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“I think it best that I accompany you to any events this Season, don’t you?” Gabriel asked.
“Perhaps,” Eleanor muttered.
“Which means Lady Havisham’s ball is out,” he told her.
“What if…?” Eleanor began meekly, but as soon as she looked up and caught Gabriel’s eyes, she stopped talking and looked down again.
“It will be best for me to be by your side, and that will be the end of it. Is that understood?” he asked.
Eleanor nodded submissively.
“Good,” Gabriel said. “Then we have some work to do. I will inform you of the events for which I am available, and you will still have some choice over parts of your schedule. The first ball is in a week, and we have much to prepare.”
CHAPTER 8
“Idon’t know how such a cold and overbearing man can have such a soft spot for a puppy,” Eleanor said.
“He really rescued it from under a tree?” Lottie asked.
“That’s what he told me.” Eleanor looked around the large hall with a mix of excitement and trepidation. “He took the dog back to his estate and nursed it back to full health. And it’s not only the puppy he has a soft spot for. From the way that he interacted with Atlas, I could see that there is a whole other side to him.”
“It sounds like you are warming up to him,” Lottie said before letting out a giggle.
When Lottie laughed, her bust rose up and down. The dress fit tightly across it, with only the slightest hint of cleavage. There was something daring about only the hint of more beneath, and Eleanor wondered how it would feel to be out in public in a dress like hers.
Eleanor’s dress was wonderful, and she wore it giddily, but it covered her far more than some of the dresses on show. It had been decided, more mutually than other decisions between her and the duke, that the first event of the Season should come with the most modest dress.
She wore lavender satin that flowed around her like water reflecting a bank of lavender bushes and thistles. Eleanor wasn’t thinking so much about the dress as she was of being out in London society for the first time.
“I do not wish to spend all of my time talking about him when I am to spend the Season with him,” Eleanor replied. “I am glad he has not yet arrived. I still have some freedom.”
Eleanor pushed the hair framing one side of her face behind her ear. The rest of her hair was swept up at the back, her golden-blonde locks holding a natural curl.
“And what is it that you plan to do with the newfound freedom?” Charlotte asked.
Eleanor smiled. “I can do anything I wish, just as any woman should.”
Charlotte nudged her shoulder against Eleanor’s. “I’m not sure everyone in this room tonight would agree with you on that.”
“No, and that is why we must keep pushing forward,” Eleanor said. She wondered what the duke might think of her thoughts. “Do you know Ava Lovelace?”
“I do.”
Eleanor smiled at that. “She was an astronomer, which is amazing in itself, but now she is making a name for herself in mathematics. She is rivaling many of the men in the field.”
“So, you want to become a mathematician?” Charlotte asked.
“No, I’m not saying that.” Eleanor looked over the crowd.
How many women want more but will never have it?
“I’m saying,” Eleanor continued, “that we should all gaze at the stars and dream because you never know the opportunities that will become available to us.”
“You could be a poet with thoughts like that,” Charlotte commented.
Both women stood in the upper gallery above the main floor of the large hall.
The tall windows were draped with dark silk curtains, hiding the night behind them. The wooden floors, easily seen in the center of the room before the music started, were polished to a high shine, reflecting the dozens of candles hanging in candelabras above. The flickering light made the room look larger and also cast a dancing yellow glow.
