“You are a great success, then, Frances, as I knew you would be,” he said.
“Mama says we will have vouchers for Almack’s by next week,” she said. “It is a great bore there, so I have heard, but of course it is the thing to do to appear there. Doubtless within the next week or two I will be permitted to waltz too. It is very provoking to be prohibited from performing the dance until one has had the approval of one of the old ladies from Almack’s.”
“I am quite sure you will not have long to wait, Frances,” he said.
And he suddenly realized why he had always found Frances’s prattling tedious while he was amused by Abigail’s. Frances was incurably conceited. Abby was not. When she had admired her appearance earlier that evening, she had done so with a merry laugh and the acknowledgment that she would be outshone as soon as she was in other female company.
And yet she was not outshone, he thought, glancing at her once more.
“It was very kind of you to marry Lady Severn,” Frances said, and his eyes focused on his partner again.
“Kind?” he said.
“And greatly condescending,” she said, “to marry a poor relative to save her from destitution.”
“There is a very distant connection of blood between Abby and me,” he said. “And I married her because I wished to do so, Frances.”
She smiled kindly at him. “She was in service?” she said. “With a cit? And was dismissed for excessive familiarity with her employer’s son, though I am quite sure the charge was unjust. She would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to find another post, of course. And so you married her, my lord. It was very noble of you.”
Galloway had certainly done his homework, the earl thought. Had he told Frances merely to reassure her, to make her feel less humiliated by the loss of a prospective suitor? Or did he mean to cause mischief?
He smiled. “You have omitted one detail, Frances,” he said, “and the key one too. I fell in love with her.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, looking over his shoulder.
“Aunt Irene was very upset when that woman walked along the receiving line with Lord Sorenson and we were all obliged to be civil to her. Perhaps Lady Severn knew her before you elevated her socially, my lord. Or perhaps she does not know that it is not the thing to associate with her.”
The earl turned his head to look at his wife, who was no longer dancing with Chartleigh but was standing close to one of the windows with Mrs. Harper.#p#分页标题#e#
“Or perhaps they are merely exchanging courtesies,”he said. “What are your plans for the coming weeks, Frances?”
He knew the girl well enough to understand that answering that particular question would occupy her for the rest of the set.
They were not merely exchanging courtesies, he saw in another glance across the room. They were deep in conversation.
“I HEARD ABOUT YOUR MARRIAGE,” Mrs. Harper was saying to Abigail. “I was delighted for you.”
“Thank you.” Abigail had excused herself from completing the set of country dances with Lord Chartleigh, having seen that her stepmother was standing alone by one of the windows, smiling at her. On closer view she could see that Rachel was wearing cosmetics. And surely one shrug of the shoulders would expose her bosom entirely. Abigail could feel herself flush. “Rachel, what are you doing here?”
“Dancing most of the time,” Mrs. Harper said. Her voice was lower-pitched than it had used to be, Abigail thought. It sounded seductive. “And enjoying myself, of course. These private balls are always quite lavish affairs.”
“But where did you go?” Abigail said. “What have you been doing all this time? We did not hear one word from you, even after Papa died.”
“Well,” her companion said, smiling, “I did not believe he would have left anything to me, Abigail. And I cannot pretend that I was consumed with grief at his death. I had wished him dead a hundred times when I lived with him.”
“He was ill,” Abigail said.
Mrs. Harper laughed. “Yes, I suppose he was,” she said. “Some people would be less kind, of course, and say that he merely drank himself to death.”
“Have you been in London all the time?” Abigail said. “But what have you been doing? How have you lived?”
“Very well, as it happens,” the other said. “I have prospered, Abigail.”
How old was she? Abigail thought. Thirty? Yes, thirty—six years older than she was herself. Rachel had been only eighteen when she had married Papa out of defiance of her father, who had whipped her one night after she had danced with Papa and walked with him in the garden at one of the local assemblies.