Recently.
Chapter Ten
Idon’t belong here, Mercy thought as she stood beside the baroness, watching couples swirl by on the ballroom floor in dizzying blurs of color.
No one had asked her to dance. She hadn’t wanted anyone to do so, really, but still it had felt a little too pointed that no one had bothered. Even those gentlemen who had come over to claim a dance with Juliet or Marina had hardly given her more than a quick nod of acknowledgement—only when prompted by the baroness, of course.
No one had bothered even to make idle small talk. Not even so much as aLovely weather we’re having. No one had even asked to be introduced.
It hadn’t hurt, really. She’d expected as much. She had tried to warn the baroness, after all. But it was embarrassing. Or at least it was meant to be. For her. Perhaps even for the baroness, since the poor woman had been the one to sponsor her, to insist upon her presence.
Even now, she thought, more than halfway through the evening, the baroness wanted to believe the tide would turn. But then, she was an innately kind woman, always wanting to believe the best of everyone.
So when she leaned in close to Mercy’s ear to whisper, “Your time will come, dear. You truly do look lovely this evening,”Mercy managed to summon forth a smile and attempted to look like she believed it herself.
Lovely might’ve been a bit of an overstatement. She looked presentable at least, in the right sort of gown, with the proper gloves and jewelry, and her hair done up just perfectly. But it was all just glossy fabric and gilt laid upon the wrong form.
She did not belong. As much as the baroness might see her through kind eyes, through a lens of affection that naturally softened the worst of Mercy’s rough edges, so too did the rest of the company present see her through lenses of their own.
Upstart. Common. Vulgar.
One cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
A trickle of sweat slipped down the back of her neck, sliding beneath the neckline of her gown, between her shoulder blades, and down her spine. Perhaps the rest of the company present was accustomed to the sweltering heat of ballrooms overstuffed with people, but she was not. The unholy combination of the heat and the stagnant air oversaturated with at least a score of different perfumes was slowly driving her toward madness.
The baroness made a muted sound of joy, clasping her hands before her. “Oh, look,” she said. “Thomas has elected to join us after all!”
Oh, Lord. She could see him now, wending his way through the crowded ballroom. She hadn’t expected him—none of them had, since he’d claimed some urgent business that required his personal attention. But it seemed that his business had concluded with enough time to spare to change into a set of handsome evening clothes, all fine black wool and a perfectly elegant knot in the fabric of his cravat.
Spectacles just the tiniest bit askew upon his face. Not so much that anyone else would notice, she thought, as if he had put some manner of effort into bending the frames as closely as possible back toward their original state. But the evidenceremained, if one cared to search for it, in the tiniest downward slope of the right lens, the smallest lift of the left.
Mercy snatched a glass of champagne straight from the silver tray of a passing servant as Thomas approached, lifting it to her lips to drain perhaps half the glass in advance of his company.
“Marina?” Thomas inquired as he settled into the space beside his mother, his eyes scanning the ballroom floor.
“Dancing with Mr. DeWitt,” the baroness said.
“And Juliet?”
“Lord Gifford.”
“He’s years too old for her,” Thomas said, his brows drawing down sharply. “For God’s sake, he must be at least thirty.”
“It’s a dance, not an engagement, Thomas,” the baroness said. “Everyone knows Gifford is not seeking a wife this Season, besides. You’ve nothing to worry for on that score.”
Thomas made a harsh sound beneath his breath. “DeWitt fancies himself a bit of a rake,” he said. “He’s not likely to settle down this Season, either.”
“Onlya dance, Thomas,” the baroness repeated, and this time there was the glint of steel beneath the lightness of her voice. “Not every dance must be a prelude to courtship. Marina knows that.”
“At the very least, she could endeavor to dance with gentlemen who might be amenable to it,” Thomas said testily.
Mercy snorted above the rim of her glass. “How would you propose she do that?” she inquired. Pitching her voice to a simpering inflection, she posited: “I do beg your pardon, sir, but I must first inquire after your interest in matrimony before I consent to a dance.”
With a surly mutter beneath his breath, Thomas at last conceded, “I suppose not.” As if he had just occurred to him that Mercy was also present this evening, he turned his gaze on her at last. “Miss Fletcher, what has become of your dance card?”
Startled, Mercy glanced down at the little paper card dangling from the ribbon at her wrist. Oh—she’d ruined it somehow. Unconsciously, in the boredom that had hung over her these last hours as she had languished by the edge of the dance floor, waiting alongside the baroness and the chaperones for a dance which would never come, she’d fiddled with it a little too much. Warped and mangled, it hung for dear life from the fraying bit of ribbon affixed to her wrist.
No matter. She’d not been using it anyway. Mercy gave a one-shouldered shrug, downing the rest of her champagne. “It’s nothing,” she said, and redirected her gaze to the dance floor, striving to spot Marina or Juliet through the throng. “As there are no names upon it—nor do I expect there to be—it hardly matters whether or not it remains serviceable.”
