Page 53 of The Cornish Mermaid

“Lady Elizabeth, you’re looking very well,” Lady Ormonde said with a genuine smile. “You must remember Ysella, although I believe the last time you saw her she was still in the schoolroom.”

The newcomer, one of most galleon-in-full-sail of all the ladies present, and whose stays must have been working in overtime, bowed her head, making her feather headdress dance and bob. “My goodness. She’s grown so extraordinarily pretty. But how could she not have, with you as her mother? She’s the image of you as a girl. I could take you for sisters.” Her gaze moved on to Morvoren, her delicate eyebrows slightly raised.

“May I introduce Miss Morvoren Lucas, a friend of Ysella’s who is staying with us for a while.” Lady Ormonde looked at Morvoren. “Lady Elizabeth Carlyon, my dear sister-in-law, the captain’s mother.”

Lady Elizabeth extended a plump, white-gloved hand, which Morvoren took. She bobbed a graceful, she hoped, curtsey, her brain cogs whirling. So, this was indeed the duke’s daughter who’d run away with Kit’s rakish uncle Robert. With her matronly figure and rather doughy face, she didn’t look the sort to throw caution to the wind with a penniless younger brother and adventurer, but appearances could be deceiving. Perhaps he’d been as dazzlingly handsome as his nephew. Running off with Kit for a love tryst was an attractive proposition.

“Charmingly pretty,” Lady Elizabeth said, as Morvoren rose from her curtsey to find her eyes fixed on the necklace Kit had lent her. “And such lovely eyes, brought out to perfection by your necklace, my dear. Do I not recall seeing that on the wife of the fifth viscount?”

Ysella had rehearsed Morvoren in how to reply to exalted people. “Thank you, Lady Elizabeth,” she said, with all the demure manners of the Regency young lady she wasn’t. “Lord Ormonde has loaned it to me just for the evening as I had nothing else to wear.” Her secret felt as though it were written across her forehead in capital letters of fire. Imposter. Charlatan. Fraud.

But Lady Elizabeth’s attention had moved on already and was back to Lady Ormonde. “Do come into the card room with me and let us play a hand of whist together. Jasper is in there and he can be such fun when he’s in a good mood. He returned from London the moment he heard Papa was to hold a ball. He’s here on the look out for a new wife who can give him sons, I’ve no doubt.”

“Do excuse me, Diana,” Lady Ormonde said, casting a reluctant glance at Ysella and Morvoren. “Would you be able to keep an eye on my girls for a while? You know how much I enjoy a hand of cards.”

Mrs. Fairfield bowed her head to her friend. Presumably a duke’s daughter took precedence over a mere Mrs. “Of course I will. Haven’t you done the same for me enough times? The girls will be safe with me.”

With no further look for any of them, Lady Elizabeth whisked her friend away, leaving Ysella, Caroline, and Morvoren standing beside Mrs. Fairchild.

Ysella turned back to her cousin Fitz. “You were about to ask us all to put your name in our dance cards, were you not, Cuz?”

Captain Carlyon, now his mother had departed, regained his voice. Who’d have thought him a man likely to be cowed by his own mother? But she had possessed the air of the sort of woman a man wouldn’t want to cross. That no one would want to cross, really. Maybe it had been she who’d seduced the late Uncle Robert.

A cluster of other young men had joined Fitz by now, looking eager to have their names entered on the girls’ dance cards. Could they possibly be keen to procure Morvoren’s name as well, or were they all here for Ysella and Caroline, both of whom they must know?

Quite a crowd was gathering.

“Miss Carlyon, may I have the first dance with you?”

“Miss Fairchild, might you reserve the cotillion for me?”

“Could you introduce us to your lovely friend?”

Morvoren felt her cheeks start to glow again as their voices clamored over her head, all talking at once. Most confusing.

She took her dance card and tiny pencil out of her reticule and studied it, not wanting to look up into the sea of eager faces, and not really wanting to put down any of their names on the card. Both of her feet had definitely turned back into left ones again and she wouldn’t be able to remember how to dance a single step if she had to dance with someone other than Kit.

A lean, tanned hand settled on hers, warm and reassuring.

She raised her eyes and gazed into Kit’s face.

“Morvoren,” he said, executing a smart bow. “I seem to remember that you promised me the first dance tonight.” He glanced at the other young men. “I’m afraid you gentlemen will have to wait. The first dance is taken.”

Morvoren took a sideways glance at Caroline, but she was busy writing down some young gentleman’s name on her own dance card, and appeared not to have noticed Kit’s knight in shining armor gesture.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Morvoren said, as Kit took hold of her hand. “Thank you, Lord Ormonde.” And he whirled her away onto the dance floor.

“Sir Roger de Coverley,” Kit said, as they took their places. “Your forte, I believe.”

Morvoren managed a nervous smile, but the fact that she was dancing for the first time in public with Kit as a partner made all the difference. She knew the way he danced, she knew he could hide her mistakes, she knew he would be tolerant of her treading on his toes. She smiled at him as they made their bows to one another.

The moment they were dancing, she forgot her fears. The music, louder and more elegantly played than Old Jacko’s fiddle, soared, and Morvoren soared with it. On their last day of practice, she’d felt as though everything had come together, and now it did again.

“I told you you’d be fine,” Kit said, as they came together again to make an archway for the other dancers to pass underneath. “Just think of everyone else as faceless chairs. And remember that no one ever notices if you make a mistake.”

Morvoren dimpled, happier than she’d been all week. “Thank you so much for bringing me to this ball. It’s-it’s more than I could ever have hoped for. The lights, the room, the gowns the ladies are wearing. It’s all like a fairytale.”

His eyes twinkled. “You are an odd sort of girl, if you don’t mind my saying so. Have you never been to any kind of dance in your entire life? Your upbringing must have been very sheltered.” He frowned. “And very different to most young ladies. Riding astride, for a start.” He was keeping his voice down low as the rest of the dancers skipped beneath the arch.