Mabel danced with the persistence that did credit to British ladies. She danced before breakfast. She danced well into the lengthening summer nights. She danced from the moment her head touched the pillow and her eyes closed and until dawn's first glow. And then she climbed out of bed and danced again.
"Stop fretting. You will be passable for Lancashire," Hazel said as they ascended the steps to the brightly lit Chesterton Manor.
"Pooh, you are inventing things." The butterflies filled her stomach with the fluttering of the papery wings.
"Wait!" Hazel hooked her by the elbow. "Did you use any blush at all?"
Before Mabel could remember, Hazel pinched her cheeks, then leaned back to inspect the result. "That's better. You looked ready for funerals, not a ball."
"I feel like the worst fool."
Hazel fanned her. "You will make two if you swoon into my arms. Merciful Heavens, breathe! Mother is coming right behind us."
The ballroom, lit by a legion of candles, swallowed them and two dozen other hopeful young ladies in pale pink and blue dresses, with thread, lace and taffeta covering every bit of them that was possible to cover without becoming garish.
"This is too grand," she whispered at the same time as Hazel exclaimed, "How magnificent!"
Mabel's eyes travelled down her blue dress. It had white puffed sleeves and silver trim and embroidery. She used to be of the opinion it suited her well, but amidst the others, it faded to drab.
"I should have begged for one of your dresses," she told Hazel.
Hazel quirked one brow up. "Something less blue, less bluestocking or less of both?"
"I shouldn't have mentioned this." The floor shone with the golden gleam of the reflected candlelight. She nearly picked up her skirts and tapped it with the toe of her shoe to make sure it was hardwood, not glass.
"Mabel, Mabel, what good is taking you to the ball, if you would stare at the floors. Look, there comes Lady Catherine, the mother of--"
"I know who Lady Catherine is," Mabel snapped, her eyes fastening to a pleasant, if heavy-set lady of middle years, impeccably fashionable, and accompanied by an equally pleasant companion in widow's blacks and slightly lopsided bonnet. "But how do you know it is her?"
Hazel didn't deign to respond and anyway, they had caught up to some acquaintances. Mabel plastered a smile to her lips, said 'yes, indeed' to everything. But her vapid mood vanished the moment anyone mentioned Chestertons.
Cordelia, the eldest of Lady Catherine's children, was showing the inclination to the same shape, and, seemingly, to anemia as well. She sprawled on a loveseat in a dress that had more lace than style. Its ivory waves washed out her cheeks and mousy hair colour even more, but the eyes repeated the striking shade of her brother's. Their blue glow alternatively kept her husband fastened to her side, and sent him to fetch a panoplie of things she required: salts, and wine, and the handkerchiefs. But she spoke very kindly to everyone, apologizing for her ill health and sharing London's gossip, mostly the lurid tales about Lord Byron.
Next was the young Lord Chesterton. However, he didn't look young at all, leaning heavily on hiss cane to hobble around the ballroom.
Mabel looked from the poor man to Cordelia, who couldn't have been much past thirty.
"I've heard that Lorrd Chesterton--the new Lord Chesterton--inherited the title very young," she said, hoping to stir the flow of gossip into the channel floating her ship. "However, I am doubting my memory."
"You are not mistaken," came the ready reply. "He is merely thirty now, and he was going on twenty-two. Such a tragedy to lose his father so young!"
"Yes, indeed," Mabel murmured. That made Radcliffe two years older than Everett. Mr. Aldington had made a big deal of Everett being seventeen at Trafalgar. While Mabel's only recollection of this resounding naval victory was a seed cake served at dinner in celebration, some crafty questioning of Edward and Hugh helped her deduce that he was twenty-eight.
Finally she spotted Everett in the milling crowd. Her heart bounced, but her gaze drifted back to the elder brother, as faithfully as the arrow on the compass is attracted by the North Pole. The poor man cut such a peculiar and pitiful figure that it was nigh impossible to look away.
She blushed repeatedly, ashamed of her curiosity, but followed him with her eyes anyway. Radcliffe carried out his host's duties meticulously, circling the ballroom and exchanging greetings. This mundane activity was made interesting by the stares or whispers that followed in his wake.
"His stoicism is admirable," Mabel murmured.
Hazel shrugged. "He is a cold man."
"How do you know? I can barely see him from here, let alone judge his character."
"Pooh. Everyone says so."
"Forgive me if I doubt your judgment. He is no dwarf at all, only a bit shorter in stature."
"He is still incredibly ugly," Hazel argued.
Mabel stole another look. Radcliffe had a twisted shoulder and a club foot. The hunch his deformities forced on him was not grotesque, however it pushed his head forward awkwardly, in a turtle's or snake-like manner. Conversing with him and ignoring it would be torture, Mabel thought, but other than that...
She was about to point out that this profile was remarkably similar to his brother's, and not at all ugly, when Radcliffe turned. She couldn't suppress an exclamation of dismay. The ugly wine mark splotched his eye and cheek. The shape of the stain was off-putting on its own, and, besides, it washed out the bright blue of his right eye to almost white.
