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Authors: Eloisa James
A Gentleman Never Tells (10 page)
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June 21, 1819
A House Party
Kent
Seat of the Duke of Ormond
“I
DON'T UNDERSTAND
what I did wrong,” Lady Bellingworth moaned, wringing her hands. “You had the best governesses money could buy, and I took you to church often, and certainly every Easter!”
“You did your best, Mama,” Cecilia replied. She spun in place, causing her new gown to swirl around her feet. “Isn't it
beautiful
?”
The gown was better described by what it wasn't: it wasn't white, demure, or ruffled. It didn't have the new gathered sleeves; in fact, it didn't have any sleeves. There wasn't much of a bodice either.
A fold of strawberry-Âcolored silk wound around Cecilia's bosom and draped over her arms. Rather than following the line of her narrow skirtsâÂmade from a darker shadeâÂthe transparent overskirt clung to her hips before belling out around her toes. A row of embroidered strawberries around the hem weighted the overskirt so it swirled around her as she moved, emphasizing her curves.
And she had them.
Cecilia considered her curves to be her best feature, with golden hair the color of old guineas a close second.
Coaxed into tight ringlets by a curling iron, her hair took on an oddly metallic gleam. But tonight her maid had styled it in a frothy pile of natural curls, stuck about with ruby-Âtipped hairpins.
“What are you wearing on your feet?” her mother cried, sounding rather like a kettle coming to boil.
Cecilia lifted her skirts and looked happily at her toes. “New shoes.”
Lady Bellingworth turned purple. “Those are your great-Âaunt Margaret's diamond buckles!”
Her shoes were made of strawberry silk embroidered in a silver crosshatch pattern that went splendidly with diamond buckles. But the pièce de résistance was her heels. They were covered in strawberry-Âcolored silk and guaranteed to catch the eye.
Generally speaking, ladies drifted around the ballroom in soft slippers, just as Cecilia had throughout the season. But she had carefully plannedâÂin collusion with a brilliant modisteâÂto change her appearance from head to toe.
In the past two seasons, she had dutifully worn white (which didn't suit her), sat demurely at the sides of ballrooms (which didn't suit her), and smiled rather than spoke (which really didn't suit her).
But she had arrived at the Duchess of Ormond's house party this afternoon without a single white gown in her baggage. When a Bellingworth decides to change her appearance, she doesn't hold back.
She was not going to drift around the ballroom: she would
sway
, and her hips would sway right along with her.
“You won't be able to dance in those shoes,” her mother moaned.
“I shan't need to dance,” Cecilia said, adroitly avoiding the issue, because in her opinion, the shoes turned a simple country dance step into an invitation. “The duchess announced a musical evening, remember, Mama? By the way, if we don't go down to the ballroom immediately, we shall be late for the concert.”
Lady Bellingworth was slumped against the high back of the settee, hand over her heart. “I feel ill, positively ill. I cannot believe that my daughter is so lost to impropriety that she would consider wearing this . . . this costume better suited to the demimonde than a house party given by one of my oldest friends.”
“If I were one of those ladies,” Cecilia pointed out, “I would take off this corset, which is horribly uncomfortable.”
“Do you think to find a husband this way?” her mother demanded. “To entice a gentleman to wed you because your gown is small enough to cram into his pocket?”
“Marriage would be desirable outcome, don't you think?” Cecilia asked. “My second season as a wallflower was more than enough.”
She was tired of being ignored, tired of sitting at the side of the room watching other girls curtsying. She was tired of pity dances with male relatives, and whispered advice from girls younger than she was.
She had an idea that gentlemen didn't bother to look very closely at the rows of debutantes, because every young lady was dressed precisely the same. Swathed in white and trained to docility, they were no more distinct than one sheep in a flock.
“I know why you're doing this,” her mother said, reaching up to pull Cecilia down onto the settee at her side. Her eyes had turned misty. “It's because of that dreadful nickname, isn't it? It's because poor James is called âSilly Billy.' It's all my fault! There must have been something I could have done.”
