Page 6 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
Maybe this is a disaster just waiting to happen.
***
“Good evening.” Becca tried to keep the tremble out of her voice as she slipped the spencer jacket off her shoulders. She couldn’t help glancing down at the fine gown she had borrowed from one of the modistes in Covent Garden, feeling as if she was a fish out of water. The gown had been secured by Charlotte, whose cousin worked as a seamstress at the modiste’s shop.
The elegant sage green gown was gathered under Becca’s bust and fell to the floor in gentle waves of silk. The hem finished just above the floor, hiding perfectly that her shoes were nowhere near as fine as the gown. The short sleeves finished just beneath her shoulders, and the surprisingly deep neckline made her repeatedly pull at the gown, fearing she was revealing too much.
“Your invitation, ma’am?” the man stood at the entrance to Almack’s Assembly Rooms asked, extending a white-gloved hand toward her.
She passed the invitation over, praying that he did not see the fact her hand shook. He looked over the invitation, and for one horrid minute, she held her breath, fearing that this was some awful trick, that perhaps it was a false invitation, and she hadn’t been invited after all.
“This invitation is to a Mr. Reginal Baxter?” the man said coolly, looking at her with a clear question in his gaze.
“Yes, he is…my father,” she said hurriedly. “He was unable to make it, so he has allowed me to use the invitation instead.”
A beat of silence followed these words as the man continued to stare at her.
Behind her in the road, more people were gathering from their carriages, all impatiently calling forward as to what the hold-up was.
“Very well.” The man sighed and waved her in.
She released the breath she had been holding and walked into the corridor of the assembly rooms, following others as they discarded their jackets and cloaks with servants standing on one side of the corridor. She avoided meeting their gazes, fearing that one of the servants might recognize her from the streets of London, then scurried in behind a particularly large group of ladies who gossiped wildly, their chatter like the buzz of a beehive.
She was so busy being careful not to be seen alone that she did not pay attention to where she was going, not until she stumbled into the main ballroom and the dazzling light of the candles took her breath away. She halted, her chin turning back and forth as she took in the room.
The great candelabras hanging from the ceiling basked the room in lemon-tinged light, making the ladies’ faces glow, along with their jewelry. As if their skin had been studded with stones, they turned their heads back and forth, making sure the light caught all their fine jewels.
Gentlemen wandered back and forth, some standing tall and adjusting cravats as a budgerigar might preen his feathers, while others stared coolly between the ladies, judging them as if it were a competition.
“I am in over my head,” she murmured, raising her hands over her arms and practically cuddling herself as she stood in the corner of the room. The one piece of jewelry she wore was the brooch that had been gifted to her by the mysterious visitor to the print house. It glittered like a candle flame all of its own.
Unsure what else to do other than make herself visible to whoever the gentleman was, Becca started to circle the room. She started near the edge, her nerves making it impossible to go anywhere near the middle of the room. No one turned to acknowledge her presence or speak to her. The feeling of invisibility grew, and rather than being perturbed by the idea, she grew increasingly comforted.
She was able to observe thetonin their finery, listening in to scraps of conversation that inspired her, making her think of new articles that she could write for the periodical.
“Oh yes, indeed,” one elderly lady said, grasping what had to be her granddaughter’s arm and clutching it tight with bony fingers. “He has eight thousand pounds a year. Is it not a wondrous thing? Imagine being married to that.”
Married to the money or the man?
Becca bit her lip to avoid laughing as she moved on through the room and hovered by a drinks table, paying particular attention to two gentlemen whose heads were bent together. One was the perfect image of a dandy with excessive lace cuffs and a painted face, the other much more reserved and demure looking with a dark suit.
“Not a penny left. Not a bit of it!” the dandy said with a high-pitched tone. “Baron Lancaster’s father bled every man he ever met dry. If you ask me, he belonged in debtor’s prison, not that fine house he got by marrying his wife.”
“Shh, someone will hear you,” the demure man beside him hissed, but the dandy didn’t seem to care and launched into another tirade concerning money.
Becca moved on again, glancing back repeatedly as she noticed a pattern. A surprising number of conversations in that room all concerned one thing, in one way or another—money.
She reached for another table lined with drinks and looked over the glasses spread across the table. There was champagne bubbling in tall, thin glasses, and rich dark claret in much squatter glasses.
It was not the beer or gin that Becca was used to seeing in the backstreets of London, in tankards clutched and waved outside of taverns and pubs in drunkards’ hands. Unsure what she would like, she took a glass of champagne and lifted it to her lips, sniffing it cautiously at first before she dared take a sip. The bubbles tickled her tongue, and she stepped back in surprise before she felt something under her foot.
“Oh!” she yelped in surprise as she realized she was stepping not on something, but someone. She tripped on another’s foot, falling to the side before a hand came up and grasped her waist.
The sudden firmness, the practical intimacy of the touch to her waist shocked her, and she turned her head as much as possible, her eyes flitting toward the bearer of that hand.
A face was much closer to hers than she had anticipated, a pair of dark eyes, the color of chestnuts, and dark brown hair like cinnamon that curled across his forehead.
“Forgive me,” she muttered, the words falling from her lips as the smallest of smiles lifted the handsome face.
