“Underhanded?” A flash of temper warmed Ellen. A week ago, she would have argued passionately with her sister and listed all the reasons why she was perfectly capable of doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to do it.
Now, however, she held her temper in check, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up in an imitation of Lady Margaret. A London lady did not argue, she made her points graciously and with dignity.
“Perhaps I am mistaken,” she began, choosing her words carefully and making certain she was sitting up straight, “but I have endeavored to deport myself in a manner that is more fitting with the society in which I now find myself. I have purchased quite a few new articles of clothing to assist in the exercise—”
“I like your old clothes better,” Phin commented as he held a spoon of porridge for his son. “These new things make you look like you should be employed in a library. Or a convent.”
Ellen paused to frown at him before continuing.
“Yesterday, on my walk through Hyde Park with Polly, I was greeted by no fewer than six fine ladies of society, and not once was I sneered at or gawked over,” she said.
Of course, that could have been because Lady Margaret hadn’t been there. And despite having six ladies acknowledge her, easily five times that many hadn’t looked at her at all, as if she’d been invisible. That had been a bit of a disappointment, but she’d soldiered on, enjoying the lovely autumnal day instead.
Lenore shook her head slightly and continued with her breakfast. “I do not like this new Ellen,” she said. “I don’t know who this woman is, but she is not the vibrant, amusing, mischievous little sister that I have always loved with my whole heart.” She arched an eyebrow at Ellen as if to make certain her point got across.
Ellen blew out a breath and sank a little. “No matter what I do, someone isn’t happy,” she said, putting her fork down. Her appetite had disappeared. “Either I’m too brash and ostentatious for the fine ladies of London or I am too strange and dull for you. I just want to belong with the people around me, Len,” she said, appealing to her sister. “You don’t know how desperately it hurts to be excluded from the society you find yourself in. You always had your good friends in Haskell, and everyone in town loved you.”
“Everyone in town loved you too, Elle,” Lenore insisted.
Ellen shook her head. “They didn’t. They thought I was…too much. But I have a chance to do things differently here. And I have someone to help me, too. Joseph has been so wonderful in this whole thing.”
In fact, Joseph had been more than wonderful. She could still feel the press of his lips against hers and the heat of his body from the way he’d held her in the changing room. She’d lay in bed, sweeping her hands over her body the way he had touched her to evoke those delicious memories again, and she’d taken them even further, imagining Joseph’s hands in that very particular spot as she’d pleasured herself the night before.
She cleared her throat and reached for her tea to hide the flush she could feel coming to her cheeks at that thought.
“I just don’t want you to be hurt or disappointed, dearest,” Lenore said with a sigh, returning to her eggs. “London society is fickle. I’ve been butting heads with it for years now. The only way to find true happiness is to be yourself and to attract the sort of people who will truly appreciate you by doing so.”
Ellen winced slightly. “That is all well and good when who you truly are is someone people like, but when you are an odd duck, it’s best to be someone else.”
Lenore looked pained and opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted as the butler strode into the room with a letter on a salver.
“What is it, Halliday?” Phineas asked from the head of the table—where he had been giving Jensen overly serious looks, as though the two were commenting on the ladies’ conversation.
“A letter has come for Miss Garrett, sir,” Halliday said.
Ellen sat up in surprise and turned to the butler. “For me?” she asked as Halliday brought the salver over to her. “It must be a letter from home, or perhaps something from Erica in Ireland.”
As soon as she picked up the letter, she gasped. It was most definitely something else. It was a thick card in an envelope that was decorated with an elaborate, gold “W”.
With shaking hands, Ellen opened it and pulled out the greatest reward she could possibly have imagined for all of her and Joseph’s hard work.
“Miss Ellen Garrett, you are cordially invited to Grosvenor House for an autumnal ball—”
Ellen was too giddy to read any more of the invitation. She squealed aloud and hugged the card to her chest, feeling as though she might burst into hysterical laughter.
“I won!” she exclaimed, glancing to her sister as if the invitation had proven her point better than any argument could. “It’s an invitation to the Duchess of Westminster’s ball! I got an invitation. It worked. Everything that Joseph suggested I do has worked!”
Lenore’s mouth dropped open in shock. “I…I’m happy for you, Elle,” she said, though she still wore a baffled and somewhat puzzled expression.
Ellen ignored it. It didn’t matter whether her sister approved of her methods or not, they had provided results. She leapt up from the table so fast her chair would have tipped over if Halliday hadn’t still been standing close enough to catch it.
“I must go share the news with Joseph at once,” she said with a giddy laugh. “He will want to hear that his efforts have borne fruit.”
“Are you certain that is wise?” Phineas asked, though Ellen was already halfway out of the room. “It is still quite early.”
It was early, but Ellen was certain Joseph wouldn’t mind. She was equally certain he would want to share her happiness as soon as possible. She donned her coat and hat, tucked the invitation into her pocket—then thought better of it and asked Polly to take it up to her room and put it in a very special place so that it wouldn’t be lost or soiled—then tore out into the crisp, October morning.
Rathborne House was a fair distance away from Lenore and Phineas’s much humbler dwelling, but the walk was exactly what Ellen needed to bring herself down from the clouds of elation and to steady her nerves a bit. It also meant she reached Rathborne House at a slightly saner hour, though it was still too early for calling.