There was no question but that Cecilia's failure on the marriage market was wrapped up with the cruel, persistent jest about her brother, Lord Bellingworth, who had been dropped on his head as a baby. No one believed the truth about his injury. They thought that the Bellingworth blood was tainted and her babies would be silly as well.
She had a respectable dowry, excellent lineage, and even better teeth. She had shining hair, a slender waist, and slightly larger breasts than were normal for a young lady. But her second season had just drawn to a close, and she had had no suitors, not even one. “It's all just so
foolish
,” her mother continued, mopping her eyes. “Poor James was perfectly normal until he suffered that terrible blow. Perfectly normal!”
“There's nothing you could have done, Mama,” Cecilia said, wrapping her arm around her mother. “You have no control over the fools who rule the so-Âcalled Beau Monde. Darlington and his ilk.”
“Charles Darlington didn't create that despicable nickname. It came from a horrid fellow known as Eliot Thurman, who was part of his circle a few years ago.”
“I've heard as much,” Cecilia said absently. She caught sight of her gown in the dressing table mirror and eased her bodice a bit lower, tugging down that blasted corset while she was at it.
It was French and hoisted her breasts in the air like a gift, but it was deucedly uncomfortable.
Luckily, her mother didn't notice what she was doing. “Thurman dropped out of society, and then of course, Darlington married Lady Griselda . . .”
Lady Bellingworth kept talking and talking until Cecilia finally intervened. “I think that Âpeople are fools to pay attention to Âpeople like Darlington. He published that fictional memoir about Josie's husband, the Earl of Mayne, after all. Josie says the earl doesn't mind, but I think it was rude.”
“I know Josie, I mean the Countess of Mayne, is one of your closest friends, darling, but you should also remember that Lady Griselda is married to Darlington, and
she
is something of a stepmother to Lady Mayne,” her mother said, tracing the twisty paths of society connections. “Besides, I like Darlington. He's apologized to me a hundred times, if not more, for having brought Thurman into society.”
“Thurman may have invented âSilly Billy,' but it took a whole herd of simpletons to repeat it over and over, turning my brother into a pariah.”
“I am not defending Thurman,” her mother said. “I loathe the man. Someone told me that he'd been shipped off to the Antipodes, though I don't know how accurate the rumor is.”
“Mama, if we don't go downstairs, we'll be late,” Cecilia said again, drawing her mother to her feet. She picked up a wisp of silk tulle and wound it around her shoulders.
“You're not pretending that scrap of fabric is a shawl!”
Cecilia put on an innocent expression. “Whatever can you mean? Madame Rocque fashioned it specifically for this gown.”
“I recognize that look, you know,” her mother said suddenly. “You had the same expression when you stole out of the house at twelve years old and begged that violin player to take you with him to Vienna.” Her mother shuddered. “I've never forgotten the horror of it.”
All Cecilia remembered was the disappointment. The violin player in question was Franz Clement, one of the best violinists in the world. Her attempt to persuade him to take her with him, back to Europe, had been the only time in her life, before this, that she had attempted to live life on her own terms.
She had failed, and in retrospect, she had to agree that the whole idea had been mad. Clement allowed her to play a Beethoven adagio and then promptly escorted her back to their London townhouse. “She'd be good enough if she were a man,” he had told her mother.
“She's a lady!” her mother had retorted, in pure horror.
“Precisely,” Clement had said, bowed, and left.
Now Cecilia turned to her mother. “I'm not threatening to run away from home this time, Mama. I've done nothing more outrageous than commission new gowns.”
“I suppose we have no choice at this point,” her mother said, as tragically as any Cleopatra. “I might as well face the humiliation now, as wait for London.”
“It can't be more humiliating than having a wallflower as a daughter,” Cecilia pointed out.
“Oh, how little you know of the world,” her mother said grimly.
Â
ELOISA JAMES
is a
New York Times
bestselling author and professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight. Visit her at
www.eloisajames.com
.
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