Page 25 of One Perfect Dance
Half an hour passed in a flash, though Regina didn’t realize it until Arial returned. “Here is Harry for his Aunt Ginny’s kiss,” she announced, “and then I must carry her away to tea with your Mama.”
Regina dutifully kissed the little fellow, and then each of the little girls wanted a kiss as well, which Regina passed out while Arial handed Harry to his nurse.
The two friends went downstairs arm in arm, but Regina’s mind remained upstairs with the children. Perhaps it was not too late. Perhaps she should consider finding a husband. One who found her desirable. One who could make her a mother.
A mother again, she added, with a silent apology to dear Geoffrey.
She would not marry any of the admirers who currently made her the object of their gallantry. Most of them were not serious and would run a mile if they suspected she thought of marriage. Those who had proposed were mostly after her money, or someone to park in the country to look after their children. David Deffew would marry her in a heartbeat, but he was a man she would never consider.
She could set aside his actions when she was little more than a girl. He had apologized profusely, and it was a long time ago. She could not, however, find anything about him to like. He had been pursuing her since she reentered Society after Gideon died, and she would not have even given him the time of day except that she felt a debt towards him for her part in his father’s death.
As it was, she had done everything short of barring him from her house to make it clear she was not interested. Nonetheless, he had proposed three times. She had refused each time, most recently telling him that she would never consider his suit, and he should stop asking.
Of course, the thought of Mr. Deffew sent her mind winging to his stepbrother.Elijah is coming home. She shook it off. She might feel that she knew him through his letters, but in truth, they had not spent much time together since she was ten. Just the length of a single dance, on her seventeenth birthday, nearly sixteen years ago.
Besides, his last letter had been sent ten months ago, from some port on the Caspian Sea. Who knew whether he was truly coming back to England, and whether he would have any interest in Regina if he did? She refused to believe anything had happened to him and his friend. Elijah Ashby and Arthur Versey were the darlings of the English-reading world. If they had met with disaster, it would be on the front page of every newspaper.
And here she was, thinking about Elijah again, instead of considering her lackluster reaction to the men who had pursued her since she returned to Society. The fault must be with her, for they all left her cold.
Downstairs with her friends, she shook off her slight melancholy and told them her plan.
“A ball for your birthday!” Arial exclaimed. “How exciting.”
“A masquerade ball,” Regina corrected. It was Arial who had given her the idea. Her friend was badly scarred on one side of her face and wore a half mask to hide the damage. This meant that, wherever she went, even those who had never met Arial knew who she was and remembered last year’s nasty lying rumors—that her burns and her own ugliness had driven her mad, that she had purchased a husband, that she was as much a loathly lady in her personal habits as she was in looks.
An event where Arial could avoid the staring and the comments might please Regina’s friend: one where everyone was in costume, and many were wearing masks.
Regina had never organized a ball, though she had attended balls in her one Season before she married and last year when she came out of mourning. “I will need to ask my brother for permission to use his ballroom, since my townhouse is not big enough for what I have in mind.”
“If he will not agree, you may hold it at our townhouse,” Cordelia suggested. “We will be in Town by the beginning of March.”
Regina beamed. “Thank you, Cordelia. I’m sure Kingsley will not mind, but I cannot tell you how grateful I am.”
“What can I do to help?” Arial asked. “Peter and I will be there about the same time.”
“I shall come up for the event,” Margaret said. “Count on me from the beginning of April, Regina.”
In moments, Cordelia had fetched paper for making lists, and the four ladies were hard at work.
March, 1818
Nowhere else smelledlike England. It was raining, but Ash rode anyway, the better to enjoy the sights, scents, and sounds of his homeland. His childhood memories had been created in the tame and gentle lands of England, in very similar countryside to that their little line of carriages and horsemen was currently traversing on their way from Ipswich to London.
Rex had put his riding horse on a lead rope when the rain first began, retiring to the family carriage where Rithya, Caroline, and little Gareth traveled in as much comfort as Ash could procure on their behalf at short notice.
Caroline had been born in February of 1817. Rex had taken a house in a small village in Kazakhstan when Rithya adamantly refused to travel any further. “I am as large as an elephant and far less useful, Rex. Until this child is born, I am staying here.”
Besotted with his baby daughter, Rex had quelled his restlessness until Rithya pronounced herself well enough to travel. They set off again, with a wet nurse, a train of pack animals, and a small army of local guards.
After that, Rex traveled as if possessed. No more stopping for weeks or even months at a time, to see the sights and get to know the locals. “I want to leave St Petersburg before the Baltic ices over,” he explained.
In Turkmenistan, they heard about an Englishman who ran shipping on the Caspian Sea, paradoxically known as the King of the Mountains. The man they found in a small port on the eastern shores proved to be the son of the rumored king, though from the olive cast to his skin and his heavy eyebrows, his mother was not English. Turkmen, perhaps, which would explain why he was here. He was able to supply space for their party on a ship sailing for the mouth of the Volga River, and also advice on dealing with Russian officials as they traveled up through the waterways of that enormous empire.
The river travel took longer than expected, and they spent Christmas at the Winter Palace of the Tsar in St. Petersburg.
Tsar Alexander was delighted with his visitors, whom he proclaimed he knew well, for he had read all of their books. Rex in particular was a favorite, his lineage making him, in the tsar’s eyes, “his British cousin.”
The nearby port was frozen over. Indeed, the ice blocked much of the sea for hundreds of miles. The tsar assured them they could stay as long as they wished, but Rex insisted on taking an overland route, bytroika, to Klaipeda, which was ice-free. Somehow, he managed to charm the vehicles and their teams, an escort, and a ship out of the tsar.
