You could easily suffer another fainting spell tonight, even with the medication,” he warned. “You were fortunate your maid was attending you during your bath this afternoon when the latest one struck, or you might have drowned. This is the second attack you’ve experienced this week, is it not?”

  The dowager countess nodded innocently.

  “My lady is perhaps forgetting several spells,” the maid piped up. “By my count, it is the fourth such episode since Monday.”

  Lady Austerley turned her gimlet glare on the younger woman. “Am I to count higher mathematics among your skills as my ladies’ maid now? I cannot believe you bothered our beleaguered doctor with that note. I imagine it had as much to do with you wishing to see him again as any need for me to. You’ve been mooning over him for months.”

  The poor maid blushed, but not before her eyes darted tellingly in Daniel’s direction. “I was thinking only of your health, my lady.”

  “Hrmmph.” Lady Austerley’s gaze shifted back. She lifted the quizzing glass she always kept around her neck, and he felt the sting of the older woman’s visual dissection. “Not that I blame you,” she added, a wrinkled smile playing about her lips. “He’s a stunning specimen, with all that thick, dark hair and those soulful brown eyes. Makes an old woman’s heart flutter, even one whose heart is just barely ticking along. Truth be told, he puts these new London bucks to shame.”

  Daniel raised a brow, determined to circle this conversation away from the issue of whether or not he was considered attractive to the female species and back around to the medical issue at hand. “Lady Austerley—” he said sternly.

  But she was not yet through. She lowered her lens and struggled to a sitting position as the maid plumped her pillow. “It’s his heart that makes him different, though. Heart of gold, to come rushing to an old lady’s aid like this. These young men today can’t be bothered to look further than their phaetons for entertainment.”

  Daniel fought the urge to roll his eyes.

  “I would have you come to the ball tonight and put my theory to the test, Dr. Merial.” Lady Austerley lifted her quizzing glass again. “Yes, yes, my personal physician in attendance. That would be just the thing to show them all.”

  Daniel breathed out through his nose. Show them what, precisely? Her loss of sanity? He was tempted to dismiss her nattering as the beginnings of dementia. But alas, he knew there was nothing at all wrong with Lady Austerley’s head. She was as lucid as a lark.

  He might have stood a better chance at changing her mind if she wasn’t.

  “It sounds as though your attacks are increasing in frequency, as I predicted they would. Your heart is failing. You should be confined to your bed, if not to ward off these periods of syncope, to at least ensure when they occur you do not risk falling and causing more serious injury.” He took in the dowager countess’s impossibly straight back. “And didn’t I advise against wearing a corset? You cannot afford to restrict your breathing further.”

  Lady Austerley waved a fist, the ropy veins crisscrossing the backs of her hands like twisted paths to truth. “I cannot have a ball without a corset, and as I’ve already said, I refuse to entertain the notion of cancelling the event. I must carry on, at least until tonight is behind me. Which is why I need you there, in case I suffer another spell.”

  “I cannot prevent these attacks,” he informed her gravely. “I can only advise you on what you must do to reduce their frequency.”

  “Perhaps you cannot prevent them, but I will feel better knowing you are there.” She tossed a bemused look at her maid, who was still star-gazing in Daniel’s direction. “And if I should be so unfortunate as to feel off-balance again, surely if you are already present we can manage another episode with far less drama than this afternoon’s little spell has entailed.”

  The maid blushed further, and tucked her head.

  Daniel hesitated. He enjoyed spending time with the dowager countess, but he already had plans for this evening, plans that involved patients who didn’t disagree with his diagnoses—namely, the unfinished cadaver he’d left lying prone on the theater table. If he agreed to this farce of an idea, he would need to slip back to his rooms now to bathe and dress instead of returning to the morgue. He’d also planned another phase of his experiment for later this evening, testing varying doses of a promising new compound called chloroform with the anesthetic regulator he was developing. Losing valuable hours at a ball was not high on his list of priorities.

  Although, if he were brutally honest, tonight’s event might benefit him in the long run. He was very afraid Lady Austerley might not live to see Christmas. He would regret the eventual loss of that income, though not as much as he would regret the loss of her sometimes prickly friendship. Tonight would be an opportunity for introductions to future clients, if nothing else.

  The countess leaned back against her mountain of plush pillows, and her hand crept out to grab his own. Her frail touch was a shock. He could feel her thready pulse, beating faintly through her bones, hinting at coming trouble. “I would ask this of you, Dr. Merial. As a favor to a scared old lady whose heart needs to last through at least one more ball.”

  Daniel swallowed his misgivings. How could he say no to such a request?

