London, London! It was evening when we arrived and the town twinkled with a million lights. The streets were filled with an astounding array of coaches, wagons, and light sporting vehicles. The chairmen carried flambeaus which lit their faces eerily as they threaded their way through crowds of pedestrians and hawkers with portable stalls. I saw one girl pushing a tipsy cart filled with pots of blooming flowers “all a-blowin’ and all a-growin’.” The dignified men in plush breeches, tailed coats, and powdered wigs were footmen, or so Christopher informed us. He wasn’t so forthcoming with information about an old lady in a long duffle coat with a group of dressed-up young ladies in tow who stood talking to a group of sailors on one street corner. “Shocking,” I heard Mrs. Goodbody pronounce, though I saw Christopher hide a smile when Christa guessed they might all be in a “school of some kind.”
It seemed incredible to me that there could be such a broad expanse of buildings and people. The same space in Kent would have covered many villages, marsh, thousands of acres of farmland, and a forest or two. But here were just rows of houses and mobs of people, all looking worried and hurried, rushing here and there, and none of them seeming to mind a whit the foul state of the air they were breathing. It made my eyes water.
The whole experience of driving into London made the possibilities of riots, wars, starvation, and disease so much more real. The walls were covered with posters lampooning people I had only heard about in a very distant fashion, people like “Prinny,” whom I had known only as the Prince Regent and “Boney” Napoleon Bonaparte. I had heard how unemployment was a problem, and now I understood. How could there ever be enough jobs to go around among so many people? Indeed, I did see more than a few thin, dirty, and shabbily dressed. And though there were houses row upon row, Christopher told me that he had read once in a republican leaflet that as many as twenty thousand Londoners were without any shelter whatever and slept under bridges and in parks. Some poor families lived in a single room. Families even shared rooms. Christa and Caro were reading out of a guidebook.
“Listen to this, Elizabeth. It says ‘a man who saunters about the capital with pockets on the outside of his coat deserves no pity.’ What does that mean?”
“He’s talking about pickpockets,” said Christopher. “They take things right from your pockets while you’re not looking if you’re not careful.”
“Why do they do that?” asked Christa.
“I suppose because they don’t have anything of their own,” said Christopher simply. “You have to watch out for them all. This includes street thugs, footpads, housebreakers, and counterfeiters. And I do hope to frighten you. Even where we will be staying, at the marquis’s house in Mayfair, you are never to go out alone, even in the daytime, without being accompanied by at least a footman or a maid. That is the rule for anyone living in London.”
The twins were awed by that last bit of information, but I thought it to be one more of the marquis’s surveillance rules.
We were now entering a different area of the city, in which streets were not as crowded, and the atmosphere seemed more sedate. People were moving at not such a rapid pace and the houses were larger and better kept.
“What area is this, Kit?” I asked.
“This is Mayfair. We are getting closer to Uncle Nicky’s humble quarters.”
The carriage finally stopped in a well-kept square lined with genteel mansions whose windows winked candlelight. We stepped down from the carriage into a spacious forecourt and could glimpse the handsome facade of Lorne House through a beautiful row of plane trees. Mrs. Goodbody looked approvingly up at the trees, murmuring reassuringly to us that if London had such trees then it couldn’t be all bad. I needed all the reassurance that I could get because the thought of crossing His Lordship’s elegant threshold made me feel like a mule at the milliner’s. Just as I was playing about with the idea of crawling back to hide in the coach, the highly finished hardwood door in the mansion’s porched entrance flew open and a tall girl wreathed in smiles and jade taffeta came gliding into the graveled courtyard. She dispensed loving hugs to Christopher and Lord Dearborne, who received the embrace in a surprisingly fatherly spirit. Even before I heard Lord Dearborne introducing her to Mrs. Goodbody, I realized that this was Lady Anne Crawford, Christopher’s fashionable sister. Their family resemblance was strongest in their manners, which were frank, positive, and unaffectedly friendly. Lady Anne had Christopher’s soft sable-colored eyes and shining brown hair. But here the resemblance ended. In Lady Anne, Christopher’s classical features were replaced by a wide stretch of mouth and a tiny button nose that seemed totally inadequate for all that girl. Actually, since she’s closer to thirty, perhaps “girl” is undignified. But so she strikes one. She took my hands in a kindly grip as we were introduced, continuing with the vivacious chatter that she had begun.
