A Regency Duchess's Awakening. Amanda McCabe
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gathered in the sparkling ballroom. Thousands of candles cast their light over the sheen of fine silk, the glitter of sapphires and rubies, and the snap of lace fans.
It was quite the “dreadful crush” that every London hostess longed for. The dance floor was swirling with the patterns of a country dance, while thickets of people packed around its edges to laugh and chatter and stare. Their voices blurred into a high-pitched, echoing cacophony where no words could be made out at all.
Not that it mattered, Emily thought. No one came to such a gathering for rational conversation. They came to be seen, to have everyone know they were important enough to be invited to Lady Orman’s ball. They paid a great deal of money to the modiste and the hairdresser in order to pack themselves into a ballroom like a tight row of salted fish. To have their hems trod on, their ringlets wilted in the heat, their throats made raw from shouting at one another.
And for what? For the dubious pleasure of having their names in the papers? “Mr and Mrs Whos-it were seen attending Lady Orman’s ball …”
Emily sighed. There were surely many more useful, not to say more pleasant, things to do with one’s time. But her parents and her brother Robert seemed to enjoy it.
She stood on tiptoe, peering through the palms to see her brother dancing with his new wife, Amy. They were laughing as they spun around, their faces alight with pleasure. Well, Amy did love society; she was good at being sociable, and that was all the better for Rob’s fledgling political career. They were surely well matched, even if Amy’s ancient-named family had not much money.
That was what Emily’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Moreby, said anyway. Amy’s family name, as old as their own, and her outgoing personality were fine assets, and a good excuse for letting Rob marry where he chose.
Besides, they would add, with sidelong glances at Emily herself, Emily will make our fortune. She is bound to marry very well!
Except that Emily had been a terrible disappointment to them thus far. She had not come close to marrying a title or a fortune. Or marrying anyone at all. And now the Season was almost over.
She instinctively raised her hand to nervously chew at her thumbnail, before she remembered she wore silk gloves. Her hand fell back to her side, tucked into the folds of her silver-embroidered white silk skirts. When, oh, when would that floor open up already?
The whole evening, the noise, the heat, the smell of melting candles and a hundred perfumes, bore down on her like an anvil. Soon, she would have to leave her little palmy sanctuary and join her parents. They would want to find her a partner for the next dance. That was what she did at every ball, let them match her up with rich lords—both young, spotty ones and old, portly ones—let them extol her beauty and goodness while she stood there with her cheeks on fire.
It was the least she could do, after she disappointed them so greatly last summer. They had gone to the house party at the notorious Welbourne Manor with the intention of matching up Emily with the new Duke of Manning, Nicholas.
Oh, they did not say so explicitly, of course, but it was obvious in their nervous preparations for the party. In all their words to her about how handsome Nicholas was, how great a friend his father had been to the Carrolls.
And she not only had been unable to attach the duke, she had scarcely been able to talk to him. She was always shy around men, of course, but there was something about him that terrified her. He was always most kind and polite, yet every time she looked into his beautiful sky-blue eyes her throat closed, and she felt that ridiculous burning blush spread over her whole body.
And then she saw his affable smile turn puzzled, and felt him withdraw from her. That was a relief of sorts. He and his family were so very exuberant, so full of fun and frivolity, while she was so quiet and serious. They would not be a good match at all, if only her parents could see that! Such a mouse as her would never fit into such a dashing family, and it was better not to even try.
Since that house party and Rob’s marriage that autumn, her parents’ matchmaking efforts had taken on a desperate edge, even as paintings and ornaments began disappearing from their house.
“She is so very beautiful!” Emily overheard her mother wail one day. “Quite ten times prettier than any other young lady this Season. Why can she not bring us a single suitable offer?”
“There was Mr Browning,” her father tentatively suggested.
“A merchant.” Her mother sniffed. “With seven children.”
“He is a wealthy man,” her father said.
“Surely we are not in such straitened circumstances that we must bestow our daughter on a tradesman.”
“Not yet,” her father muttered, as Emily fled in order to not hear any more. The fact that Mr Browning was in trade did not bother her, but the seven children rather did. Plus he was twenty years older than her, and had such sweaty, grasping hands.
Unlike Nicholas, whose long, elegant fingers had clasped hers once to help her into a carriage. Yet they were both such unsuitable men for her, in their own ways. And surely her parents would not force her to marry someone she didn’t care for, if they knew what had happened with Mr Lofton that time….
“I don’t mean to be a disappointment,” she whispered. If not for her wretched shyness, the way her mind went all blank and her throat closed up whenever she met a stranger.
“I say, the quality of the gatherings this Season have been very poor indeed,” a man said, close enough to her hiding place that she could hear the actual words and not just an indistinct hum.
“I agree,” his companion said in a bored drawl. “Lady Orman could once be relied upon to host only the cream of the ton. Now she seems to let in anyone at all.”
Emily peered past the green fronds again to see Lord Barrington and Mr Fraser, two thoroughly useless dandies. She had once endured a dance with Lord Barrington, as he prattled on to her about a new way to tie a cravat or some such thing. She had no desire to listen to his gossip now, but she could see no way to slip past them. She was trapped.
“If this continues, I shall have to go see if there are more quality amusements to be had in Brighton,” said Mr Fraser. “Or even abroad. Even the wine tonight is most insipid.”
“I stood over there and watched the ladies pass by for an hour,” Lord Barrington said, gesturing toward one of the walls with his quizzing glass. “I counted only ten that were tolerable, and only two who were truly pretty.”
“Oh? Who were they, then?”
“Mrs Featherstone and Viscountess Granton,” said Lord Barrington, mentioning Amy.
“True, none can match Lady Granton for beauty. She is quite the Toast. But what of her sister-in-law, Lady Emily Carroll? She is reckoned to be mightily pretty at my club.”
Lord Barrington gave a contemptuous snort. “She is undoubtedly pretty, with that pale hair and white skin. But a veritable icicle. She can’t seem to bring herself to say three words to anyone, just stares at you with those cold, dismissive green eyes. At my club, she is called the Ice Princess, and we wager on which poor, desperate fool will marry her by the end of the Season. The winner thus far is Mr Rayburn. Undoubtedly, the marriage bed will mean the freezing off of his …”
Whatever crude word he was going to say dissolved into their snickers. Emily pressed her hands to her face, wishing more than ever that the floor would swallow her and she could vanish! She didn’t feel like an “ice princess” in the least. Indeed, she felt as if her whole body was on fire with shame.
She longed to cry, to curl up and disappear, never to come to a hateful ball again.
But she was not a Carroll for nothing. Her family might not be wealthy any longer, but they certainly had a long, proud history. They had faced the Tower under Henry VIII, poverty during the Civil War, riotous parties with Charles II, and her own grandfather, a terrible gambler who had to flee to France twice to