Page 5 of The Cornish Bride

Major Hamilton laughed, but with restraint. “Not as yet. He’s in no position to offer for a girl, if that’s what you mean. Being the son of a cleric doesn’t exactly leave a young man with much in the way of funds.” He twirled her round. “I should know. My own father is a sight lower in the clergy than Featherstone’s father, and I doubt I’ll ever be in a position to make an offer for anyone.”

“Oh.” Ysella digested all this information and stored it away for future reference. After all, she was a girl with a sizeable dowry endowed upon her as a child when her dear papa died. He’d made sure all his girls were well provided for without encumbering the estate Kit had inherited. She had no need to marry well, as Mama would have put it. Indeed, her sister Meliora had made a love match with a lowly lawyer who had to work for his living, and no one had protested at that. So the impecunity of Captain Featherstone, who she was already seeing in the light of a suitor, need not matter a jot.

To her delight, the dashing captain sought her out after midnight when they all went in to supper, tucking her small hand into the crook of his arm and smiling down at her as though she were the only girl at the ball. “How could I not choose you to lead in to supper?” he said, his dark eyes smoldering with promise. But of exactly what, Ysella couldn’t guess.

She took her place at the long supper table, glowing with pride, but she could only pick at the food he put on her plate and sip the wine a liveried servant poured for her.

If only etiquette didn’t dictate that she could only dance once with a young man. She still had one or two gaps on her dance card and longed to be able to write the captain’s name in one of them. How silly were the rules of polite society, and how very annoying. Her dear friend and sister-in-law, Morvoren, would rail against them as much as she was, if she were here instead of stuck down in Wiltshire “as big as a house.” Morvoren’s own words in a letter she’d sent, not Ysella’s own. Having to produce an heir was one of the downsides of courtship and marriage, in Ysella’s opinion, although last time she’d seen Morvoren, her sister-in-law had seemed quite content, if not ecstatic, about the state she was in.

“Tell me,” the captain said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. “Have you been to the Lyceum yet to see Mrs. Dickens in Devil’s Bridge? I hear it’s very good.”

Ysella shook her head, refraining from telling her beau that she’d never yet been to the theater. Best not to look too much like a country bumpkin in front of a young man for whom London and all its refinements was home.

Undeterred, he went on. “Or there’s Quadrapeds at Covent Garden. And I do believe I heard they had an elephant on the stage at one point, although I couldn’t be certain if this tale is true, elephants being so very large.”

“An elephant?” Ysella had but the vaguest notion of what an elephant looked like, her schooling having been somewhat deficient about natural history. Somewhat deficient, in fact, in most subjects, once she’d been expelled from school.

The captain nodded. “If you’ve never seen one, perhaps you could be persuaded to accompany me to the Royal Menagerie at the Exeter ’Change? I hear they have a fine selection of beasts there—definitely an elephant, but also a hippopotamus, that is a water horse, although it looks nothing like a horse to me, and a rhinoceros. Huge animals you can’t see anywhere else. You would be amazed at the variety of beasts other countries abound with. We’re very lucky to be able to go and see them here in London.”

Ysella’s curiosity was aroused. Of course she would like to go to the Exeter ’Change and see these strange and exotic animals, but would Mama allow her to go with the captain? This would need careful handling, but at least Kit wasn’t here to stop her. There was that.