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Well, I wasn’t!
I lifted my foot once more. I had never been a quitter.
Wham!
‘I don’t get out much, you see,’ Mr Fitzgerald added, shyly. ‘I don’t know why, but people - ladies in particular - don’t really seem to respond well to me.’
‘Oh, really?’
Well, you’re not responding very well to what I’m trying to do either!
Wham!
Nothing. Simply no reaction. Bloody hell! Did this fellow have toes at all?
He sighed. ‘Yes, it is, unfortunately.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Fitzgerald. I can’t imagine why that is. You’re such a charming-’
Wham!
‘-caring, kind man.’
He gave another small sigh.
‘I suppose it’s because I’m not a particularly manly man, you know. I inherited my estate, and never have been really motivated to expand it or do anything except keep the land in good shape and the tenants happy. So most of my life has been spent in idle luxury. I’ve never really had to learn how to stand on my own two feet.’
‘Indeed?’ Wham! Wham! ‘Well, personally, I think you are doing extremely well at the feet thing.’
He beamed. ‘Thank you, Miss Linton! That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!’
After that, it was pretty much a lost cause. The man smiled at me as if he were a puppy and I his long-lost owner. He danced three more dances with me, and afterwards kissed my hand and said he would count the seconds till our paths crossed again. I’m not joking! Count the seconds! Seriously!
Something had to be done.
If my usual tactic of toe-destruction wouldn’t help in this case, I had to come up with something else.
Hm…
How could you signal to a man that you couldn’t stand him and didn’t want to have anything to do with him?
Several options occurred to me immediately.
A) Dump a bucket of horse dung over his head
B) Kick him in the derriere
C) Strangle him
But none of these options could easily be accomplished in a ballroom, and particularly not under the watchful vulture eyes of my aunt. No, I had to come up with something more subtle, something more discreet.
‘Ah! That’s it!’ Snapping my fingers in sudden realisation, I plunged my hand into the pocket of my dress. There it was: after the parasol, the most dreaded weapon of any girl worth her salt. With a contented sigh, I pulled out the fan and let it snap open.
Now for the tricky part.
At the insistence of my aunt, I had spent weeks learning the secret language of the fan that, according to her, sophisticated ladies used to converse with their lovers, memorising the correct gestures for messages such as ‘kiss me’, ‘follow me’, and ‘I want to get engaged!’ Only, what my aunt didn’t know was that I had also spent considerable time in secret, learning other kinds of messages to communicate with a fan. Messages which I deemed much more useful.
I turned in the direction where I had last seen Mr Morton Marmeduke Fitzgerald. The little half-bald man was just busy nibbling on some delicacy and conversing with a man in glasses. He caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back, holding his gaze.