  She had no family to speak of, no remaining close friends. She was lonely and ailing and he’d
been unable to refuse the dowager countess anything since their first chance meeting, when she’d fainted dead away in St. Paul’s Cathedral and he’d been the only one with enough sense to come to her aid. He squeezed her hand. “If it would ease your mind.”

  “Excellent.” Lady Austerley smiled. “I’ll have an invitation penned for you, posthaste.”

  Chapter 3

  Clare’s ankle wasn’t better in an hour or so.

  Neither had it improved by the time the coach was brought around to the front door, nor by the time she stepped into Lady Austerley’s vaulted foyer. If anything, it was worse, sporting whimsical new shades of red and purple and stealing her breath with every step.

  “Do try to keep up, dear.” Her mother frowned over her shoulder, the red feather on her headdress bobbing with discontent. “I declare, you dawdle more like your father every day.”

  Clare gritted her teeth. She could not admit to her mother the real reason for her hesitation, or else risk being whisked home to bed. And any comparisons to Father were to be avoided if her mother was to remain in an ebullient mood this evening. She hobbled faster, her mismatched shoes clunking ominously on the marble tile.

  Step, thump. Step, thump.

  Her mother didn’t seem to notice, but Clare’s cheeks heated at the disparate sounds. She ought to be grateful Lucy was possessed of overlarge feet and, moreover, had been willing to donate an old shoe to the nearly lost cause of getting her foot into something approximating a slipper. At least she hadn’t needed to resort to wearing Geoffrey’s shoe.

  But gratitude was not foremost on Clare’s mind as her mother gave their name to the footman. She lifted her chin, knowing that aside from the travesty of her mismatched shoes, she had never looked better. Her maid had taken hours with her hair, and her new green gown was an absolute wonder, clinging to her shoulders with what appeared to be nothing more than hasty prayer. But though the gown’s voluminous skirts hid her feet from public view, they could not change the fact her ankle still felt like a sausage shoved in a too-tight casing.

  She looked out on the glittering swirl of London’s most beautiful people, her stomach twitching in anticipation. The ballroom was awash with colors and scents, by now familiar after the triumph of her first Season. She knew what to expect, whom to greet, and whom to cut. And somewhere in the crowd Mr. Alban waited, a proposal surely simmering on his tongue.

  Almost immediately she was set upon by her usual pack of friends, and her mother drifted off. “Where have you been?” Lady Sophie’s fan snapped open and shut in agitation, though her eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “Mr. Alban arrived nearly a half hour ago,” Rose supplied helpfully.

  Clare fit a careful half smile to her face as she greeted her friends. Lady Sophie Durston always stood out like a dark hothouse flower amidst the crowd, though this evening she stood out more because of her vivid pink gown. Miss Rose Evans was a classic English beauty, blond and blue-eyed. Tonight she was dressed in virginal white—though Sophie had snidely confided to Clare just last week that perhaps Rose should avoid that color, and not only because it was a miserable complement to the girl’s too-pale complexion.

  They were the young women all the men watched and the less fortunate girls envied. Together they had captured the hearts and imaginations of half the eligible men in the room. But since the start of this Season, Clare had been interested in only one of those hearts, and her friends knew it all too well.

  She risked a veiled peek in Mr. Alban’s direction. He was speaking with Sophie’s father, a pompous windbag of an earl who had recently helped secure Parliament’s new ban on public meetings. Intended to hobble supporters of the growing Chartist movement, the news had been splashed across all the papers and bandied about polite Society in hushed, worried tones. She briefly wondered which side of the debate Alban claimed, though it was something she could never ask during the space of a waltz.

  But as the overhead chandelier caught the white flash of his teeth, those distracting thoughts fell away. Oh, but he looked resplendent tonight in a dark jacket and emerald waistcoat, his chestnut hair gleaming. She could almost see him looking just so across a morning breakfast table, polished to a shine by her careful attentions, the Times spread out amicably between them.

  “Has Mr. Alban asked anyone to dance?” she asked, turning away from the heart-stopping sight of him so she could not be accused of mooning overlong.

  “Not just yet,” Rose piped up from Sophie’s elbow, where she almost always hovered like a pale, blond shadow.

  “He’s been speaking with Father since he arrived,” Sophie confirmed, her voice a low purr. “Business over pleasure, you know.”

  Clare was relieved to hear he had not been busy with other girls’ dance cards, though she wasn’t worried. Mr. Alban had been remarkably persistent in asking her to dance the first waltz each evening. She harbored no doubts that this evening would go the same way.

