She moved toward the refreshment table with purpose, intent on appearing both approachable and occupied, which was an impossible combination and she knew it. The crystal punch bowl glimmered. Beside it, two fashionable ladies leaned close in confident conspiracy.
“Lady Bascombe claims she knows who wrote it.”
“No!”
“She says she has a niece in publishing who heard it from the printer himself.”
Elizabeth bit back a groan.Lady Bascombe flustered facts like a busker with two coins—loud, confident, and barely in tune.
And she had no notebook. Not a scrap of paper. Not even a tragic program to scribble upon. It was a great deal easier to mind her tongue when she had her pen.
“She says it was a governess. Or a widow. Someone scandalous. Possibly French.”
Elizabeth’s legs trembled beneath her layers of muslin—a thing she could never dare permit polite society to notice. Her heart pounded like she had run up three flights of stairs in corset and boots.
Not yet. No one suspected her. But they would. Caroline Bingley would see to that. For now, thetonwas enchanted with their new parlor game: Guess the Anonymous Authoress.
Elizabeth took a sip of punch and nearly choked. Too sweet. Too pink. Too festive for someone whose social viability was about to collapse like an overfilled soufflé.
She needed a husband. Fast. Someone respectable, dull, preferably terrible at reading.
Her eyes caught on Captain Marlowe.
He stood near a grouping of palms, laughing with her uncle Gardiner. His uniform was perfect, his shoulders unfair, and his smile warm enough to melt half the room. A model officer by appearance—if only appearances were enough.
She had—stupidly, catastrophically—mocked his taste in poetry the first time they met. Not unkindly. Just… unguardedly. As if she had forgotten that most gentlemen wilted when pricked with anything sharper than praise.
And she had done little better later in the evening when their paths happened to cross by the punch bowl again. He had said, with the gravity of a man quoting Cicero,“Love is a fortress, breached only by honor,”and she—poor fool—had suggested fortresses might fare better with less sentimental mortar.
That was her failing, she supposed. She could admire confidence. Even endure arrogance. But a man who sought approval before every remark, who asked for permission to be amusing? That wore thinner than muslin in the rain.
Still. He was charming. Thoughtful. Not unhandsome. And he clearly thought well enough of how he looked in a uniform, which—though not quite the same as self-respect—was at least a cousin to it.
She could fix this.
She approached with casual grace and the determined expression of someone planning to undo a minor war crime with a compliment and a strategically deployed dimple.
“Captain Marlowe, I was told just this morning that the Naval Chronicle praised your actions at Calais. Something about a stranded merchant vessel and excellent judgment under pressure?”
He turned, surprised but pleased. “That is true, Miss Bennet. Though you have me at a disadvantage. I hope you are not… mocking me again?”
“Not this evening. I am strictly reverent tonight. I only mock on Tuesdays and alternate Sundays.”
He laughed. A good sign. A nervous one, perhaps, but genuine.
They spoke for three minutes. Perhaps four. She asked clever questions. He answered, then second-guessed his answers. Hepaused once to ask if she was warm enough near the fire. Then again, to see if the conversation suited her. Then once more, to assure her she need not indulge his talk of shipboard life if she found it dull.
She smiled each time, but with decreasing sincerity.He leans in as though my opinion will cure scurvy,she thought. How noble. How distinctly unnecessary.
She pressed her lips together. No pen. No parchment. No outlet. All these unsaid remarks swelled like unspent currency in her chest.
She adjusted her gloves instead.
They danced around the awkwardness of their last encounter. She very nearly had him smiling the way he had smiled the first time they met—unguarded, unaware, before he had decided her approval was a thing to be nervously chased.
He offered to show her the stars by telescope sometime—as he was a naval officer, and could name nearly all of them.
She had the good sense not to retort that she preferred the moon over the stars, because it at least had the decency to disappear for half the month. Her hand twitched toward her reticule.