So, Hazel nearly got it right. Radcliffe wasn't a dwarf, but he did step out of a nightmare.
"It is rude to stare, Miss Mabel," Everett said next to her.
She nearly leaped in the air, heat flooding her cheeks and neck. The dreadful man delighted in whispering things into her ear!
"However, I can excuse it when it comes to poor Radcliffe," he continued after a merciless chuckle.
"It's a beautiful name."
"Yes, a wonderful name for an heir to the family's fortune."
And terribly unfortunate, given the man's appearance. But what was Lady Catherine to do? Name her firstborn Baldric? She couldn't compliment Everett's name without sounding like a dolt unable to stir the elegant conversation.
Fortunately, Everett didn't come to banter. He bowed lightly. "Would you save a dance for me, Miss Walton? Second one, if it is available?"
The angelic chorus sung in her heart, but she affected pique. "I shouldn't, because you scared me so, jumping out like this."
He lifted a dark brow. "I sincerely apologize for the abruptness. It is only that I was afraid to miss my chance."
Her head emptied of all thoughts under his glance, but her hands ruffled through the pages of her dance notebook instinctively. Men loved to chase those already in demand.
"Fortunately for you, Mr. Chesterton, my second dance is free."
He chuckled again, as if being fully aware of her innocent lie. Let him chuckle. Tonight she'd prove to everyone that she is an accomplished dancing partner.
"Delighted to hear that, and thank you," he said and bowed again.
The chorus of seraphim rose to a celebratory crescendo worthy of the salvation of her soul, despite Everett disappearing into the crowd with the agility of a mischievous sprite out of a Shakespearean play, while she scribbled his name on the page.
"Seems like you are getting your wish, Mabel," Hazel commented, sending a charming smile over her fluttering fan's rim to Mr. Aldington.
"I did! I truly did!" Mabel said breathlessly, deploying her own fan before she died of excitement. Her heels tapped in rhythm with its fluttering. Drably dressed or not, she was going to dance with Everett. "But whoever got the first dance?"
"We'll know in a minute."
"It's such a terribly long time to wait," she complained.
"I should think it's Lady Catherine," Hazel said distractedly, while her fan fluttered, then folded, then fluttered again, sending messages to Mr. Aldington. Mabel wasn't sure he could read them, but never mind his fluidity in the elegant language of the fan! He sailed over obediently, to bow to Mabel and spirit Hazel away to the middle of the floor for the first dance.
Mabel was left sitting it out, but she didn't feel upset at all.
If it's not Everett, then I don't care if it's no one.
And, almost immediately, she wished she was shielded by the same indifference toward Everett as Hazel professed to have, because as the dancers took their spots in the shining middle of the floor, her eyes fastened to his tall, slender figure.
Many cheeks were blooming with excitement waiting for the music, but she was sitting out, and the blush was unbecoming for it hinted at resentment. Or even worse, desperation. When she wasn't desperate at all. She just wanted to know who had Everett's first dance and if she were very pretty. The fan came to her rescue again, yet it wasn't enough.
If only she was cut out to remain indifferent and cold as a true lady should be. If she could stomp out her unbecoming curiosity and the vexatious insects!
Alas! It was beyond her capability to remain frigid, particularly when it became apparent that only she and Lord Chesterton, Miss Carter and Amelia, wouldn't be dancing among those present and unwed.
Even sickly Cordelia Chesterton left her couch to join hands with her husband on the dancing floor. She didn't look anemic at all, and he looked happy for catering to her whims earlier. Could that be Everett and her one day?
The musicians tried a few notes to stir the sentiment even higher, then the music engaged in earnest. Its riotous start pushed everything and everyone into motion: the ladies, the gentlemen, the skirts, the chairs—and Mabel's heart.
This aching organ first lifted in her chest with relief when she saw Lady Catherine hand in hand with her son, then dropped seeing how lightly the lady skipped despite her years, and despite the dance master's calling out Mrs. Jersey's new-fangled quadrille, rather than the retiring cotillion. Probably, they had gotten used to it in London already.
And Everett... she could be absorbed in Everett for days, doing nothing else but watching his graceful deportment. He was impossible for all other gentlemen to even approach, let alone rival. Where they hopped like goats or shuffled their feet, Everett made his body flow to music.
The forms that confounded her and drove her batty as she fought to memorize them, didn't constrain him at all. It was as if they didn't even exist, and his whole dance came from the heart right here, right at this moment.
Even if everyone else moved the same, it wasn't the same with him... and his curls spilled over his shoulders and bounced with his every turn and hop.
Mabel shivered, her eyes positively refusing to do a polite thing and look at something other than Everett's hair.
After dreaming of it day and night, and with her heart's desire about to come true, she didn't even know if she wished to dance with him, or just hoped to spend the rest of her life watching him dance from her corner.