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“George’s stockings! Tell me he isn’t here!”
Lily burst into laughter. “No, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he shows up. Better prepare yourself, for I expect his flame only burns the hotter for having lost you once before.”
“I shall die of mortification if he so much as looks at me,” Harriett vowed, snapping her fan open to cool her heated cheeks. She scanned the crowd for the red-headed Lord Russell, praying she saw him first. Instead, her gaze lit upon a head of sandy-colored hair atop an uncomfortably familiar face. She froze as the man looked up and made eye contact. It can’t be.
“Harriett?”
Lily’s worried face blocked Harriett’s view. By the time she managed to again get a clear vantage, the mirage was gone.
“Harriett, darling? Are you well?”
Her gaze finally focused on Lily’s face. “It’s nothing. I just thought I saw someone I knew.”
“Alive or deceased? I haven’t seen you turn that particular shade of white since the funeral.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Harriett told her, forcing a little laugh. “You were telling me about Nanette?”
~ * ~
Damn me, but this is bloody boring. Roland turned away from a scene identical to countless others marching back through his memory in a lengthy, monotonous line. How he longed to be back at the Royal, cutting capers backstage with Rich and celebrating a night’s success with the Beefsteak Club.
He cast his gaze out over the crowd. Not a genuine one among them. Especially the women. In Covent Garden one at least knew the difference between an act and the real person. There, acting was reserved for the stage. Here, it was an entirely different matter.
Every last one of these women was pretending to be something other than what she was. Some were probably not even aware they were doing it. Others were. Regardless, they’d all been trained from birth to say and do whatever they thought would best please a potential husband. None of them were real.
Was he truly expected to select a wife from among this lot?
He downed another glass of champagne. The servant who had just handed it to him stared, boggle-eyed, at the empty flute he handed back. Chuckling, Roland turned away and wandered the room. The women looked at him with assessing eyes, sizing him up like a prize pig on auction at a country fair.
Perhaps I ought to put an apple in my mouth...
“I can hardly believe she’s back on the market,” said one girl to another as he passed. “I thought she’d gone to a convent or something.”
“She certainly looks as though she belongs in one,” snipped the other. “It’s been nearly two years, and she’s still in half-mourning. I cannot imagine wasting my youth and beauty to mourn a man to whom I wasn’t even married. Not for a moment longer than required, anyway. I should have doffed the black the very second it was permitted.”
Roland’s neck prickled. Keep walking. Don’t stop. But his feet refused to obey.
“She must have truly loved him,” said the first one in a wistful voice.
The other snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. He was almost twice her age, Marian. Nearly everyone I know is of the opinion she has been overly dramatic about the whole thing. Trying to garner sympathy, no doubt. I heard her father had to finally force her to put away her mourning.”
“Oh, Nanette, don’t be so unkind,” admonished the first one. “At least her sister doesn’t appear to mind sharing the field, bless her.”
“I shouldn’t think she has much to worry about,” retorted the nasty one—Nanette. “Harriett Dunhaven may be back on the market, but I doubt she ever will be taken off the shelf.”
Harriett. An image arose in his mind’s eye, blinding him to everything else around him. William’s funeral. He’d arrived drunk and caused a scene. A furious Harriett had pulled him aside to try and shut him up, and he’d torn off her veil, accusing her of putting on a grand show for her graveside audience.
He’d never been so wrong in all his life.
Not for her the cool, neutral mask so many ladies of quality put on when faced with anything that dared deviate from the perfect orderliness of an uneventful life. No. She’d given her grief free run, let it inhabit her entire being.
The memory of her ravaged face struck him like a blow to the gut. Even in stark, unflattering black, even red-eyed and looking like the very devil, he’d found her strangely beautiful. It wasn’t so much her features, for they ran quite to the ordinary. It was what they’d conveyed that had held him in thrall: righteous indignation and grief so intense it had sliced him to the marrow, for it had been no less deep than his own.
Seeing his misery mirrored in her hazel-green eyes had done something to him. Something he couldn’t even put a name to. All he knew was it had hurt and seeing it had made the loss of William unbearable. Shame filled him as he remembered his appalling reaction to that pain. He’d told her—loud enough that everyone present heard it—that William could have done better.
Oh, God. And she’s here tonight. Panic gripped him as he followed the direction of the ladies’ furtive glances.
Sure enough, there she was, the avenging fury herself, Lady Harriett Dunhaven. And far too close for comfort. As the women had said, she still wore the lavender of half-mourning. She lifted her hand to check that her hair was still imprisoned in its snood, and his eye was drawn to the glint of gold.