“Christopher, you told me she was a beauty, but there are degrees, you wretch. You should have warned me that I was about to be presented with the task of chaperoning Venus come to earth!” she said. She turned to me. “My dear child, I don’t know if you’re going to love London or not, but I can quite safely guarantee that London is going to love you!” With this lavish assessment, she swept us into the house with promises of tea, bathing water, and restful bedchambers. We crossed the marble floor of a graceful entrance hall, and climbed the central staircase to the first floor. My sisters leaned perilously over the flow of wrought-iron handrail, the better to view the subdued design in the stained glass fanlight set over the main doorway.
My bedroom matched the tone of the rest of Lorne House, graciously luxurious with an exquisite lightness of detail. The walls were hung in Wedgewood blue and cream damask, and the colors appeared again throughout the room. After my little cot, surely I would be lost in the lovely canopied bed hung in blistered satin! The rest of the room was furnished richly but sparsely, giving an airy, spacious feeling. Even my fantasies of life in a marquis’s mansion had not been audacious enough to imagine this.
The greatest hit with the twins turned out to be a little room adjoining their chamber, which someone had discreetly decided to name a water closet. I must say it is a marvelous invention, though I have never heard of such a thing before and if you don’t have one, I can heartily recommend its installation!
Also, to my amazement, a friendly lady’s maid came to help me prepare for dinner. Imagine, Elizabeth Cordell with a real lady’s maid! She helped me to choose a clinging gown of watered bisque silk that she promised was just the thing for “informal” dining, and coaxed my hair into a casual tumble of dancing curls.
“Ooo, miss, don’t you look something like!” she enthused. Never before had I looked quite so fashionable. I was so excited that I gave the little maid a swift hug which almost prostrated her from shock.
I was to await Lady Anne’s escort to the dining parlor, but decided immediately against so tame a course. Slowly, and giving myself monstrous airs, I descended the stairway to the first floor. Smiling and inclining my head graciously, I curtseyed deeply to the well-kept portraits that lined the walls. Men in Elizabethan ruffs, powdered wigs, and sparkling jewels stared haughtily back at me, with the vivid blue eyes of the marquis.
Curiously, like an inquisitive mouse, I poked my head into one high-ceilinged reception room after the next. Shining velvet and satin draperies, glinting crystal, and islands of exotic carpets set off the delicately carved and graceful furniture. It was like a place out of a dream.
The double doors to the grand salon on the first floor stood open and I ventured cautiously inside, hardly able to believe that I would not be ejected as an intruder at any moment. Crossing the high-polish parquetry floor (much too lovely to be walked on), I came to the huge bay windows that overlooked the square, now twinkling with a hundred candlelit windows. I felt rather dwarfed by all this magnificence. Lord Dearborne came in to join me, the perfect foil for his exquisite surroundings.
“I was admiring the view, Milord,” I offered nervously.
“Yes, the view is enchanting this evening.” The smile that swept me was lazily appreciative. “Were you shocked by your first glimpse of the wicked pace of London life?”
“The bustle in the streets, you mean? It made me dizzy but it’s so peaceful here that it might be an evening at Barfrestly. Except that here is rather more… incredible. It’s like a palace,” I confided shyly. His smile was, for once, quite kind. I felt my self-confidence increase accordingly. “I’ve had so much excitement at Barfrestly lately that London may well be dull in comparison. I’ve been here several hours already without one person trying to knock me on the head, blow me up, or toss me across the front of their saddle,” I said, for a little practice at repartee.
