“Admit it,” he said, “that’s not the only thing you’re worried about. You’re concerned I won’t follow the rules. I promise I won’t shame you. I will use my best manners.”
“That hardly reassures me.”
“Fortunately, you will be able to keep me in line.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Aren’t you accompanying me and Rosy for the presentation? She said you were.”
“I can’t. I’m unmarried.”
“So is she.”
She folded her hands over her waist. “I’m not being presented to the queen. After a woman is presented, she goes to no drawing rooms at St. James’s Palace until she marries. But you needn’t worry. Eliza, the only one of us three who can sponsor Rosy, will make sure everything goes well. Your mother would normally be the one to do it, but she cannot because it must be someone who has already been presented to the queen, and your mother says she never even came to London after your parents met in Newcastle.”
“That seems damn—very complicated. If you’re not sponsoring Rosy, why did she say you were going with us?”
Diana had been waiting to tell him, hoping to find the right moment. Now, right or wrong, the moment was here. “Rosy got me to agree to at least riding in the first carriage with her and waiting until you both come out of the palace. I think she’s hoping for some last-minute wisdom to give her courage. Either that or she considers me a sort of magical talisman to give her good luck.”
“Or she has begun to rely on your counsel of late, so she wants you there for as much of it as can be managed.”
“Why Eliza isn’t good enough for that, I don’t know,” Diana said. “You’ll have to ask your sister.”
He arched a brow. “So you’ll be accompanying Mrs. Pierce, me, and Rosy in a few short hours?”
“Yes. Well, not entirely, since there are two carriages, and you and my sister will be in the other one.” Her stomach knotted up. “And I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you? Pray do enlighten me, then.”
“You’re thinking I planned this for my own purposes.”
He gave her a blank look. “What purposes would those be?”
She swallowed hard. If he hadn’t already thought she might be scheming to be around him, she certainly wasn’t going to make him think it. “You tell me.”
“I haven’t a clue. I’m merely surprised you’re willing to sit in a carriage for what could be hours waiting for us.”
He should be surprised that a lady with Eliza’s family situation was accepted as a sponsor. Diana certainly was. Because one of the requirements was fairly specific: No member of a family touched by scandal is received at court.
Diana could only assume that the no-scandal rule didn’t apply to sponsors. How else had Eliza been accepted? Or perhaps it wasn’t her they were accepting but Lady Rosabel, sister to a newly minted duke. Perhaps they were purposely overlooking Eliza’s family scandal.
Then another thought occurred to Diana. “Rosy may be hoping to have an ally if something goes wrong and she has to make a quick escape.”
“If that happened,” he drawled, “would you help her?”
“It depends on why she wants to escape. And how far she got into the presentation.” She drew a deep breath. “I would probably urge her to go back. Verity . . . had a bit of a mishap at her own début. Ever since, she has steadfastly refused to attend the Queen’s Drawing Room again, and I would hate to see Rosy have any such permanent reaction to it.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “What sort of mishap?”
“It wasn’t Verity’s fault, I swear.” She pulled him farther down the hall from Rosy’s bedchamber. “And you cannot tell Rosy or she’ll be terribly self-conscious about it, and then it could happen to her, too. The mind can act against us sometimes.”
“What could happen to her, too, for God’s sake?”
“The ladies have to curtsy very low to the queen. Queen Charlotte either kisses their foreheads, if they’re children of peers, or she gives them her hand to kiss, for everybody else. Then they have to back out of the presentation room without tripping over their trains.”
“I take it that Verity tripped?”
Diana winced. “Actually, it was worse. She sneezed just as Her Majesty bent to kiss her forehead.”