Page 7 of Scars of a Passionate Revenge
He walked around the edge of the ballroom, scanning the crowd for his friend, and managing somehow to avoid the attentions of the various young ladies standing in groups with their mothers and aunts and grandmothers, all scouring the room for potential suitors for the Season’s debutantes.
He found himself on the edge of the dance floor, a dangerous place to stand, as there were several young ladies close by without partners. He saw, to his amusement, that Cecil was currently waltzing with Lady Isabella, the daughter of their host. He smiled a wry smile and turned away.
He wanted to get away from the dance floor as quickly as possible, and suddenly he felt rather hot; the stifling atmosphere in the ballroom was rather oppressive and he craved fresh air. He headed through an open doorway out onto the terrace and stepped outside. To his dismay, he saw that he was not the only person in need of a break from the heat of the ballroom.
The terrace was almost as crowded as the dance floor. He saw a small flight of stone steps leading down from the terrace. Without hesitating, he made his way down them, and out into the cool darkness of the garden below.
***
“I wish we could just go home!” Alice huffed, before sitting down on a chair upholstered with the softest velvet she had ever encountered. The luxurious feeling, though, did little to cheer her mood.
Lady Clara Arnold, her oldest and closest friend, dropped onto the chair next to her. “You should not give up so easily, Alice,” she chided gently. “I am sure that there are plenty of pleasant gentlemen here this evening. We just have not had the pleasure of meeting them yet.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I have met far too many of them already, and none of them pleasant.”
Clara giggled and took a sip of her punch. “They can’t all have been that bad!”
“They were!” Alice insisted. “None of them had a single thing of interest to say. Lord Grisham wanted to tell me all about the vast swathes of land he is going to inherit, and the Earldom, of course, and the others were just as bad. I don’t think a single one of them has had an original thought in all of their lives. Lord Thomas even said that he did not have time to read! Can you imagine?
And he said it like it was a good thing, as if I would be impressed at how busy and important he is!” She leaned back in her seat and looked out across the room, filled with people, and let out a sigh. “I think that they all think that a young lady should simply stand there looking pretty, or simper at their boring conversation. Whenever I try and talk about anything of substance, they look at me as if I am mad. Clearly I am not allowed to have opinions or thoughts of my own.”
“Perhaps your expectations are a little high for a ballroom?” Clara said cautiously.
“They are just the same at tea parties, though, and garden parties, and all the other events we have to endure!”
“Alice, you sound rather bitter…”
“I am not bitter,” Alice protested. “I am just not interested in marriage. There are far more important things in life.”
“Like what?” Clara asked, her green eyes wide. “I cannot imagine anything more important. It is all I want in the world.”
Alice looked at her friend and felt a stab of something like pity. She was glad that she did not feel such a longing to be married herself, although at times she did feel another sort of yearning, that she could not quite put a name to. But Clara wanted to be married, and she wanted to marry for love.
Already she had turned down several proposals, from men who she did not think she could love, and that seemed to have resulted in other gentlemen thinking that she was haughty. It seemed that the society in which they lived was not at all designed to give young ladies what their hearts truly desired.
She was about to reply to her friend, when she looked up and saw Dorothea ploughing through the crowds towards them. She groaned inwardly.
“Clara, my stepmother is coming over,” she whispered, leaning in towards her friend. “I am sure she thinks I should be engaged by the time this ball is finished, and I cannot bear to listen to one of her lectures. I must excuse myself. Forgive me!”
She got to her feet just as Dorothea reached them. She smiled at her stepmother, then said,
“Forgive me, Madam, I must go to the retiring room.” Before Dorothea had a chance to respond, she quickly walked away, silently congratulating herself on escaping Dorothea’s clutches, at least for the moment. She felt a little sorry for Clara, left having to converse with her, but her friend was so amenable, she knew that the conversation would flow easily between them.
As she crossed the room, she felt a draft coming from an open door and realized how hot she was. The room was stifling and suddenly she craved fresh air, peace, and a moment away from the hubbub of the ballroom.
She turned and slipped out onto the terrace, then down the steps and into the cool and shaded garden. It was almost dark, and she knew that she should not be out there alone, but Alice was not the kind of young lady who was too troubled by the rules of society. If no one found out, then what harm would come of it?
She crossed the lawn and made her way down a gravel path, treading carefully so as not to make too much noise with her footsteps. She found herself in a small, secluded clearing, lined with trees. The air was fresh and the night was still, and she leaned against a tree and looked up at the indigo sky, the stars just beginning to twinkle through the darkness.
She felt the hardness of the bark against her back and let out a soft sigh. She felt that strange sense of yearning again, that she found so hard to describe, even to herself. It was like a kind of emptiness inside her, that she did not know how to fill.
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny…” she said out loud, almost without realizing that that the words had escaped from her lips.
“But in ourselves,” came the response, in a deep soft voice, coming from the darkness behind her.
Chapter 4
Alice let out a gasp and whirled around to see who had spoken.