  As the musicians began to take their seats behind the screen of potted greenery that had been erected to hide them from view, a young man approached their group with the sort of enthusiasm usually displayed by unruly puppies—or, barring that, their eight-year-old owners.

  “Good evening, Miss Westmore!”

  Clare sighed, knowing she must acknowledge him. “Good evening, Mr. Meeks.”

  He beamed at her, though she’d gifted him with the barest of greetings. “I was honored last week when you said you would grant me the first dance this evening.”

  Clare gripped her dance card. Had she really done something so rash? He was a perfectly unthreatening specimen of a young man, but he was also one of the gentlemen Mother had encouraged far too enthusiastically last year. Still, Clare was predisposed to be kind. He meant well, even if he didn’t make her heart stir with anything other sympathy.

  And she liked to think she would have honored her agreement to dance with the young man, had things been different. But the conversation with Meeks had occurred one week and one turned ankle ago. She could scarcely be expected to honor such a promise given her current circumstances.

  “I am afraid you must have misunderstood.” She shook her head, knowing her ankle was unlikely to last more than a dance or two. “I am otherwise engaged.”

  He deflated before her eyes. “Oh. I see.” His feet shuffled as he turned to Sophie and Rose, a nervous sheen on his high forehead. “Perhaps, then, if either of you are free?”

  Sophie shook her head in mock regret. “I am afraid you are far too tardy in asking, Mr. Meeks. Our cards are already full.” She pointed her fan toward a line of restless young ladies sitting against the far wall of the ballroom. “You might aim your sights over there. I feel sure someone in the wallflower line will still have a few open spots remaining for a gentleman of your punctuality.”

  Mr. Meeks’s cheeks flared with color as Rose tittered behind a gloved hand. As he turned away and began to trudge toward the wallflower line, Clare sighed. “Honestly, Sophie, was it necessary to be so cruel? He’s done naught to earn our ire.”

  “Oh, don’t look so glum,” Sophie chided. She flicked her fan open and fluttered it lazily below her green eyes. “Truly, the occasional set-down is the best thing all around for him. Have you forgotten about that debacle last year, when he had the gall to think you might consider his proposal?” The air rang with her light laughter. “It isn’t as though he should harbor hopes for anything beyond the occasional dance where we are concerned.”

  Clare held her tongue. It was true she had set her sights higher than a proposal from Meeks, but that did not mean she thought it was all right to snub him. There were some in the crowd who thought she should have accepted his proposal, her mother among them. After all, Mr. Meeks had an annual income of two thousand pounds and would one day be a viscount, the same title as her own father. There was potential there, to be sure.

  But Sophie had decided, based on some unfathomable criteria only she knew, that Mr. Meeks was not within their sphere.


  In contrast, though he was only the heir presumptive to a dukedom, Mr. Alban had been immediately welcomed into Sophie’s circle. Of course, he was handsome as sin, something Mr. Meeks had no hope of claiming. Furthermore, the elderly Duke of Harrington was clearly consumptive, and, rumor had it, none too interested in females, so Alban was as good as the heir apparent in many eyes.

  Still, it frightened Clare sometimes to see how unpredictable the tide of public opinion could be. Next year Lucy would be out among this harsh crowd, and in a few short years Geoffrey would also be navigating this same social gauntlet. She didn’t like to think that her siblings—embarrassing though they may be—might be similarly sized up and dismissed.

  So tonight she offered her friends nothing more questionable than an agreeable nod. Because being included in Sophie’s gilded circle was far better than being shoved outside it, and she’d worked too hard to get here to ruin it tonight in a fit of misplaced kindness.

  As the opening strains of the first set of the evening rang out, Sophie’s lips curved upward. “Not that I would ever question your desire to wait for a better offer than was afforded by Mr. Meeks, but you’ve just arrived.”

  “Yes,” Rose added, suspicion adding a half octave to her voice. “What was that nonsense about being otherwise engaged? You can’t have a single name on your dance card yet.”

  “I . . . I might sit out the first set.” At their looks of horror, Clare tried to smile, though she suspected it came out more as a grimace. “I’m a little fatigued this evening. I might prefer to save my strength to dance with Mr. Alban.”

  “You do look a trifle pale.” Sophie’s hand reached out to gently squeeze Clare’s arm. “Heavens, what are we thinking, chattering away like magpies when you look close to swooning? You need to sit down and rest.” She inclined her head toward the row of chairs she had earlier pointed out to Meeks. “There’s a prime seat, just there. Now, which dance were you hoping for from Alban? Maybe I can help hurry him along.”