“If London gets too dull, let me know and I’ll try to arrange some excitement for you,” promised Lord Dearborne, giving me a look that demonstrated that it is better to practice one’s repartee with less dangerous partners.
Lady Anne joined us then, and Christopher. I had been dreading my first dinner in this exalted company. My sisters were dining in their room tonight with an early bedtime, and Mrs. Goodbody ate belowstairs with the marquis’s servants. At first I was upset by the notion of taking my meals away from her, but when I suggested that I could eat downstairs too, she vetoed the idea with such horror that I dared not mention it again.
“After all the years I have suffered, seeing you denied your true station in life, I’m not going to have you saying anything so silly! Lordy me, whatever would your poor mama say? ’Tis like a wish come true, seeing you in your rightful company,” Mrs. Goodbody had lectured.
I remembered an anecdote Christopher had told me about the great Beau Brummell, who is quite the most fashionable man in England. Once, at a dinner party, he had asked a footman to name him his neighboring diners rather than trouble himself to turn his head to discover their identities on his own. Thankfully, I was to discover that affectation due more to avoid the disarrangement of the fastidious beau’s neckwear than to the formality prevailing at the supper tables of the haute monde.
Lady Anne was the liveliest lady imaginable, and alternately teased her brother, shared the latest political gossip with Lord Dearborne, and upon hearing that I was interested in classical studies, announced that she would take me to see Lord Elgin’s marbles on the very next afternoon, though “Nicky disapproves dreadfully of the method of their acquisition.”
“Yes, do take her, Anne. I daresay she will regard them as sacred relics,” said Christopher, leaning over to tap me on the nose. “Better enjoy your leisure while you can, ’Lizbeth, I daresay m’sister has a million devilish places to drag us to thereafter!”
“Don’t I just!” sparkled Lady Anne. “I’ve only two weeks left before I join my husband in Europe; we’ll be gone for four whole months. ’Tis an eternity, I assure you. So I’ve to pack four months of socializing into a scanty fortnight and that takes a deal of ingenuity. Oh, Elizabeth, there are so many people that I want you to meet and not near enough time. Don’t worry, though, for as soon as we are back from Europe we will install in my dear John’s house on St. James Square. A mammoth pile I promise you, but the most modish of locations! And you will come and stay with us for an extended visit. No, no, my dear, don’t refuse me. Indeed, I would have had you come the moment I learned of your existence from Christopher, but all is at sixes and sevens with us with John suddenly being given that foreign assignment. He left last week for Amsterdam, John that is, and I was so delighted when Nicky sent to ask me to stay here. Ah, speaking of devilish places,” Lady Anne continued with a sly glance at the marquis, “Kit, my love, tomorrow night we go to Lady Catherine Doran’s for a ball. It will be a dreadful squeeze, I know, but all the world comes.”
And, as Lady Anne had promised, it did seem that all the world had come to Lady Catherine’s on the next evening. Never before had I dreamed that so many spangled ladies and carefully tailored gentlemen existed. And the names of the guests! We hadn’t been there for half an hour before Lady Anne had introduced me to so many notables that my head was swimming. As if it were a mere nothing, Lady Anne had made me known to distinguished generals, intimidatingly famous peers of the realm, and even a royal duke. I was grateful, though slightly overwhelmed, that Lady Anne herself supervised my preparation even to the finishing touch of adding one of her own heart-shaped diamond pins to the shimmering cascade of curls that my ladies had lovingly arranged. The gown I wore was the heavenliest creation of semitransparent silk, smoky topaz with a demitrain. I wore my first pair of long gloves, too, and I was glad to have them for, as I ruefully told Christopher as he led me out for the first dance, my wrists were the only part of me decently covered.
