Dorothea opened her large green eyes to their fullest extent and, addressing her grandmother, asked, ‘But why would I have done so? I’ve never been in the habit of discussing inconsequential occurrences with anyone.’
Lady Merion held her breath. She could not resist glancing at Hazelmere to see how he was taking being classed as ‘inconsequential’. He appeared to be his usual urbane self, but she thought she caught a glint from those hazel eyes, presently fixed on Dorothea’s face. Be careful, my girl! she mentally adjured her granddaughter.
‘What a wonderfully useful trait, Miss Darent,’ responded Hazelmere, deciding for the moment to ignore provocation. ‘So now we have a believable and totally unexceptionable story to account for our previous meeting. Provided we stick to that, I foresee no difficulty in ignoring the inevitable tales of what happened at the Three Feathers.’ He rose and with effortless grace bent over Lady Merion’s hand. ‘I gather you’ll be attending all the ton crushes this Season?’
‘Oh, yes,’ responded her ladyship, reverting to her normal social manner. ‘We’ll be out around town just as soon as Celestine can clothe these children respectably.’
He crossed to Dorothea’s side and she stood for him to take his leave. Again he raised her hand to his lips. Smiling down at her in a way she found oddly disconcerting, his hazel eyes trapping her own, he said, ‘Then I will hope to further my acquaintance with you, Miss Darent. I do hope you’ll not find me too inconsequential to remember?’ The gently mocking tone was back.
Dorothea returned the provocative hazel glance without apparent concern, and, wide-eyed, remarked, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think I’d forget you now, my lord.’
He only just succeeded in controlling his face but his eyes clearly registered the hit. He paused, looking down into her brilliant green eyes, his own brimful of laughter. Forever a sportsman, he could hardly complain, as he had set himself up for that one. Still, he had not expected her to have the courage to fling that back in his face, and with such ease. With one last enigmatic glance, he turned and, bowing again to the sorely afflicted Lady Merion, bid both ladies a good day and left.
As the door shut behind him Lady Merion turned a gaze equally made up of disbelief and conjecture on her granddaughter. However, ‘Ring for tea, child,’ was all she said.
Chapter Four
For the Darent sisters, the Season began in earnest the next day. The morning commenced with a visit from Lady Merion’s hairdresser. The pert Frenchman no sooner clapped eyes on the girls than his loquacious soul knew no bounds. Celestine had insisted on being present, much to everyone’s surprise. It transpired that she had decided to take complete control of the Misses Darents’ appearance. Lady Merion was astonished at her unusual condescension and then even more surprised by the transformation wrought in her elder granddaughter. Wearing the first of Celestine’s creations, delivered expressly for their promenade in the Park later that day, with her lovely dark hair lightly cropped and arranged in a variation of the fashionable Sappho, Dorothea had emerged much as the ugly duckling transformed into a veritable swan. The result, as Celestine confided in a whispered aside to her ladyship, could not be adequately described as beautiful—that was an epithet reserved more correctly for the youthful Cecily. She was attractive, stunning, and trailing a definite aura of sensuality, and the impact of the new Dorothea was unerringly directed at the more mature male. Lady Merion, with Hazelmere in mind, blinked and rapidly realigned her expectations.
The sisters were next introduced to their dancing master, hired for an hour every morning for a week, to ensure that they would not put a foot wrong in the more conventional dances, as well as to introduce them to the waltz. Both girls were naturally graceful, and country balls had made them familiar with all the current measures, save the waltz.
In the afternoon they set out in Lady Merion’s barouche to see and be seen at the Park. The spectacle of the ton taking the air, meeting old acquaintances and making new ones, held both girls enthralled. Lady Merion, her eyes resting for the umpteenth time on the delightful spectacle on the carriage seat opposite, felt happier and more buoyed by expectation than she had in years.
They had barely commenced their first circuit when a tall and angular lady, dressed in the height of fashion and seated in a landau drawn up to the side of the carriageway, waved to Lady Merion, who immediately instructed her coachman to pull up.
‘Sally, how delightful! Is Maria back yet?’ Without waiting for an answer, Lady Merion continued, ‘You must let me present my granddaughters. Dorothea, Cecily, this is Lady Jersey.’
After exchanging greetings with the girls, Sally Jersey fixed her ladyship with a penetrating stare. ‘Hermione, you’re going to cause a riot with these children. You must let me send you vouchers for Almack’s at once! My dear, I had a dreadful premonition that the Season was going to be so dull, but with two such beauties around I can see there’ll be fireworks!’
Both Dorothea and Cecily blushed.
Lady Merion remained chatting to Lady Jersey for some minutes, exchanging information on who had or had not returned to the capital. It became apparent to the two girls that they were attracting considerable attention, from the ogling stares of the soldiers and young bucks, which Lady Merion had instructed them to ignore, to the far more disconcerting stares of other mamas passing by in their carriages with their hopeful young daughters. Under the soporific effect of the drone of their grandmother’s conversation, Cecily let her gaze wander to a group of elegant gentlemen chatting to two pretty young ladies on the nearby lawn. Dorothea, similarly abstracted, was abruptly brought back to earth by Lady Jersey. ‘I hear, my dear, that y
ou are already acquainted with Lord Hazelmere?’
Aware that to show the slightest hesitation would be fatal, Dorothea used her large eyes to great effect, lucently conveying an attitude of complete nonchalance. ‘Yes. As luck would have it, I met him again recently. He was kind enough to assist me at an inn on our way to London.’
Her ladyship’s prominent eyes did not waver. ‘So you had met him before?’
Dorothea’s composure held firm. Her brows rose slightly, as if the answer to that question should really be quite obvious. ‘His great-aunt, Lady Moreton, introduced him to my mother and myself some time ago. She was a neighbour of ours in Hampshire.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Lady Jersey was clearly disappointed in this undeniably mundane explanation of Dorothea’s acquaintance with one of society’s more rakish bachelors. She returned her attention to Lady Merion.
After a further five minutes of acidly social intercourse the coachman was told to move on. As Lady Jersey fell behind, Lady Merion drew a deep breath and bestowed a look of definite approval on her elder granddaughter. ‘Very well done, my dear. Now we just have to keep it up.’
What she meant by that became rapidly apparent as they engaged in conversation after conversation with dowagers and matrons and occasionally with mothers with unmarried daughters. Without fail, the incident at the inn would somehow find its way into the arena, in one version or another. After her success with Lady Jersey, undoubtedly society’s most formidable inquisitor, Lady Merion let Dorothea deal with all these enquiries, only stepping in when some of the younger ladies seemed anxious to lead the description into areas too particular for her ladyship’s sense of propriety. Cecily, absorbed in the Park and its patrons and too young for the matrons to waste much time over, largely ignored these conversations.
Almost an hour later they stopped to talk to the Princess Esterhazy. After the introductions were performed, the sweet-faced and distinctly plump Princess smiled sleepily at the girls. ‘I saw you talking with Sally before, so I’m sure she must have promised you vouchers?’
Lady Merion nodded. ‘She feels my girls will liven up proceedings.’
‘Oh, undoubtedly, I should think,’ agreed Princess Ester-hazy.
At this point two elegant young gentlemen detached themselves from a group that had been eyeing the beautiful young things in the Merion carriage and approached. ‘Your servant, Lady Merion,’ said the first, raising his hat and sweeping a graceful bow, copied by his companion.
Lady Merion, turning to see who had addressed her, promptly exclaimed, ‘Oh, Ferdie! Is your mother in town yet?’
Assured that Mrs Acheson-Smythe would be in the capital by the end of the week, Lady Merion introduced her granddaughters to the elegant pair.