Lady Polly. Nicola Cornick
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understand what you mean, Lucille. It is just so difficult…” She despised herself for her lack of spirit, even as her mind shrank from the thought of broaching such a personal subject with someone who was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger. Yet Lucille was also right that their social circle was relatively small: to try to avoid someone was always difficult. Friends always seemed to have other mutual friends or acquaintances and an invitation or chance meeting could prove awkward.
Lucille took a biscuit and poured a second cup of tea. “I own it will be a relief to have the matter settled,” she said with a candid smile. “Then I may stop worrying about you and turn my attention to Peter and Hetty! They are causing me great concern!”
“It must have been a great blow for Hetty when Mrs Markham’s ill health led to the postponment of the wedding,” Polly commented, secretly glad that Lucille had turned the subject. “But what do you mean, Lucille? How can Peter be giving you cause for concern?”
Lucille frowned. Polly’s brother and her own foster sister had been intending to wed that spring, but the marriage had been delayed indefinitely since Hetty’s mother had succumbed to the dropsy.
“You know how silly Hetty became at the start of the Season,” Lucille said, a little crossly. “Of course, she is very young and I think her head was turned by all the attention she received, but I thought that once she had returned to the country she might regain some of her natural sense! But only today I have had a letter from her telling me that Lord Grantley is in Essex and paying her lavish attentions! And your brother is as bad, Polly, for instead of posting down to Kingsmarton to see Hetty and untangle matters he persists in staying in Town, and last night at Lady Coombes’s ball he was paying the most outrageous attentions to Maria Leverstoke…”
“But I thought she was Lord Henry’s flirt,” Polly said, studiously picking an imaginary thread off Fanchon’s latest confection, and politely avoiding a description of Lady Leverstoke that might have been more appropriate but less discreet.
Lucille made an airy gesture. “That may be so, but she seemed smitten enough with Peter last night! He is become the most dreadful philanderer! You are for Lady Phillips’s ridotto tonight, are you not? Only watch, and you will see just what I mean!”
Chapter Two
Lady Phillips’s ridotto was one of the major social events of the Season, but already the June weather had turned hot, prompting some of the ton to leave London for their country estates or the cooling breezes of the seaside. Nevertheless, there was a great crush at the house in Berkeley Square and, even with the french windows flung wide open the temperature in the ballroom was enough to make the guests perspire unbecomingly.
Almost the first person Polly saw on entering the crowded reception room was Lord Henry Marchnight, lavishing his attentions in a thoroughly improper way on a lady in bright scarlet satin. Polly, trying to ignore the pang of misery that assailed her, considered that the colour of the lady’s outfit was an all-too-appropriate choice.
“Lady Melton,” hissed the Dowager Countess of Seagrave to her daughter, “married to his lordship but a twelvemonth ago and already driving him to his grave with her extravagance and her affaires! So Lady Phillips is letting the demi-monde patronise her ball! I should have expected her to exercise more judgement!”
Polly raised her brows. The Dowager Countess was very high in the instep and would never countenance such guests at one of her own events, but not all ton hostesses were as discerning. A moment later, Polly heard her mother give a stifled groan, halfway between a shriek and a moan, almost as though she were in pain. The Dowager Countess had stopped dead in the middle of the marbled floor.
Polly stopped too and turned enquiringly to her mother. “Mama, are you quite well?”
“Yes, only look! No, not over there…over by that pillar! The strumpet!”
Startled, Polly turned to scan the room. There were plenty of faces she recognised, but none surely to give rise to such vehemence in the Dowager Countess’s breast. Why, her mother had gone quite pale, though whether with shock, anger or illness it was impossible to tell. Then, she saw the reason.
“Good Lord—” The exclamation had escaped before she could help herself.
“Polly, you will not take the name of the Lord in vain!” the Dowager Countess said energetically. She seemed slightly restored by her daughter’s inadvertent slip into blasphemy.
“Yes, Mama, I am sorry, but it is Peter and—”
“I am as capable as the next person of recognising your brother,” the Dowager snapped. “We cannot acknowledge him, however! Come this way! Thank God that Nicholas and Lucille are not present tonight! That brass-faced trollop is always trying to embarrass us!” She took Polly’s arm in a tight grip and positively pulled her towards the ballroom.
“I thought that Peter had taken up with Lady Leverstoke,” Polly said, obediently allowing herself to be steered away with only one backward glance.
“Humph! I never thought to consider Maria Leverstoke as the lesser of two evils—” The Dowager broke off to give a tight-lipped smile to one of her acquaintance. “On no account must you allow your brother to approach you,” she continued, as they squeezed past the orchestra to appropriate two rout chairs in an inconspicuous corner. “It would be quite unacceptable!”
“Perhaps it would be easier for us to go home,” Polly said, a little dispiritedly. It was bad enough to be confronted by the prospect of Lord Henry flirting all evening with some fast-looking matron, but the thought of avoiding her own brother seemed quite ridiculous. Here, however, she ran up against the Dowager Countess’s stubborn streak.
“Go home! And have everyone say that that trollop has ousted us? Certainly not! Besides…” the Dowager looked around surreptitiously “…I most particularly wish to see Agatha Calvert tonight! She has not been up in Town this age and we have so much to catch up on!”
“Surely Lady Calvert can call on you tomorrow—”
The Dowager Countess looked disgusted. “Have you no pride, Polly? I assure you that the Cyprian will not drive me away!”
Polly smiled slightly. She could see her brother Peter coming into the ballroom at that very moment, threatening to put his mother’s resolution to the test. Lucille had mentioned Peter’s sudden descent into questionable company, but even she had apparently been unaware of this latest disaster. For with Peter Seagrave was none other than Lucille’s sister, the notorious Cyprian Susanna Bolt, in a dress of the most outrageous plunging black silk and ostrich feathers.
“Peter, what can you be doing!”
“Why, I’m talkin’ to my own sister!” Lord Peter Seagrave said, with pardonable indignation. “What could be more suitable?”
“You know that is not what I meant!” Polly looked up at him with asperity, feeling her annoyance begin to melt at the limpid innocence in those dark Seagrave eyes. It was so very difficult to be angry with Peter for long. Whilst Polly and Nicholas had inherited something of their father’s gravity, Peter had a gaiety and insouciance that was almost irresistible. “Oh, Peter, how could you squire Susanna Bolt about and embarrass Mama so?”
Peter looked affronted. “Mama ain’t embarrassed by me! Why, she’s nose to nose with Agatha Calvert and has barely noticed me!”
“Only because she has not seen Lady Calvert for an age!” Polly looked across to where the two matrons were chatting nineteen to the dozen. “I assure you, she would not have allowed me to even speak with you else! Supposing Lady Bolt approaches us?”
“Lady Bolt is almost one of the family,” Peter added virtuously, but unable to repress a slight twinkle, “and I am sure Mama would not slight a relative!”
“Fustian!” Polly was also trying not to smile. “Oh, this is too bad of you, Peter! I dare swear it is not for the family connection that you have sought her