“It wasn’t kind of you,” she said, and laid down her pencil to retrieve her abandoned glass of brandy. It slid down her throat smoother than it had in the beginning, a pleasant burn to thebottom of her stomach. “I did try to tell your mother,” she said. “What was going to happen. To save us all the embarrassment of it. Just because my feelings aren’t hurt doesn’t mean my pride isn’t a bit battered.”
“Because nobody asked you to dance?”
“Because nobody ever has, and nobody was ever going to,” she said patiently. “It’s happened before, you know. My first Season. I was a bit slow then, I suppose. Four balls I attended, the hosts of which Papa managed to bribe or bully in order to secure an invitation for me.” The brandy was gone, and the decanter was so far. Instead she held the glass in her hand and traced the rim. “Four balls to realize how unwanted I was within those hallowed halls. I was not asked to dance. No one even requested to be introduced to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and to her annoyance, he actually seemed to mean it. “That must have been dreadful.”
Mercy managed a shrug. “Only a few young ladies and gentlemen were overtly cruel about it,” she said. “But still, it was plain enough to see that I did not belong there amongst them. Papa had purchased a place for me at those events. Probably he could have purchased me a husband, too, had I wished it. But even he hasn’t got the blunt to purchase favor or respect.”
“If Mother had known—”
“Oh, I didn’t tell her,” Mercy said. “I was just eighteen, you know, and still quite sensitive about it. Who wants to confess such a failure, when there is nothing to be done of it? To relive something so humiliating?”
“But surely Marina, at least.”
Mercy sighed and brushed back a lock of hair that had come loose from her pins. “No,” she said. “She had such romantic dreams of her own first Season. It would have been cruel to tell her what a wreck I’d made of mine, to steal those dreams away from her. Besides, there was simply no point in putting such athought in her head, when it was never going to happen to her. All of you have places within society already. You have had all your lives, simply by virtue of the station to which you were born. I’m the problem. The interloper in their midst. The menace.”
Thomas winced. His arms straightened as he pushed himself out of the chair and strode toward the table upon which the decanter of brandy had been set. He seized a glass, plunking it down to pour himself a healthy measure of liquor.
“Another for me as well,” Mercy said, holding out her own glass. “If you don’t mind.”
Perhaps her prior misadventure with spirits had made him somewhat leery, for Thomas squinted at her in rank suspicion behind the lenses of his spectacles. “How many will this make for you?” he asked.
“Only two,” she said. “But it will help me sleep easier tonight.”
“Hell,” he said, and strode across the room. The decanter clinked against her glass as he poured, though she could not tell whether it had been her fault or his. “Might as well. Been a wretched night all around.”
“Say rather boring,” she said. “You’ll understand if I do not wish to attend future balls.”
“There’s the damned problem,” Thomas said as he reclaimed his seat once more. “You’ll have to. Mother insisted on as much to several of her friends. She’s disappointed enough in them for leaving you off to begin with. She’ll be devastated if it was for nothing.”
“I really would rather not,” she said, with an aggrieved sigh, and rubbed at her temple with one hand. “It is so dreadfully boring, Thomas, to be set up against the wall for hours at a time. I can think of a dozen things I’d rather be doing, and it isembarrassing besides. I may not take it to heart as I once did, butnobodylikesto be the subject of gossip.”
“I promise you, you will dance at the next ball.” The firelight flickered off the lenses of his spectacles as he sipped his brandy. “I would have asked you,” he said, “had you returned to the ball instead of haring off home.”
Mercy lifted her brows in surprise. “What, and run the risk that I would tread upon your toes?”
“Mother assures me you’re a fine dancer,” he said.
“Oh? Perhaps I’d do it purely for the fun of it, then.” Again, a flash of shame crossed his features, which was curious. “Worse has been said of me, deliberately within my hearing,” she said. “I’ll admit I did not expect it from you—”
“Christ,” he interjected, and scrubbed his hand across his face, rubbing away the faint traces of shame that lingered upon it. “I was angry when I said those things of you. I don’t think you’re a lost cause, nor a sow’s ear.”
“But a menace?” she prompted, with a cant of her head.
“Ah, well, you are that,” he said, attempting a half-smile as he took a long swallow from his glass. “If you would cease going off half-cocked on some misadventure or other, perhaps I’ll revise my opinion. Youhavemenaced me of late; surely even you can admit to it.”
Despite herself, Mercy laughed. “I suppose I can be…sometimes trying,” she allowed.
“Stubborn,” he said, with a pointed look over his glass. “Intractable. Prone to flights of fancy and madcap schemes.”
She muffled a chuckle beneath her fingers. “Do you know, Thomas, you really are too straight-laced sometimes. Just occasionally I wonder if you have ever had anything that might, by any definition, be considered fun in the whole of your life.”
“I don’t suppose I have. Not a lot of fun to be had in managing an estate.” He glanced down at the drink in his hand as if it contained the answer to an unasked question. “From timeto time, I enjoy billiards.”
Fascinating, to have to consider so carefully what activities one enjoyed. “Do you? I’m quite good at billiards.”
A little snort, as if this response had not surprised him. “Of course you are.” He drained the last of his glass and rose to his feet once more. “It’s late,” he said. “Mother and the girls will be back shortly, and you should be abed by then.”