“You mean the neck of your gown? Of course it’s decent,” Christopher replied reassuringly. “You can depend on m’sister to send you out just right. The girl’s got excellent taste, even the Beau says so and everyone knows how finicky he is. ’Sides, it’s the style to look as naked as possible. It’s considered classical—that should please you. Even the men’s trousers are skintight in emulation of nude Greek statues.”
“I hadn’t noticed any men’s trousers,” I managed to shoot back primly, if slightly untruthfully, before Christopher and I were separated by a movement of the dance.
It was some time before I was returned to Lady Anne. Christopher had a cadre of his own to introduce me to. Dozens of cheerful, friendly young people swarmed around us in between sets, eager to talk with Christopher after his absence from London. So many of Christopher’s friends led me out to the dance floor that at last I had to beg for a rest.
Lady Anne was seated on a crocodile-footed Egyptian sofa set picturesquely near a potted palm. She appeared to be immersed in earnest conversation with a foppish young man, but as I arrived she ousted him promptly and installed me in his place.
“Ah, there you are, Elizabeth. Richard, do run and find Elizabeth some refreshment. I vow this room has become horridly close.”
The crowd separated then, and across the room I saw Lord Dearborne. The marquis was beautiful by daylight but there ought to be a law against him in candlelight. The effect is devastating. The gleaming brass buttons of his satin waistcoat seemed almost dull in comparison to the shining highlights of his curling shoulder-length hair. I ascertained with amusement that I was not the only female to notice. A number of ladies cast languishing glances at my “guardian.”
I watched in fascination as Lady Catherine came to press herself against the marquis in an unconvincing stumble. “Dreadful!” I ejaculated in an undervoice that Lady Anne, who had followed the direction of my gaze, was able to hear. Then I flushed brightly with the shocked realization that I would have liked to try much the same thing myself.
Lady Anne, thankfully misinterpreting my blush, returned confidentially, “Dreadful is the word for it. But it’s not a view that we will have to put up with much longer. Lady Cat’s star is definitely on the wane. Already Nicholas is losing interest in her full-blown purring.” She tapped her ivory fan on her palm several times before asking casually, “Tell me, what do you think of Nicky?”
I saw Lady Doran say something that produced one of Lord Dearborne’s most alluring smiles.
“I think of him as little as I can possibly manage!” I realized that this was scarcely a proper sentiment to express about the man who is at least legally one’s guardian. “Oh dear, that makes me sound like the most ungrateful beast in nature and I am fully sensible of all that Lord Dearborne has done for my sisters and me. I don’t know what would have happened to us if Lord Dearborne hadn’t gone on supporting us after Admiral Barfreston died. Sometimes Lord Dearborne can be the most charming of companions. And then there are times…” I stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about those times to anyone. Lady Anne regarded me strangely. “Times when he scarcely notices me,” I finished lamely.
After a moment she spoke again, though sadly. “It’s very tragic that someone with the enormous potential that Nicholas has for real happiness gets caught up in so many meaningless affairs. I’ve known Nicky since we were children—our families were very close. If you could have seen him as a boy, Elizabeth… He was full of life and so idealistic. Then one summer, his family didn’t come to visit us as they had every year before. We got a scribbled note from Nicky’s mother that said they wouldn’t be able to get away from London that year. Later, of course, the whole story came out. Nicky had had an affair with a married woman more than twice his age. Apparently her husband found out and made a bungled attempt at suicide—he even tried to bring a divorce action against his wife, naming Nicky as her lover. Nicky was only sixteen at the time. Nothing ever came of it, and it’s ancient history now by London standards of gossip. But when I met Nicky after that he had changed. I mean, he didn’t withdraw from the world into embittered seclusion, he had just sort of soured on life. He was harder and there was a streak of cynicism that hadn’t been there before. You see, the whole affair wasn’t unusually scandalous by society standards, but it was all so sordid. Any woman who cares about Nicky will have to be very patient with him while he learns how to love all over again.”
