Catherine almost sighed. That was three years ago. Her dress was only two years old.
She could not imagine wanting to see Miss Seaver ball after ball after ball. Why was Lucy friends with this person?
“Well, I thought it might be my only hope for being noticed in such a crowd of lovely girls,” Catherine finally said somberly. And wholly ironically. “I’m glad to see my strategy worked.”
Miss Seaver looked uncertain.
Lucy cast her a wry look.
“But...” Miss Seaver continued, “I told my friend to tell him that I didn’t know where your chaperone might be.” She delivered this with wide-eyed innocence and gave a little shrug.
Catherine’s heart sank. “But... Lady Wisterberg is in the game room. And I thought...”
She was going to say, “I thought everyone knew that, and you certainly did, too,” but it might have embarrassed Lucy.
“As it so happens, he sought me out for clarification, and I’m going to be dancing the waltz with Lord Vaughn tonight.” This was Miss Seaver’s coup de grâce. “I shall say kind things about you to him during it,” she magnanimously lied to Catherine.
Catherine and Lucy stared at Miss Seaver, a bit awestruck.
If this was a chess game, they’d been roundly outplayed. Because now Mr. Hargrove looked a trifle jealous at the notion of Miss Seaver dancing with the young heir, and Lucy looked anxious about the fact that Mr. Hargrove was jealous, and Miss Seaver had snatched the attention of an heir from Catherine.
She recalled what Lord Kirke had said, about putting his enemy or rival Farquar on the back foot, which was where he’d wanted him. And this was what Miss Seaver was attempting to do: put Lucy and Catherine on the back foot.
On the one hand it was intriguing; on the other it was dispiriting. Catherine didn’t think there was a chance in the world she could negotiate an entire season this way. Sincerity was her native language. She’d learned when she was much younger that lies were a drag on the spirit. She could just about trace this lesson to the day she’d sneaked a jar of jam from the kitchen, eaten nearly all of it, lied about it, lay upstairs with a stomachache—and then was compelled to eat dinner. She’d been casting her accounts for days.
She’d likely make a terrible politician, should the day come when women not only voted, but were elected.
Miss Seaver wouldn’t dare say the things she was saying if he were standing here with them, she thought. He wassomebody.
She was nobody.
She suddenly felt profoundly like a bumpkin in her two-year-old green dress. No, worse: as exposed as if she were naked. Before she could brace herself against it with anything like reason, desolation whistled through her and took her breath away.
What delusion had made her believe she’d been in any way prepared for London? She stood in the ballroom now, motionless, airless, and wondered if she knew herself at all.
No matter what, she was still without a partner for the next few dances.
And while Mr. Hargrove, Miss Seaver, and Lucy went off to dance their quadrille, she went in search of a comforting place to wait.
“Come, Kirke. Help me sell some newspapers.” Thomas Barnes, editor ofTheTimesexhaled his cheroot smoke, which joined the cloud wreathing the men in the Earl of Southam’s library. “Go out there in the Commons and bang on about something patriotic to get English hearts pumping. You know—‘The intoxication of victory! What man is free and et cetera!’ You know, that thing you do.”
Barnes actually did a creditable Welsh accent. Kirke was darkly amused.
The editor shook his head admiringly, wistfully, and added, “Now that wassomespeech.”
But there was a hint of warning in it. A suggestion that everyone was prepared to be indulgent of Kirke the politician, with his quirks and secret scandals and penchant for pushing everyone toward change, as long as he continued to perform in ways that benefited and entertained them.
“I must thank you for the suggestion, Barnes,” hesaid evenly. “As it never would have occurred to me, otherwise.”
Barnes, not without a sense of humor, hiked a brow and the corner of his mouth.
But Dominic could feel his inner barometer rising.
Across from Kirke, the odious Bertram Rowley—why washeinvited?—was smirking.
“I’m looking forward to our contest next year, Kirke.” Rowley’s speaking voice called to mind a goat awakening from a rough night of debauchery.
Kirke smiled and tipped his head to study Rowley quizzically.