Esther turned to her aunt, surprised. She certainly hadn’t expected any help from this quarter.
But it wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. “I agree that Esther ought to be supervised and guided,” she said, her face pinched into a frown. “But I thought we had reached an agreement that you would allow me to be responsible for guiding her through her first Season.”
“Oh, Tabitha,” Esther’s father said, the smile on his face completely false. “We could never expect you to take on such a massive responsibility. After all, who Esther marries will determine the course of the rest of her life. I know you mean well, but it’s a lot to ask of you, given that you have your own daughter’s interests to look out for.”
By which he means that he knows Aunt Tabitha isn’t going to put my interests ahead of Eugenia’s.
From Aunt Tabitha’s expression, Esther was sure that she and her aunt were thinking the same thing.
Suddenly, she couldn’t bear another moment in any of their presence. “Will you excuse me?” she asked. “It’s been a very long evening, and I’d very much like to get to bed.”
“All right,” her father said. “But this conversation isn’t over, Esther. Tomorrow at breakfast, I’ll want to hear from you about your success at the ball tonight.”
Esther turned away quickly so that her parents wouldn’t register the dread on her face. She fled out into the foyer and up the stairs to her bedroom.
How could they? This Season was supposed to be my chance to get out on my own, to build the life I want for myself. How could they not trust me? After all the work I put in tonight trying to engage the interest of the Duke. And I was sure I had him!
Now, seeing her parents—seeing how little faith they had in her—she began to doubt herself.
Maybe they had been right to come. Maybe there was something she couldn’t see, some way in which she needed them.
Maybe I’ve already begun to fail.
She hated thinking this way. It made her miserable to have so little confidence.
But if her parents had thought her capable of doing what needed to be done, they wouldn’t be here. She couldn’t question that fact.
Eugenia was waiting for her in the hall outside her room. “What on Earth is going on?” she asked, her eyes bright, her voice a whisper.
Esther resigned herself to gossiping with her cousin, at least for a little while. It wasn’t the evening she had had in mind—she’d hoped to spend a quiet hour thinking over the steps she had made to secure the Duke’s interest—but talking to Eugenia was certainly preferable to talking to anybody else in this place.
She opened her bedroom door. “Do you want to come in?”
Eugenia hurried inside, and Esther closed the door behind her. Amelia had clearly been here already and had left a tray of hot tea and a pair of cups. Esther wondered whether her lady’s maid had foreseen that her cousin would want to spend time with her this evening.
I’ll have to thank Amelia. She always thinks of everything.
Esther poured a cup of tea for herself and for her cousin, and the two of them took seats on the bed.
“What’s going on?” Eugenia asked again as she sat down. “Why are your parents here?”
“Because they don’t trust me,” Esther said unhappily. She detailed to Eugenia the conversation that had taken place down in the sitting room.
“That’s ridiculous,” Eugenia protested when Esther was finished. “You were so successful tonight! Did you tell them that you had attracted the Duke’s attention?”
“No,” Esther admitted.
“You should tell them,” Eugenia said.
“I don’t know,” Esther said. “It’s like I told you before. I’m afraid that if I said something to my parents and then His Grace turned out not to be interested in me after all—”
“But heisinterested,” Eugenia interrupted. “Everything was perfect tonight, Esther.”
“Itseemedperfect,” Esther corrected her. “But how can we know what will happen next? Maybe when the Duke goes home for the evening and has time to think, he’ll decide he doesn’t find ladies who scold him for things that weren’t his fault as charming as he thought he did.”
“Hedidlike you,” Eugenia insisted.
“Or perhaps, at the next ball, he’ll meet someone else he likes even more,” Esther suggested. “We don’t know, Eugenia.”
