Devil-May-Dare. Mary Nichols
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push, my dear.’ She smiled suddenly and her blue eyes lit with mischief. ‘No matter, it is still early in the Season.’ She paused to pick up a gilt-edged invitation card to a ball to be held at Thornton House, Park Lane on the following Friday week. ‘Let us see what this brings forth, for everyone who is anyone will be there.’ She tapped the card against her chin, pretending to think. ‘Now, who shall be your escort? I think Longham, don’t you?’
‘Frank Burford has already asked me,’ Lydia put in quickly.
‘Frank?’ Tom repeated. ‘You haven’t been such a ninny as to agree?’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, Frank is a capital fellow, I’ll allow,’ he said. ‘But you may as well have stayed at home and saved Papa a deal of blunt if you are going back to Raventrees on his arm. You’ve known him since he was in short coats.’
‘I’m comfortable with him and, as he has been so good as to ask, I have accepted.’
‘I hope you have not held out any false hopes, Lydia,’ her aunt said, rising from the table. ‘It would be most unfair of you.’
‘Not in the least,’ she said cheerfully, putting down her napkin and following her aunt from the room. ‘I know he has a penchant for little Miss Thornton, but so far she has not deigned to notice him.’
‘Miss Thornton!’ exclaimed Tom, deciding that as there were no other men with whom to smoke and drink he might as well join his sister and their aunt in the withdrawing room, where they settled themselves to await the arrival of the tea tray. ‘She’s a little above his touch, don’t you think? I cannot see her mama agreeing to that match.’
Lydia was inclined to agree with her brother when, ten days later, they took their turn in the long line of guests waiting to be received by Lord and Lady Thornton, and realised what a lavish affair it was. And all in the cause of marrying off their daughter.
The ballroom was filled to capacity and noisy enough to have been a battlefield. The orchestra which was tuning up on a dais at the far end of the room could hardly be heard above the din of people greeting acquaintances, being introduced and exchanging the latest on-dit. The heat from the gas lamps was already intense and ladies’ fans were much in evidence, not only for cooling purposes, but for whispering behind.
‘What a squeeze!’ said Frank, resplendent in a yellow brocade coat and matching satin knee-breeches, tied above his white silk stockings with ribbon bows. He looked a little ridiculous, Lydia thought, but not for a minute would she have hurt him by letting him know her thoughts, any more than she would have wounded her aunt by commenting on her lavish rose satin décolleté ballgown with its wide panniers, a fashion at least a generation out of date.
Tom pushed his way through the crush and found a seat for his aunt before wandering off to find himself a partner for the cotillion which was then forming, and Frank led Lydia on to the floor. She was engaged for every dance after that by a multitude of young men, to all of whom she was charming, laughing and thoroughly at ease, aware that she looked her best in the cream silk gown Mrs Davies had helped her to choose. The very simplicity of its high waist and softly falling skirt displayed her slim figure to perfection and its not too low neckline and puffed sleeves set off pale shoulders and a throat encircled with nothing but a rope of beautifully matched pearls. Her hair was drawn back in a Grecian style with a top-knot and ringlets woven with more pearls. Nothing could have been a greater contrast to most of the other gaudily attired young ladies with their beads and feathers, rubies and emeralds.
It was late in the evening when she spied the Marquis of Longham, standing by himself just inside the door as if he had only then arrived. His pose was nonchalant, and Lydia, who was dancing a Chaîne Anglais with the Honourable Douglas Fincham, youngest son of the Earl of Boreton, was forced to admit to herself that his figure was made for tight jackets and close-fitting pantaloons. Not long before, these would not have been allowed at a ball, knee-breeches being the accepted dress, but now only Almack’s stuck to the old ways, and here was a man for whom the new fashions must have been made. His long-tailed black evening coat was exquisitely cut to his broad shoulders and narrow waist, while his black pantaloons served to outline muscular thighs that drew a sigh of admiration from many a débutante. Lydia told herself severely, but not very honestly, that she was immune.
‘For someone who don’t have a feather to fly with, he’s in prime twig,’ commented her partner, who considered himself no end of a fine fellow. He was very young and extremely chubby, like a round young puppy. His shoulders were padded and his waist corseted and his collar points scratched his cheeks whenever he moved his head. His enormous cravat was tied into an intricate pattern of loops and folds, while across his pink and yellow striped waistcoat hung a multitide of chains and fobs. Beside the elegantly clad Marquis, he looked a veritable macaroni. ‘But it don’t signify,’ he added. ‘Everyone knows his father is batty and has lost his fortune.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ Lydia asked, forgetting her determination never to listen to gossip.
‘It is common knowledge,’ he said airily. ‘His creditors will be hammering on his door before the Season is out, unless he can find himself an heiress.’
‘And I think you would be wise to refrain from such scandal,’ she said sharply, making him redden from the wilting points of his collar to the roots of his fair hair. ‘He might call you out for it.’
‘Why, I set no store by Canterbury tales,’ he said, speedily recovering from this rebuke, having little imagination and an extraordinary idea of his own worth. If a young lady gave him a put-down, it only meant that he should try the harder to engage her attention.
Correctly judging his character, she set about teasing him so that by the time the dance ended and he returned her to her aunt he did not know whether to be elated or resentful. Aunt Aggie was in lively conversation with one of the dowagers who sat in regal splendour along the side of ballroom, making sweeping and quite scandalous statements about all and sundry, but she was attentive enough to look up at her niece with a humorous quirk of her brow and a flutter of her fan behind which she was heard to murmur, ‘A veritable pea-goose, my dear. Do send him about his business or he will cling like a leech.’
Lydia stifled a giggle but she was saved having to take her aunt’s advice because Douglas drifted off, and she joined Tom and Frank who stood near by waiting to claim their partners for the next dance. Frank had already stepped forward to stand before Miss Thornton, when Lady Thornton pushed herself between them and drew the Marquis towards her daughter.
‘Well, of all the put-downs!’ Lydia exclaimed, feeling very sorry for the dejected Frank, as he turned away to seek solace in the card-room while Amelia Thornton, pink of face, set off with the Marquis. ‘Lady Thornton is making a fool of herself with her daughter besides, throwing her at every unmarried man in the room from old Lord Winters who is sixty if he is a day to Douglas Fincham who was only yesterday taken out of short coats; the only thing they have in common is a title — or the expectation of one — and a fortune. As for the Marquis of Longham, I thought he had more sense than to be used in that fashion.’
‘He could hardly snub the poor girl by refusing,’ Tom said, reasonably. ‘That would have made matters worse.’
‘I feel sorry for poor Miss Thornton, for she will not be allowed to make up her own mind,’ Lydia went on, her own sense of justice making her admit Tom was right. ‘I’ll wager if I were to present myself as an eligible man, Lady Thornton would have me stand up with her.’
Tom turned to stare at her. ‘I say, Lydia, you wouldn’t dare,’ he said, then added, as he saw the gleam in his sister’s eye, ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’
‘Why not?’ The sight of the Marquis of Longham dancing a quadrille with Amelia Thornton and showing every sign of enjoying it made Lydia feel as if it was she and not Frank who had been snubbed, and filled her with an illogical desire to do something entirely reckless.
‘You’d never pull it off,’ he said. ‘Lady Thornton will see through you and then you will be sent home to