Regency Society. Ann Lethbridge

swallowed. Those around him were the very pick of this Season’s debutantes, the cream of a society priding itself on lineage and ancestry. She recognised the Wilford sisters and the Wellsworth heiress, along with Lady Arabella, and was about to withdraw when a voice beside her made her jump.

      ‘I did not think of you as a coward, Mrs Bassingstoke.’

      Emerald Wellingham stood beside her, blocking her retreat.

      ‘It seems then that my rudeness at your house the other day is not my only failure, your Grace.’

      ‘Ahh, so formal when I thought you might be a friend?’

      Bea’s heart raced at the tone in her voice. Satirical. Taunting. And she could well understand why. ‘You have cause to chastise me.’

      The laugh that followed set Beatrice’s nerves on edge.

      ‘I would say you might have to fight your way through the gathering crowd of adoring females if you wish to speak to Taris.’

      ‘So I see.’

      ‘And if I thought that was all that you saw, Mrs Bassingstoke, I might turn this minute from your company and hope that you might never darken my family’s door again with your prejudices. But there is more to you, I think. More to the singular reaction of panic that I saw on your face when you comprehended the nature of my brother-in-law’s shortfalls.’

      A voice behind made both turn and the Duke of Carisbrook joined them. ‘Mrs Bassingstoke.’ Said with all the indifference of a man who could barely feign politeness.

      ‘Your Grace.’ Bea wished that she just might disappear into the polished floor beneath her feet. Her palms, where she held her hands like fists, were damp with nervousness, though she made herself smile.

      ‘If you will excuse me…’

      She turned and walked through the crowd, the music of Mozart softening the hard cracks of anger that she felt boiling up in herself.

      ‘Tell no one…‘

      Her mantra for the past decade as life had flung crisis after crisis her way, the little difficulties escalating into bigger ones, and all eminently unrectifiable.

      Loud giggles from the group at the top of the room pierced her bewilderment, and she could not think what exactly to do next, though a balcony provided a way out and she slipped on to it, wiping the tears she felt pooling in her eyes as she tried to take stock of the situation.

      She was twenty-eight years old and any histrionics on her part would be reprehensible and overblown, an aged woman who should have been well past undisciplined and unbecoming emotion.

      The sheer and utter hopelessness of it all left her gasping and she placed her hands upon her chest, barely breathing, the silence of just standing there bringing a measure of control.

      And then the door opened and Taris Wellingham came towards her, his hands around the silver ball on his ebony cane.

      ‘My sister-in-law informed me that you wished to see me.’

      He sounded nothing like the man who had walked with her earlier in the afternoon, but all imperious and lofty.

      ‘I did, my lord. I came tonight to tell you that I do not quite know what came over me today and that I would like to thank you.’ Her voice was pulled from embarrassment, barely audible.

      ‘Thank me?’ His words were brittle. Almost harsh.

      ‘Thank you for entrusting me with your secret…’ She faltered and as he turned away she tried anew. ‘I would also like to say that your affliction of poor eyesight is infinitely more appealing to me than the other option of drunkenness.’

      Unexpectedly he turned back and smiled, though as the silence lengthened between them she simply could not think of one other thing to say.

      ‘My sister-in-law tells me you have discussions on “matters of importance” at your residence.’ He looked exactly at her tonight, amber magnified through the thick spectacles.

      ‘Put like that, it all seems rather absurd,’ she returned.

      ‘She tells me that you are a woman of strong opinion and that your eyes are green. Leaf green,’ he amended when she did not say anything. ‘She also tells me that you worry a lot.’

      ‘She could see that?’

      ‘In the line on your brow.’

      ‘An unbecoming feature, then,’ Beatrice said, all her hackles rising. What else had Emerald Wellingham related to him? ‘I am a plain woman, my lord.’

      ‘Plain is an adjective that has many different interpretations. A carp in a river can be plain to the eyes of one who does not fish, yet vibrant to an angler. A deer in the forest can look insignificant amidst a band of sun-speckled trees and magnificent away from them. Which plain are you?’

      ‘The type that recognises the truth despite any amount of flowery rhetoric.’

      He laughed.

      ‘Describe yourself to me, then.’

      She hesitated. ‘You can see nothing at all?’

      ‘With my glasses on I know that you are not a large woman. I know too that your hair is long and thick and that you have dimples in your cheeks.’ He held out his hands. ‘From touch,’ he qualified. ‘There is a lot to be learned in touch. On a good day I can see more.’

      ‘I am five feet two inches tall and some may call me…thin.’

      ‘Some?’

      ‘My husband always did. He thought that if I ate more I should appeal to him better, but no matter how much I tried—’ She stopped, horrified as to what she had just confided in him, when for all the years of her marriage she had told every other soul nothing.

      ‘Pride can be a dangerous thing, Beatrice-Maude.’

      She pretended not to understand what he meant. But she knew exactly the tack that he was following because pride was all that had ever stood between her and chaos. Pride kept her quiet and biddable, because the alternative of others knowing what she had suffered was just too humiliating.

      Honesty fell between them like a stone in a still and deep pond, the ripples of meaning fanning outwards as the consequences became larger and larger. Withdrawal had its own set of repercussions, just as pretence did. Still, here on the balcony, with the distant strands of Mozart on the air, she was careful. A woman with the candour of her past licking at twenty-eight long years and a future before her that finally looked a little bright. She could allow no one to tarnish that. Not even Taris Wellingham, with his magical hands and his handsome face.

      No, plain was measured in more than just the look of one’s countenance, she decided right then and there. Indeed, it was a bone-deep knowledge that no amount of clever repartee might disavow, a knowledge engraved with certainty in each memory and action and hope. Unchangeable, even with the very best of intentions.

      When the door behind him opened to reveal Lord Henshaw, she used the moment to escape, excusing herself before walking away with the swift gait of one who was not quite breaking into a run.

      Taris listened to her go, knew the exact moment that she disappeared from the balcony, her footsteps quick and urgent.

      ‘You are due to speak in five minutes.’

      ‘Rutledge sent you to find me?’

      ‘He is a man who likes things to be on time.’

      ‘May I ask you a question, Jack?’

      ‘Go ahead.’

      ‘What does Mrs Bassingstoke look like to you?’

      ‘Mrs Bassingstoke?’ Surprise lay in Jack’s reply as Taris nodded. ‘She is shapely in all the right places and her character is determined. If I were to pick just one word to describe her I would