Page 1 of His Mad Duchess
CHAPTER 1
“This feels like a parade,” Cecily hissed in Margaret’s ear, her fan half-hiding the unladylike frown pulling at her mouth. “And not even the fun kind with elephants and sweets. Just dreadful men and worse perfumes.”
Margaret stifled a laugh that threatened to slip out loud enough for Aunt Agnes to hear across the ballroom. Margaret hid her smile behind the edge of her dance card; it was blank as usual.
Around them, the Duke of Wrexford’s grand ballroom glittered with candlelight and silk, diamonds glinting at every wrist. The crush of people pressed too much warmth into the air; candle wax and sweat and rose water all tangled together until Margaret wondered if they were all just pretending not to suffocate.
Beside her, Cecily fidgeted with the carved ivory sticks of her fan. Her cousin—more sister than cousin, really—always said what no one else dared to breathe in these rooms. Maybe that’s why Margaret liked her best.
“You’d prefer elephants in the Duke’s ballroom?” she murmured, leaning a fraction closer, so no one else could hear her dry amusement.
“At least they’d be interesting,” Cecily snapped back. Her nose wrinkled in that way that made Margaret want to laugh.
“I’d take one over Lord Aberley’s breath; he’s danced with me twice already. If he asks again, I might swoon from the fumes and faint dead away, and they’ll have to carry me out on a tray.” Cecily wrinkled her nose again, sweeping her gaze across the crowded hall. Silk gowns, glittering jewels, everything polished, except the gossip floating behind every lace fan.
Margaret’s lips twitched. Cecily could always drag a smile out of her, even when she’d rather keep her mask in place. “Careful. Swooning attracts attention. I hear that’s the worst possible fate for a lady at her first ball. And your mother would never forgive you for collapsing before midnight.”
They both flicked their eyes across the sea of powdered heads. Lady Agnes, the Dowager Countess of Wexley, Margaret’s aunt and Cecily’s mother, stood near the string quartet, one hand fluttering like a small, polite threat.Smile. Be charming. Catch a duke if you can, a viscount if you must. But for heaven’s sake, don’t stand like statues.
“She keeps glaring at me,” Cecily grumbled, snapping her fan shut with an unladylike click. “Like I’m about to upend the punch bowl on a viscount’s shoes. I’m not. Not unless he deserves it.”
“You’d better not,” Margaret said, fighting another smile. “Aunt Agnes would flay you alive.”
“She’d flay you first. She still thinks you’re the bad influence.”
Margaret didn’t bother to protest. She’d learned long ago that people believed whatever story made them feel important. At least Cecily never flinched from saying so aloud.
She let her eyes drift to Cecily’s pale silk gown, the tiny pearl buttons, the bit of green ribbon at the waist. So young, so bright. Not yet ruined by other people’s whispers. “Only two near-mishaps and a death wish for Lord Aberley. An excellent debut, I’d say.”
“He deserves it for the breath alone,” Cecily shot back.
Then her frown softened, and she dipped her voice. “Are all balls like this? Or does it only feel worse when…” she hesitated. “When no one’s asked you yet?”
Margaret felt the edges of her dance card bite into her gloved palm. She angled it so Cecily could see the neat, empty columns so painfully clean they almost gleamed in the candlelight.
“It depends,” she said, her voice dry but her chest oddly tight. “Some people are happier being ignored. It saves all that tedious conversation.”
Cecily’s face pinched; her loyalty never did know when to hold its tongue. “They’re fools, all of them. You’re the loveliest lady here, scandal or not.”
Margaret opened her mouth to hush her, but the music swelled, a waltz she knew by heart, the same tune year after year, always played for other people’s fairytales, never hers.
Margaret’s gaze drifted past Cecily’s fan to where her aunt stood like a hawk beside the musicians. Lady Agnes nodded graciously to a passing viscount’s wife, her hand drifting to Beatrice’s elbow like she was a prized filly to be displayed just so.
Beatrice, Margaret’s older cousin, with perfect posture, perfect laughs, and a perfect neck for displaying the family pearls. It was Beatrice everyone whispered about tonight. Whether the Earl of Collingwood might propose before the summer ended, and whether she’d finally do what Margaret never could—make the family proud.
No one even bothered pretending to fuss over Margaret anymore. What good was fuss, when the girl in question was said to be mad—or worse, cursed?
They had named her a fire-born harbinger, the child who raved of a man in the smoke, who grew into a young woman plagued by nightmares loud enough for servants to repeat below stairs.
Some whispered she carried death like a dowry, others laughed that any man bold enough to marry her would be in his grave before the year was out. Four seasons of such talk had worn thenovelty away. Even scandal grows stale when repeated too long, though never so stale as to be forgotten.
She tipped her dance card, so Cecily wouldn’t see how tight her grip had grown.Better mad than miserable, she told herself. Better invisible than pitied.
And just as she thought it, the ballroom gave her the reminder it never failed to deliver. A pair of silk-gloved ladies drifted too near behind her shoulder, their voices low but sharp enough to cut and just enough for Margaret to catch a hiss. “One wonders what possessed Her Grace to invite a lady whose name is so steeped in misfortune…”
A second voice pitched in, softer but sweet with pretend pity:
“Such a shame, really, all that beauty wasted. Those blue eyes. That lovely hair, you’d never guess… would you, looking at her?”
