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*~*~**~*~*
About two hours later, when a long time had gone by without any missives from His Mightiness and I was just beginning to wonder whether perhaps he might have choked on one of his files, somebody knocked at my office door - the one to the hallway, not to Mr Ambrose’ office.
Surprised, I looked up. I was certainly not used to people knocking at my door as if they could disturb me doing something important. As if I were somebody important.
‘Err… come in?’ I called.
Mr Stone poked his head in. ‘Mr Linton? Are you busy?’
‘No, no.’ I quickly sat up straight and tried to look very professionally secretarial. ‘Come in, please.’
‘Thank you.’ Smiling his cautious smile, Mr Stone entered. ‘I just came to give you a message. Mr Ambrose has sent me to inform you that he has gone out on urgent business and that he will not require your services for the rest of the day.’
I sat there, dumbstruck. Could this be what I thought it was? Could he actually have cut his day short in order to avoid seeing me? Why would he go to such abnormal lengths to avoid me? Was it such a blot on his honour to have a female for a secretary?
Anger boiling up inside me, I stomped past a startled Mr Stone, went down the stairs and left the building, determining there and then not to let Mr Haughty Almighty and Annoyingly Handsome Ambrose slip through my fingers tomorrow. He would have to accept me or choke on the fact of my femininity.
Disconsolately, I wandered home through the dusky streets of London. When, every now and again, couples passed me and I saw a smile on the lady’s face that showed she was infuriatingly happy with her miserable lot in life as an inferior to chauvinists, I couldn’t help but glower at her. The man who accompanied the woman nearly always noticed, drawing a protective arm around his charge and glowering just as fiercely back at the stranger. Chauvinism. Pure chauvinism, wherever you looked.
Since there were a lot of people out on the street and I had a lot of glowering to do, I didn’t reach home for about an hour. When I finally turned the last corner and saw my uncle’s house, my eyes went wide in shock.
The door to the house was wide open. Anxious, excited voices were calling out inside, and there was a large carriage right in front of the door. My uncle didn’t own a carriage. Gripped by apprehension, I started to run. What the hell was going on in there?
The Worst Fate Imaginable
It was infuriating to have to go in through the garden door, climb up to my window, change, climb down again and return to the front. But I didn’t want to give my aunt a coronary by appearing on her doorstep in a pair of striped trousers. When I finally arrived in front, the carriage was still waiting there, and so was my aunt, anxiously looking out into the street.
‘Lillian!’ She rushed out of the door as I approached, her hollow cheeks flushed, a determined smile on her face. Oh no. Anything that made my aunt this happy wouldn’t be good. ‘Finally, there you are! Where were you? Oh, don't bother, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you’re here. Come, come quickly you have to hurry! The ball starts in an hour!’
‘Ball?’ I asked, dread welling up inside me. ‘What ball?’
‘If you, silly girl, had just stayed at home like a proper young lady, you would know all about it. Your sisters, Anne and Maria, and I have been talking about nothing else for weeks.’
That would explain why I didn’t remember. My ears were good at protecting themselves against unnecessary torture.
‘Now come in and hurry, for God’s sake!’
She rushed inside, skirts flying around her bony figure, and I followed with trepidation. ‘Why a ball?’ I wanted to know. ‘What has a ball got to do to me? Anne and Maria get invited to balls, not me. I don't go to balls, never ever.’
‘You will today,’ my aunt trilled and made a pirouette in the middle of the room that was worthy of a prima ballerina. I could see it in her eyes: the golden glint that meant she was dreaming of finally being rid of us, and at a profit, too.
The trepidation in my chest was quickly evolving into panic. Me, at a ball? I hated balls! Balls meant society, society meant people, and people meant either women or men, or worse, both! I disliked men in general because they oppressed women, and I disliked women in general because most didn’t at all seem to mind being oppressed. And now I would have to face both, mixed together?
Even worse - I had heard that at balls, people had to dance.
With one another. Both sexes!
‘But surely,’ I tried to reassure myself aloud, ‘only Anne and Maria are going? I mean… they are the ones that everybody admires and wants to dance with.’
My aunt nodded, the happy glow of gold coins still gleaming in her eyes. ‘I agree, no man in his right mind would want to invite you.’
‘Oh… err… thanks.’
‘Considering how uncouth and tanned and misbehaved you are.’
‘How nice of you to be so explicit.’
‘But,’ she continued, turning her glittering eyes on me, ‘Sir Phillip was so impressed by Maria and Anne’s charms at the ball the other night that, now he is giving his own ball, he has issued an invitation for the entire family.’
