Page 13 of Lady Like

I s anything worse than walking into a party? Emily thinks as she stands shoulder to shoulder with a potted lemon tree and tries to look more at ease than she feels.

The room is stifling. A hothouse, it would seem, is still a hothouse even when repurposed for a ball.

Violet had vanished what must be a quarter of an hour ago, having promised to return with punch and a man to introduce Emily to.

In the meantime, Emily is holding up the wall.

She’s been clutching her fan so tightly since that gentleman knocked it from her grip that she’s starting to sweat through her gloves.

What does one do with their hands at a party?

She looks around, trying to find some other attendee standing alone whose behavior she can mimic, but everyone is broken off into twos and threes, chattering and laughing and trading dance cards.

An old panic gutters in her, the memory of standing on the fringes of the social hall dance floor in Middleham and pretending she did not know everyone was whispering about her.

No one here is talking about you, she reminds herself, but still the buzz of conversation around her seems to solidify and shape itself into those familiar rumors.

Did you hear about Miss Emily Sergeant and that man she—

“Excuse me.”

Emily turns. It takes her a moment to recognize the gentleman behind her as the one whose shoulder she knocked—she had hardly registered his face, too distracted by the Amazon of a woman beside him wearing a wine-colored dress in a cut that can only be worn by the exceptionally brave or the exceptionally well endowed, of which Emily is neither and that woman seemed both.

A woman in a dress like that likely never wonders what to do with her hands.

But the gentleman—here he is again. He dips his head as he takes her hand with a genial smile. “I do hope you’ll find my impertinence charming, for I could not bear letting you pass me by without knowing your name. I am Alexander Bolton, Duke of Rochester.”

Crikey, has she accidentally been doing the correct thing with her hands after all?

For not only has she been approached, but by a duke no less!

The duke, the one Lady Dennis had called the catch of the Season.

If she came home on the arm of an age-appropriate, handsome duke, her marriage contract to Robert Tweed would surely dissolve like salt in water.

Rochester smiles, and his teeth are white and straight and all his own. And yes, Emily knows that her list of desired attributes in a man is short— not coupled and not Robert Tweed being really the only two—but he might be the most handsome person she has ever seen.

“I did try to find someone to make an introduction,” he says. “But you seem to be a mystery. I’m happy to fetch the master of ceremonies to introduce us, if that makes you more comfortable.”

“Miss Emily Sergeant,” she says quickly. “I am recently arrived in London, visiting my cousin.”

He touches his lips to her knuckles, and she silently repents for every time she ever rolled her eyes at girls in amatory novels who swoon at the single touch of a man, for she feels her legs turning to jelly.

“Let me be the first to welcome you. How does this night compare to the many other balls you’ve surely been attending? ”

Emily laughs. She had hoped it would come out girlish but instead it sounds rather manic. “This is my first in the city, and the town I come from is so small that I have never walked into a party and not known nearly everyone there.”

“Well then, allow me to show you some London hospitality and find you a glass.”

Rochester takes her hand again, and though they’re both gloved, Emily is certain his knuckles are slick with expensive lotions, and his nails manicured, for surely this is a man with great regard for his personal hygiene.

“Wait for me,” he says, then kisses her hand lightly before he disappears into the crowd.

As soon as his hand leaves hers, Emily realizes how damp her palms are.

Her gloves are stuck to her knuckles. She starts to fan herself with her hand, then remembers she has an actual fan and whips it open.

Who, she thinks, dabbing at the sweat along her hairline, chose a goddamn hothouse for a ball ?

“Emily,” she hears Violet call, and she turns, eager to tell her cousin about the handsome duke who had approached her, of all the ladies here!

But Violet is not alone. She’s accompanied by a man near Emily’s father’s age, with bristles of wiry hair creeping out of each nostril.

Violet is smiling but widens her eyes at Emily, a silent apology. “Emily, this is Mr. John Barker. Mr. Barker, my cousin, Miss Emily Sergeant. Mr. Barker saw you across the room and asked to make your acquaintance.”

Emily extends her hand, and as Mr. Barker kisses it, his nostril hair brushes her wrist. “Good to meet you, Mr. Barker.”

“Miss Sergeant,” he replies. “You look most exquisite in white. May I have the next dance?”

“Oh. I…”

She would like to wait for Rochester to return, but she also knows a lady never says no to a dance, and what would the duke think if he found her rejecting men because of some one-sided allegiance to him?