Lady Anne gave me a sidelong glance, then continued: “When it was over, society welcomed Nicky back with open arms—they were willing to accept far worse youthful peccadillos from anyone with Nicky’s title and wealth. Naturally, Nicky was well aware of the reason for their broad-minded leniency toward him and that did nothing to improve his opinion of the human race. He has such contempt for women—he’s used to taking what he wants without needing to ask first. I think that it would do him an enormous amount of good to care enough to ask.”
I thought of Lord Dearborne on those few occasions when he had unbent with me and his smiles then—as they were without mockery or contempt. Had this been what he was like as a young man before world-weary boredom had eclipsed the sweetness? I wished suddenly, passionately, that he could regain whatever it was that he had lost in the process of growing up. For no apparent reason I suddenly recalled the time he had caressed me in his arrogant, loveless fashion under the honeysuckle bush, and again flushed to the roots of my hair. I was glad to have my wayward thoughts interrupted by Lady Anne, who drew my attention to a young man elbowing his way impatiently across the crowded floor.
“Oh Lord, Elizabeth, look. ’Tis Godfrey Woodman coming toward us. Kit says that he’s developed the most profound crush on you while staying in Kent. I suppose there’s nothing for it but you will have to dance with the tiresome fellow. Au revoir, my dear.”
To be honest, I didn’t think Godfrey a tiresome fellow in the least. True, he had less sense of humor than a nesting osprey, but then he is a very good poet for all that he hasn’t caught the public fancy. And I was glad to see a familiar face in the vast sea of unknown fashionables.
After we danced, Godfrey led me over to a vacant seat and we exchanged ecstasies over Lord Elgin’s marbles. He was about to quote me a stanza from the epic poem he was sweating over at present when, very much to my amazement, we were joined by Lady Catherine Doran herself.
“Ah, Godfrey, prosing on about your poetry again? Dull work for Miss Elizabeth, you may be sure… Run off now and let us chat a bit,” said Lady Catherine, gifting Godfrey with a smile that robbed her words of offense. “Elizabeth, my dear, I hope that you don’t mind my informality but we hardly need stand upon ceremony, do you think? Nicky and I are such old friends. So, how do you find London?”
“It’s very… big,” I replied foolishly. There was something so intensely suave about Lady Catherine that it left me feeling remarkably gauche.
Lady Catherine laughed as though I had made the cleverest witticism she had heard in days.
“Ah, to think that Nicky has undertaken your guardianship. How delightfully… paternal of him! But tell me. My cousin, dear Mrs. Macready, told me that you’ve had some excitement since Nicky arrived, with the death of the French cook, no less! Here, my dear, let me refill your wineglass and you can tell me about it.”
I was so flattered that Lady Catherine was interested in talking to me that I was rendered inarticulate for a few moments. She was so warmly encouraging, though, that I soon lost the shys and gave forth with the full tale of Henri’s death, or what I knew of it, anyway. Lady Catherine hung on every word. I finished by telling her that I should dearly love to solve the riddles that I was sure still existed in connection with Henri’s death.
“Perhaps you shall, my dear. But how is this? You don’t drink! Have another glass of wine. There now. We may be comfortable again. Let me tell you a tale in exchange for that fascinating one you told me.”
Lady Catherine went on to relate several very funny pieces of London gossip, what Beau Brummell had said to Lord Alvenley the other evening at dinner, and who Lady Caroline Lamb had tossed a plate of orange peels at during Lady Jersey’s al fresco picnic.
It is a very special type of flattery that Lady Catherine uses. She is so attentive, and so involved with everything you say that it gives you a marvelous, though false, sense of your own importance. Truthfully, my hostess was a little too attentive. She refilled my wineglass so many times that I was beginning to feel fuzzy. Wine is not my favorite beverage, but I was afraid to offend her by refusing to drink, which just shows you what a wimp I was at the time. The candlelit scene became a soft twinkling blur with Lady Catherine dominating the center. I don’t recall how it was that we came to be joined by Lesley Peterby. I only remember Lady Catherine smile up at him in greeting.
