“Good evening! I was hoping we would see the two of you here,” Isabella exclaimed as they exchanged greetings.
Elizabeth hadn’t seen either of them since the house party ten days ago. Isabella explained that they had returned from Winchester only the day before and that they had made plans to meet up with some of her relatives here.
“Oh, there they are!” She waved to someone excitedly.
A plump young woman and a stern-looking man approached them. After they exchanged greetings, Isabella introduced them as Miss Theodosia Pilkington and her brother, Mr Bartholomew Pilkington. The pair had apparently just arrived from Sussex that day.
Both Amelia and Louisa wilted in the man’s presence. He nonetheless secured a dance with all of them, before Isabella’s husband came over and claimed a dance with everyone but his wife, which Elizabeth continued to find ridiculous, despite Lady Burnham having assured her several times that not dancing with one's spouse was the proper thing to do.
Then Baron Waldegrave came over to their group, accompanied by Duke Talbot, and the two of them claimed the two remaining dances on Elizabeth’s dance card, which happened to both be waltzes.
And just like that, my dance card is full,Elizabeth thought, mightily pleased with herself, but also wondering where this vainglorious sentiment was suddenly coming from.
She glanced around at the other young women and noticed that Louisa was still looking unwell. Elizabeth wondered whether it would be too presumptuous of her to ask whether aught was amiss.
She has Isabella for that; better not to appear intrusive,she decided.
While dancing with him, Elizabeth discovered that Mr Pilkington was as stern as he had seemed. He spoke negatively about a number of things, includingwomen’s fashion these days, which Elizabeth couldn’t even properly resent him for because she was too busy turning her face away from his as they moved in order to avoid being assaulted by his rancid breath.
Nonetheless, she was happy that she had felt uninspired and had chosen a blush gown for the evening, certain that one of her more vibrantly coloured dresses would have given the poor man a fit.
His poor sister must feel so restrained by his views,Elizabeth thought, before she realised that she was no better off than Miss Theodosia. Then she chastised herself for thinking so ill of her only brother and for being so ungrateful, which caused her mood to sour.
When Mister Pilkington led her to the refreshments after their dance, he saw an old friend, who turned out to be Mister Paul Goulding.
It is no surprise that these two are friends,Elizabeth thought as she looked for the lemonade. As the two men conversed inequally monotone voices on her right, an unfamiliar gentleman walked up to the table and stood on her left. She didn’t look up.
“I cannot believe they let you prance around these rooms like you’re not the daughter of a whore,” he whisper-hissed at her and promptly disappeared in the crowd.
Elizabeth’s hands started shaking, and she had to lean on the table for support. Pilkington and Goulding were obliviously nattering away as she tried to breathe through the humiliation and fear.
She hadn’t even seen the man’s face. Who was he? Why was he so offended by her mere presence? Would she, at some point, be introduced to him, and would she unknowingly dance with him and touch him, a person who hated her that much?
Such thoughts kept buzzing around her head for the rest of the ball. Not even Isabella’s husband, who had been blessed by the same animated temperament as his wife, had managed to lift her spirits.
Luckily, the Baron seemed to be equally gloomy.
“Please forgive me, Lady Hawkins,” he told her sincerely. “I am here tonight solely to try and catch some of my brother’s friends who may know of his whereabouts. Our father is threatening to disown him for marrying bene -” he stopped himself and straightened up. “I apologise. I am under a lot of pressure at the moment. I should not be burdening you with this.”
“It is understandable,” Elizabeth told him gently.
She found his worry for his reckless younger brother endearing and chose to ignore their father’s sentiments about Miss Caroline. Elizabeth was aware of how the world worked. Wishing it were different didn’t change anything or give her false hope.
“We don’t have to converse. You can look around to see if any of your brother’s friends have arrived.”
Nathaniel thanked her, and they both spent the rest of the dance looking around. Several times, Elizabeth saw Talbot’s dark head leaning closer to Lady Helena’s shiny blond one, and she saw them smiling while they were engrossed in lively conversation.
A perfect match, she thought.Complementary in all aspects. Her Grace, Helena Talbot, the Duchess of Norwich, who is not the daughter of a whore.
Her mood was still despondent when the aforementioned duke took her hand for the second waltz. She looked everywhere but at his face.
“You seem to be having another fit of temper, Miss Hawkins,” Talbot said knowingly when she said nothing for a while.
“It seems to be that kind of day,” she said, not eager to tell him the truth. “I noticed you weren’t late this evening, which was rather unusual for you.”
“I’ll have you know that no one is permitted to enter the rooms after 11 pm.”
“Not even a duke?”
