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“Good heavens, show her in!” she cried. “What are you waiting for?” As Bantwell was exiting, she turned to her grand niece. “The Demowerys, my dear. Excellent family. Lord Rand is brother to Lady Andover, a great hostess, and their papa is the Earl of St. Denys—and even his Royal Highness is afraid of him. Of, I wish you had taken more trouble with your hair. It is such a jumble I don’t know what Lady Rand will think.”
Delilah bit back the automatic retort that she didn’t care two straws what Lady Rand thought. She did care, very much.
This was the first female visitor they’d had since they’d arrived, and Delilah’s heart fluttered with anxiety as she pushed hairpins back into place. If Lady Rand didn’t like what she saw, Miss Desmond was doomed.
That she was to be spared social destruction for the time being was evident within five minutes of the viscountess’s entrance. Lady Rand began by apologising to Lady Potterby for presuming upon a very distant—perhaps forgotten—acquaintance, but she understood that Lady Potterby had known her mama.
“Of course I have not forgotten your lovely mother,” said Lady Potterby. “Indeed, to see you is to see her again, as she was in her first Season.”
Lady Rand gave her a gratified smile. “Yes, I believe she and your mama,” she said, turning to Delilah, “came out in the same Season. I am very sorry your mother has not come to Town with you,” she went on, as Lady Potterby’s eyes opened wide in consternation. “I should have so liked to meet her. I am sure she is one of the most courageous women I have ever heard of.”
“She believed her presence would reflect badly on me,” said Delilah, determined not to skirt the issue, despite her aunt’s warning frown. “Men are forgiven everything and women nothing. Courage, you see, is not the quality usually attributed to her.”
Lady Rand made an impatient gesture of dismissal. “The world is too often unjust and utterly blind. ‘Convention is the ruler of all’—and no one understands that some souls are strangled by convention.”
Miss Desmond’s rather defensive mien softened. “Yet we cannot each make our own rules or we should have chaos,” said she. “So our elders tell us, anyhow. Mama broke the rules. Don’t you think that in admiring her you countenance the overthrow of civilisation?”
“Delilah, pray do not be impertinent,” Lady Potterby warned.
“Are you impertinent, Miss Desmond?” Lady Rand asked ingenuously. “I thought we’d embarked upon a philosophical debate, and I was just beginning to enjoy myself.” She turned her enormous hazel eyes full upon Lady Potterby. “Pray let us continue. I was about to quote Ovid.”
“Ovid?” Miss Desmond repeated, wracking her brains for the apt quotation, while her great aunt appeared ready to faint from shock.
“I was about to remind you ‘the gods have their own rules.’”
“And Mama is now raised up to Olympus. How immensely gratified she will be to hear of it!”
The exchange following was so rapid, so filled with Greek, Latin, and French, that Lady Potterby threw up her hands in defeat. Still, unbecomingly intellectual as the debate might be, it was a conversation, and both young women seemed happy. The mention of Mrs. Desmond had given Lady Potterby a turn, for she’d instantly expected more unpleasant reminders of the family disgrace, like those they had endured at Rossingley Hall.
Lady Rand was evidently not of the Gathers’s ilk, however. Even if she had odd notions, she was one of the few permitted them. An eccentric Lady Rand was still a Demowery, a member of one of Society’s first families. If she liked Delilah—and it appeared she did—the rest of the Beau Monde must learn to like her as well.
The Beau Monde received its first lesson the following afternoon, when Lady Rand took Miss Desmond driving in Hyde Park and made short work of any persons who dared show her companion anything less than deferential courtesy.
The second lesson was provided on the evening of the following day, when Lady Andover’s dinner guests found the Devil’s daughter in their midst.
By the third day, the invitations began trickling in to Potterby House. It had been discovered in the interim that Lady Rand and Miss Desmond were bosom-bows, not to be parted. More important, it had also been learned that Miss Desmond had taken tea with Lady Rand’s motherin-law, the Countess of St. Denys.
If this was rather hard on the ladies, it was doubly so on the gentlemen, many of whom had cherished hopes of making Miss Desmond’s acquaintance without the usual restrictions.
“Still, she’s bound to go wrong, sooner or later,” Mr. Beldon assured his friend, Sir Matthew Melbrook, as they entered Lord Fevis’s house together. “It’s in the blood. Then they’ll drop her like hot coals, mark my words.”
Mr. Beldon’s opinion represented one faction of Miss Desmond’s male admirers. This group was convinced it was only a matter of time before she showed her true colours, committed some social outrage like those her parents repeatedly had, and was ostracised. In that case, she would need a protector. How long until this occurred and the person to whom she would turn in her hour of need were the subjects of intensive wagering.
The other, smaller, camp was more philosophical. These gentlemen secretly hoped Miss Desmond would not fail any of Society’s tests or stumble into its many traps. She was a great beauty. Her conversation was lively, which made her company most agreeable. A lifetime of such companionship seemed equally agreeable, especially to those gentlemen sufficiently wealthy and securely positioned to marry where their fancy took them.
Lord Berne found neither camp to his liking, though the latter troubled him a great deal more. He knew that in his case marriage was out of the question. In any case, the notion of Delilah Desmond in another man’s arms was insupportable to the point of madness.
He was, in short, boiling with frustration. When he’d finally been allowed into Potterby House, he had confronted a score of rivals, not to mention their frantic female counterparts. The women, except for those of the Demowery family, had no love for their dazzling rival. Still, wherever she was, they had to be as well—otherwise they were in danger of being ignored altogether. Besides, there were advantages to flocking about Miss Desmond: This formed a virtually impenetrable barrier between herself and the gentlemen.
As if there were not barriers enough, Lord Berne sulked as he res
tlessly prowled Lady Fevis’s ballroom. One must be content with a single dance and then subside to the sidelines or else fight the crowd to snatch twenty seconds’ meaningless conversation with her.
It was all Langdon’s doing, the viscount was certain. There he was, the dratted meddler, politely elbowing Argoyne aside so he could bore Miss Desmond to death with his endless intellectualizing. Which of course the poor girl was forced to endure out of gratitude.
The viscount had no way of knowing it was Mr. Langdon’s endurance being tested at the moment. He had just learned that Miss Desmond had promised a waltz after supper to Lord Berne.
“Are you mad?” Jack demanded. “Where the devil was your aunt when you consented? Has she not explained that you can’t waltz without permission from one of Almack’s patronesses?”
“One, yes,” Delilah snapped. “Two, reminiscing with Lady Marchingham. Three, yes, but I forgot.”
“Of all things to forget –”
“Because it isn’t important,” she interrupted. “As you know perfectly well, even Lady Rand cannot get me admitted to Almack’s—and if the patronesses will not have me, I do not see why I must abide by their idiotic rules.”
“This is the first ball you’ve attended. You don’t even give them an opportunity.”
“For what? To judge whether the daughter of an actress is fit for civilised company?”
Miss Desmond might have spared her breath, for Mr. Langdon had stalked off.
Damn her for the pigheaded creature she was, he raged silently as he tripped over the cane of some decrepit roue. As he was apologising, Jack spied Lady Cowper in conversation with Lady Andover. He made for the patroness and, his face crimson, choked out his request.
Emily Cowper was the least forbidding of the Almack’s patronesses whom Jack had once incautiously labelled Gorgons. Naturally, the epithet had reached their ears, and they’d never let him forget it—though they’d not gone so far as to ban him from Almack’s. This was not simply because he was too valuable a piece of merchandise in the Marriage Mart, but because most of these ladies found it more amusing to get their own back by tormenting the easily flustered bookworm at every opportunity.
