Sweeping a disdainful gaze over the frayed hem of her borrowed gown, the Earl leaned toward his companion. In flawless scathing Parisian French, the aristocrat murmured, "Another desperate country girl for my boredom? Expecting a vacant simpering smile, the Lord found himself paralyzed when she locked eyes with him. She corrected his archaic grammar in French, insulted his manners in fluid Neapolitan Italian, and delivered a Russian proverb about arrogant pigs."
The ballroom vanished. The Earl was ruined.
The ballroom of the Duke of Devonshire smelled overwhelmingly of melting beeswax, wilted gardenias, and desperation. Margaret Lindfield stood perfectly still against a massive Corinthian column, letting the plaster cool her spine through the thin thrice-turned silk of her gown. Her feet burned. The slippers she wore had belonged to her cousin 5 years prior, and the leather had hardened into something resembling wood.
She did not shift her weight. Shifting meant drawing attention, and attention in this room was a currency she could not afford to squander. She watched the floor. It was a meat market.
There was no poetry to it, no romance in the swirling skirts or the sharp scrape of the violins. It was a transaction. Young women starved and corseted until their ribs bowed inward, paraded past men with gout, men with inherited syphilis, and men with enough acreage to make the mothers turn a blind eye to both. Margaret was 23.
In the eyes of the polite society swirling around her, she was a relic, a ghost haunting the edges of the dance floor. "Stop slouching, Margaret. You look like a frightened scullery maid. Lady Agatha, Margaret's aunt and reluctant warden, materialized from the crowd."
Her breath smelled of sherry and stale mints. She gripped Margaret's bare arm, her fingernails biting into the skin. "I am not slouching, Aunt. Margaret said, her voice entirely flat."
"I am simply attempting to breathe. The air in here is thicker than pudding. "Complaining again. Your father's dreadful habit.
Lady Agatha snapped her fan open a sharp violent sound. "Your father complained about the damp in Venice, the dust in Rome, the cold in St. Petersburg. And what did it get him? A shallow grave in foreign soil and the daughter entirely of prospects."
Margaret swallowed the bitter taste at the back of her throat. Her father had been a minor diplomat. He had not been a wealthy man, but he had possessed a brilliant restless mind. He had dragged Margaret across Europe paying for her education in the only currency they had experienced.
She had grown up haggling for bread in Neapolitan markets, translating diplomatic missives in drafty Parisian attics, and reading Tolstoy in the original Russian while the snow piled against the windows. When a sudden fever took him last winter, he left her nothing but two trunks of leather-bound books and a mountain of debts. Lady Agatha had paid the debts and in return, Margaret was expected to sell herself to the highest bidder to repay the investment. "Look lively."
Lady Agatha hissed, her grip tightening until Margaret nearly winced. "Lord Kelsall is walking this way. Do not speak unless spoken to and for God's sake, try to look soft. Men detest women who look as though they are doing arithmetic in their heads."
Margaret followed her aunt's predatory gaze. Simon Danvers, the Earl of Kelsall, was cutting a path through the throng. He did not look like a man enjoying a party. He looked like a man navigating a swamp.
He was tall, dressed in severe black eveningwear that lacked the peacockish frills favored by the younger bucks. There was a hard cynical edge to his jaw and a profound, bone-deep exhaustion in his dark eyes. He was wealthy, disgustingly so. Margaret had heard the whispers in the drawing rooms.
Coal mines in the north, shipping lanes in the east, and an estate in Yorkshire that spanned three postal codes. He was the undisputed prize of the season, and he knew it. He moved with an arrogant grace, nodding barely an inch to the desperate mothers who tried to throw their daughters into his path. Beside him walked Lord Peter, a shorter, fair-haired man who was currently failing to suppress a yawn.
Margaret felt a sudden, heavy dread. She knew the look on Kelsall's face. She had seen it on the faces of wealthy merchants examining bruised fruit at a market stall. He was bored.
He was untouchable and he was entirely convinced that every woman in this room was a mindless, grasping creature out for his title. "Aunt Agatha, please. Margaret muttered, trying to pull her arm free. "Do not do this.
He is not going to look twice at a penniless orphan. It is humiliating. "Silence. Lady Agatha snapped."
"He is walking directly toward the refreshment tables. We are intercepting."
Before Margaret could anchor her heels into the floorboards, Lady Agatha lunged. She dragged Margaret through a gap between two portly dowagers, stepping sharply on the hem of a passing debutante, and planted them squarely in the Earl of Kelsall's path. Margaret closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, praying for a sinkhole to open up beneath the floorboards and swallow her whole. When she opened them, the Earl was stopping.
He was less than 3 ft away. The smell of expensive sandalwood and clean linen cut through the stench of the ballroom. He did not look pleased. "Lord Kelsall."
Lady Agatha trilled her voice, pitching up an octave into a cloying, sugary register that made Margaret's teeth ache. What an absolute delight. We had entirely given up hope of seeing you this evening. Simon Danvers paused.
He did not sigh, but the tightening of the muscles around his eyes communicated a sigh perfectly. He looked at Lady Agatha with the blank polite mask of a man who has had this exact conversation 600 times. Lady Agatha, he said. His voice was a low baritone, rough around the edges like gravel wrapped in velvet.
A pleasure. I was merely seeking a glass of something that isn't warm lemonade. Of course, of course. The crush tonight is simply dreadful.
Lady Agatha shoved Margaret forward. Margaret stumbled slightly, her wooden shoe catching on a floorboard before righting herself. Her cheeks flamed with hot prickly humiliation. May I introduce my niece, Miss Margaret Lindfield?
She has just returned to England after many years abroad. Simon shifted his gaze to Margaret. The silence stretched. It was not a romantic silence.
It was a clinical appraisal. Margaret kept her chin level, refusing to drop her eyes to his cravat, though staring directly into a peer's face was considered bold. She saw exactly what he saw. He took in the faded amber silk of her dress, the way the bodice had been let out and re-stitched to fit her wider older frame.
He saw the absence of pearls at her throat. He saw the tight defensive set of her mouth. Another one, his eyes said. Another desperate aging charity case dragged out of the attic to try and trap a pension.
Margaret felt her fingernails dig into her own palms. The arrogance of the man was suffocating. He stood there, secure in his wealth, secure in his maleness, judging her worth by the fraying threads on her sleeve. Miss Lindfield, Simon said, his tone utterly devoid of inflection.
He gave a shallow perfunctory bow. "My lord. Margaret replied. Her voice was quiet, steady."