“Ah, my dearest Lesley, how charming you are, as usual. Elizabeth, surely you know Lesley Peterby. I can see that Lesley is feverish to have some little chat with you, Elizabeth. You have met before, have you not?” I made an effort at a polite smile which Lady Catherine promptly, if erroneously, interpreted as a signal to play least in sight. There I was, talking to Lord Peterlyn. Peterley? Petersby? The simplest name can become a tongue-teaser if you’re tipsy enough. Oh well, choose one and forge ahead.
“How are you this evening, Lord Petersy?”
His rather nasty one-sided grin became even nastier. “Peterby. But why not dispense with formalities? My friends call me Lesley.”
I was far from sure that I wanted to dispense with formalities. What I would have liked was a few minutes of country air to clear my head.
“I’m not one of your friends. I’m only your acquaintance—officially at least. So I don’t want to call you by your first name, Lord Peter… thing. Furthermore, I don’t feel like talking, so if you want to sit here, then either you will have to do all the talking or put up with silence.”
I was hit by the horrid suspicion that I was even more intoxicated than I thought. Imagine snapping like that at a man I hardly knew, and at a high society ball, at that. Far from minding, my companion threw back his head and laughed.
“Very well, then, charmer. You have merely to sit back and relax while I attempt to carry on the conversation for both of us. Let me see, what can two people discuss on such shallow acquaintance? The weather, perhaps? And do you find the climate to your liking, Miss Cordell? Yes, thank you kindly, Lord Peterby. ’Twas a trifle sultry yesterday, was it not, Miss Cordell? Decidedly, Lord Peterby. But not unseasonably so, I think.” He paused to take a quick swallow of wine. “There. You see, there is no need for you to enter the conversation at all. In fact, it would be quite superfluous.”
I found myself giggling. “How absurd you are! I’m afraid that I was awfully rude.” I leaned toward him confidentially. “You see, this is my first night in London society.”
“Excellent. Rudeness is an essential ingredient for a long and successful reign in polite society. Witness the triumphs of Beau Brummell, Lady Jersey, and Lord Dearborne.”
The triumphs of Lord Dearborne were not my favorite subject. I drew myself up and said with dignity, “Lord Dearborne is my guardian.” I thought this over a moment. “Sort of,” I added conscientiously.
“Indeed?” He had a smile like a cat. Do cats smile? Oh, how I wished that I had refused those last three glasses of wine. I rose to my feet with resolution, if not equilibrium.
“I am sorry to have to part company with you, Lord Peterness, but I intend to walk in Lady Catherine’s flowers… among Lady Catherine’s flowers, that is.” The carpeted floor tilted slightly beneath my feet and I was glad to grab hold of Lord Whatever’s arm, as he had risen with me.
“Then you must let me accompany you, my fair acquaintance. I know my way around this garden well.” He took my arm and escorted me across the room as I muttered crossly, “Well, all right, if you must.”
I felt a wonderfully sweet breeze from the large glass double doors at the end of the room, but before we reached there, we were intercepted by my sort-of guardian.
The marquis, at his most urbane, charmingly but firmly dismissed Lord Peterwhat, who left after honoring me with one more predatory glance.
“But I wanted to go out into the garden,” I squawked unhappily up at the marquis.
“And so you shall, infant.” He led me out onto a lantern-lit stone veranda. “But not with Lesley Peterby.”
We descended several steep steps onto an uneven flagstone walkway. I took in a deep breath of floral-scented air and exhaled slowly, feeling my nausea dissipate slightly, though the dizziness remained. I didn’t relish the idea of Lord Dearborne telling me whom to go into the garden with.
“Is there something wrong with Lord Peterby?”
“Not if you’ve a taste for coupling under the shrubbery,” he said bluntly.
