He wondered what he should say to Jacob when he asked him how Kitty was faring but then found his eyes drawn back again to Diana, who was laughing happily again as Beatrice showed her how she intended to wear her hair for the court presentation.
“What are you staring at, Edmund?” Beatrice asked. “You look like you’re going cross-eyed.”
“Beatrice!” Unity warned while shooting her son a cautionary smile. He straightened up and composed his face.
“Well, he is just standing there staring at us,” Beatrice complained. “He’s been doing it the whole time.”
“I’m looking at you, young monster, finally putting up your hair, wearing long skirts and planning to attend balls. The same girl who was putting holly in my bed and hiding toads in my desk only last year.”
“I was not!” his sister denied, blushing. “Anyway, that was years ago.”
The two mothers laughed, and after a moment, Beatrice joined in too.
“He’s such a tease,” she told Diana, who quickly drew her back into perusing the invitations with only a tantalizing flicker of her eyes at Edmund.
* * *
Holding the loop that held the skirts of her elaborate white and pale gold dress high enough to walk, Diana waited nervously in the line of young ladies queued before the grand drawing room door at St James Palace.
Higher in the order of social precedence, Beatrice– as a duke’s daughter– would have been presented slightly earlier in the afternoon. The ladies around Diana now were unfamiliar and distracted with their last-minute tweaking of hair and dresses. Some of the mothers looked at her speculatively, but she told herself that they would probably look at anyone in the same way.
Diana imagined Kitty being presented by Lady Birks five years earlier, with so many hopes and dreams of her own. She even remembered reading scraps of newspaper sent by Lady Birks reporting that year’s presentation and showing that Kitty had been thought one of the brightest and most beautiful of that Season’s newcomers.
Now, at Percy’s insistence, Kitty was out riding with him, the Arnolds wishing her to be occupied and included. By birth and by virtue of her previous presentation to the Queen, Kitty might have accompanied Lady Templeton today, but they all knew the social ripples her appearance at court could cause despite her innocence. Kitty herself had ruled out the possibility before Esther could even raise it.
Diana’s headdress with its eight ostrich feathers and strings of tiny pearls had been placed carefully on her blonde curls that morning by her mother’s maid and adjusted to perfection by Lady Templeton as they stood in line to wait her turn. Her satin slippers felt strange and new on her feet, and she only hoped she would be able to curtsey fully without falling.
As they drew closer to the doorway, Diana turned to look nervously at her mother.
“Mother…”
“You will be fine, my darling girl. You know what to do.”
Then, they were through the doorway, and a servant in a powdered wig and striking uniform announced their names and titles. At the end of the room on a large chaise lounge, surrounded by small dogs and colorfully arrayed ladies-in-waiting, sat Queen Charlotte herself. She was an imposing figure in the most ornate gown and wig that Diana had ever seen.
Diana walked forward gracefully as she had practiced with her mother and bent her knee to the ground in a deep curtsy before the Queen, lightly kissing the be-ringed hand extended to her and then rising without a single wobble. An instinctive smile broke out across her face at her accomplishment and seemed to pass to Queen Charlotte and her ladies, who all smiled back.
“I can see that you will be a wonderful addition to our society, Lady Diana,” the Queen said amicably. “I do look forward to seeing what you do next.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Diana said immediately despite her surprise at being addressed. “I’m honoured.”
At the Queen’s nod, she backed away carefully until she met her mother at the door, avoiding turning her back on the monarch. Then, they were ushered out once more by the palace servants.
* * *
Once the nerve-wracking experience of her presentation to Queen Charlotte was done, the first few weeks of the Season were the colorful whirl that Diana had always imagined. Escorted by Percy and accompanied by her mother, or as part of the Colborne party when her mother was busy with Lord Templeton’s care, Diana had the time of her life.
“Is it all you imagined, Diana?” Esther asked her daughter affectionately as they travelled back in their carriage late one night after a private concert, supper and dance given by the Honourable Mrs. Arabella Grant.
Percy sat on the seat opposite them snoring gently, his hat slipping down over his face. Diana giggled at her brother and then laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and sighed contentedly, unable to believe how lucky she was.
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Mother! All of it. Concerts, suppers, dances, theatre trips, outings on lakes… and so many balls still to come. Thank you so much.”
Misty-eyed, Esther looked at her happy daughter in her delicate blue ballgown, slippers and her grandmother’s pearls and diamonds.
“To be young and in love is a wonderful thing indeed, isn’t it?” she said, and Diana nodded with another laugh.
Diana had danced until dawn ball after ball so far, always ending the evening in Edmund’s arms, whispering together, longing for one another, and wishing that the final dance would never stop.