So Emily pins on a smile like an ugly brooch gifted by an elderly aunt.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Barker. I’ll pencil you in for the next quadrille, shall I? ”

“Or perhaps this one?” he asks, and damn, yes, the musicians have just picked up their bows for another set.

“Of course.” She glances over her shoulder at Violet as Mr. Barker leads her to the dance floor, and Violet mouths Sorry! before taking a sip from one of the two punch glasses in her hands.

Once the dance begins, Emily expects Mr. Barker will make inquiries about her health or parentage, or even the weather—all the niceties he had neglected before sweeping her onto the floor.

But he makes no attempt to converse. Instead, he dances like it is a competition, and he is determined to finish first. At the end of the set, Emily is pink-cheeked and out of breath, searching the room for Violet. Or a chair.

But there is another man with Violet asking to make Emily’s acquaintance, this one plump and ruddy-cheeked and introduced as Mr. Chesterton. She isn’t certain he gets her name before he leads her back onto the floor.

After Chesterton, she pencils in Messrs.

Wilde, Harris, Burton, Bell, Tottenham, and Shufflebottom.

All the men of London seemed suddenly lined up to dance with her.

Some enlist her cousin for an introduction before whisking her out to the dance floor.

Others charge in alone. This sudden interest should bode well for her marriage prospects—except that once engaged in the reel, not one of the gents seems to have any interest in conversing with her.

They don’t offer to take her on a turn about the gardens after, fetch her a drink, or even sit with her while she recovers her breath.

One spends the whole time telling her about the girl he intends to marry, which is only marginally better than the one who explains the process of breeding swine, with gestures.

When the final set before supper is called, Emily’s toes throb.

Her dress is plastered to her back with sweat, and she has lost several feathers from her hair, like a molting bird.

She finally manages to spin away from the dancing and collapses on a bench beside the refreshments, struggling to catch her breath.

“You look as though you need this now more than ever.”

When Emily raises her head, Rochester is standing before her, holding out the long-ago-promised lemonade.

“Have you been waiting all this time?” Emily asks, taking the glass gratefully.

“Well, I confess, I drank the first cup I retrieved for you,” he says. “And the second. Possibly a third, I can’t recall—there is quite a lot of brandy in it. You seem to be a popular partner tonight. I don’t suppose there’s room for me?”

“Oh I’m sure…” Emily flicks open her card, only to find that somehow every space is already filled. She nearly screams in frustration. This time next week, she’ll still be here, turning mindless circles around this orangery on the arms of men who don’t give a fig about her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, but Rochester waves away the apology.

“Perhaps you might meet me in the garden before supper instead?” he asks. “Under the pergola? Fresh air should do you good.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she says just as her next partner takes her by the arm and drags her back onto the floor.

To her great surprise, as the musicians raise their bows, she realizes she is once against facing Mr. John Barker. His nose hair is somehow even bramblier.

“Mr. Barker!” Her tone falls short of the pleasure she hoped to convey and instead lands somewhere between surprise and disappointment.

“Ready to go again?” he asks as the musicians begin.

Mr. Barker bows, then reaches for her hand, but Emily pulls backward.

“Mr. Barker,” she says again, struggling to remain civil when what she would really like to do is grab him by his nose hair and shout.

“Forgive my impertinence, but we have already danced a reel tonight and you seemed disinterested in getting to know me better. Why exactly is it that you seek another turn?”

She expects he will deny his lack of interest, or at the least offer some blustery explanation. The best she can hope for is that the question alone will cause him to storm off the floor and she’ll be free to chase down Rochester.

But instead he says, “A woman gave me tickets to the theater.”

Emily blinks. “Beg pardon?”

“She gave me tickets to a Drury Lane show. All I had to do was ask you to dance.” He sniffs, and his nose hair quivers.

“I’m mad for the Bard. Particularly when the ladies’ troupe does it.

You know sometimes they take their tops off.

Of course, I avert my eyes, but it can come on most unexpectedly—”

“What woman?” Emily interrupts.

“She’s there, in the burgundy dress.” Barker points, and Emily turns, just in time to spot the woman she saw earlier with the duke slipping from the hothouse. And with Emily’s dance card full and Rochester nowhere in sight, it isn’t hard to reason who she’s off to meet.

“Son of a bitch,” Emily mutters.