I wasted about thirty seconds on a choking fit before grinding out, “You are the one with the taste for coupling under the bushes, not I! Of all the hateful, degrading things to insinuate…” I returned to choking.
“Gently now, I wasn’t questioning your behavior, only Lesley’s. He isn’t always—let me see, how to put this delicately enough for your ears—shall we say, very gentle with women that interest him.”
“You may say anything you like. Anything at all. Pray don’t bother to consider delicacy—I’m sure that it would seem dreadfully provincial for you to do so.” I stopped and lifted my hands to my swimming head, shutting my eyes tightly. “Lord Dearborne, I think I’m drunk.”
The hands that supported my shoulders had comforting strength.
“Here. Just behind you is a stone bench. That’s right. Good heavens, you foolish child, it’s nothing to cry about.”
“Oh yes, it is! If Mrs. Goodbody could see me now, she’d never speak to me again. And think of my sisters, how will I ever face them?” I recited a melancholy catalogue of all the people that I could never again face. At one point I heard what sounded like a quickly repressed laugh from Lord Dearborne, but when I turned to look up suspiciously at him he was a study in straight-faced sympathy. Sniffing dolefully, I accepted his proffered handkerchief.
“Now listen, my charming little nitwit, there is no need to panic. You’re not roaring drunk by any means. You drank a little too much too fast. It happens to everyone occasionally. You are just not experienced enough to know how to hide it.”
“You’re saying that I can’t hold my liquor like a man,” I exclaimed. To my helpless surprise, the chill of the night breeze was banished by the warmth of the marquis’s arm, which pulled me close against his hard body. The moment lasted forever, as though some giant hand of a time clock had stopped. A concerned call from Christopher brought it screeching back into motion.
“Elizabeth, there you are. I saw her looking a little tippy inside, Uncle Nicky. Need any help?”
“Would you sit here with her for a few minutes? I’m going to slip discreetly into the kitchen and bring a cup of coffee.” The marquis grinned at Christopher. “I’m afraid that your protégée isn’t yet used to unwatered wine.”
Lord Dearborne melted into the darkness. Christopher took his place beside me and I lay my head rather heavily on his shoulder.
“Oh Kit, I feel so utterly wretched.”
“I know exactly how it is,” commiserated Christopher in a kind voice. “Too much wine can make one feel sick as a sewer dog.”
“Christopher!” I said, rallying at this surprising information. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been inebriated?”
“Lord yes,” he said cheerfully. “Been half seas over dozens of times. But you’re barely fuzzled, Princess. Never fear, Uncle Nicky and I’ll have you right as a trivet in no time.”
The marquis returned and, plying me with coffee and comfort, he and Christopher slowly revived me. Lord Dearborne had somehow found my shawl inside and now draped it round my shoulders. Christopher carefully wiped my face with his handkerchief, dampened in the fountain. While I shivered at the touch of his fingers, Lord Dearborne tucked some errant strands of my coiffure back into place.
Finally, Christopher stood back to survey their repairs. “She looks good as new, eh Uncle Nicky? If they ever abolish the aristocracy in England then you and I can become ladies’ maids, don’t you think? How do you feel now, m’dear?”
“As good as one can who’s spent the evening sacrificing on the shrine to Bacchus. I—I want to thank you. You’ve both been very kind…”
“The child’s in worse shape than we suspected, Kit,” said Lord Dearborne, shaking his head in mock dismay. “ ‘Thank you’ are two words I never expected to hear from Elizabeth.”
“Of all the detestable conceited…!” I gasped.
“There. Now you sound much more like yourself. May I have the honor of escorting you back inside?”
Refusing the marquis’s proffered arm, I brought my chin right up and marched back toward the house, now much steadier on my feet. The funny thing was that my overconsumption of wine didn’t ruin my evening in the least. I was to enjoy three more hours of dancing before I tumbled into bed and slept like a baby until the outrageous hour of nine o’clock in the morning.