London 1896
This season was going to be different. Felicity Wentworth would be the belle of the ball, the diamond at every occasion, the toast of the town. Hearts would be broken, but she would be the one doing the breaking, and she would not be wasting one single second thinking about that man who never deserved all those tears she had shed.
She stood at the top of the stairs and looked down on the ballroom laid out beneath her. As if surveying her domain, she took in the young women in pastel gowns and the men in evening suits, swirling around the dance floor. Her gaze moved to the chaperones hovering on the edges, watching their offspring like protective mother hens, and the gentlemen clustering in small groups, talking, laughing and weighing up the attributes of this year’s crop of debutantes.
Several men looked in her direction. She lifted her head as if their adoration were her due, and silently informed them that if they wanted her affections, they would have to work hard for them. This year she would not surrender her heart so easily.
She swept down the stairs, knowing she looked magnificent in her dress designed by Paris fashion couturier Charles Worth and aware that her pale green satin gown embroidered with delicate flowers in gold thread would be the envy of every young woman present. The couturier knew how to flatter a woman’s body. He had ensured her waist looked suitably tiny, that the gown gently flowed over her hips and swept elegantly around her legs as she walked, and there was just enough cleavage on display to entice without causing a scandal.
Her sister Adelaide’s recent marriage to the Duke of Hartfield had lifted the Wentworth family well out of poverty so now she dressed like a princess on every occasion. As the daughter of an earl she had the right connections and lineage to make her a desirable catch and thanks to her sister’s dissolute but generous husband, she now had a marriage settlement large enough to tempt any man.
Well, almost any man, but she would not think about that tonight. Tonight was about flirting, dancing and having fun. And she was determined to do as much of all three as was humanly possible and make this the best season a young woman could possibly have.
‘Lord Witherington is attempting to attract your eye,’ her mother whispered beside her. ‘His family is very well connected and they say he’s worth many thousands of pounds.’
She grabbed her daughter’s arm. ‘And look, he is coming your way.’
‘Yes, I might deign to dance with him, if he plays his cards right,’ Felicity said, relishing this new haughty approach where she was to be the one to call the tune.
Lord Witherington took Felicity’s gloved hand and bowed over it. ‘May I be the first to place my name in your dance card?’
She honoured him with a smile and handed him the small card with the attached pencil.
He wrote his name on the line for the next dance. The pencil hovered over another line and she lightly swatted his arm with her fan.
‘Only one, you greedy boy,’ she said in her most flirtatious voice, causing the earl to smile in enjoyment at her chastisement. ‘You’ll set tongues awagging if we dance together more than once at the inaugural ball of the season.’
‘And we wouldn’t want to cause a scandal, would we?’ he said with a wink as he took her arm and led her onto the floor.
‘Not with dancing,’ she said in a voice she hoped would tantalise. ‘Not when there are much better ways to scandalise society.’
This was received with an expected rise of his eyebrows and a delighted smile. She had no intention whatsoever of causing a scandal with Lord Witherington or any other man, but it was a pleasure to see how easily a man could fall under her thrall.
He swung her around the room with more energy than the polka demanded and held her a bit too tightly, but she laughed and flirted as if having the most marvellous time possible.
Perhaps the laughter was a bit forced, and perhaps the smile a bit strained, but she would enjoy herself this season, no matter what.
When he led her back to her mother, the Earl of Bambridge was waiting, eager to be the next man to take her hand, and several other potential beaux were lined up wanting to add their names to her dance card.
This was all going perfectly. The season was already a success and it had only just begun. Soon the tribulations of last season would be a distant memory.
Laughing at the earl’s joke, which was not particularly funny, she took his arm and was led back onto the floor for the waltz.
As if an invisible current had swept through the room, every head turned towards the stairs. Still smiling, Felicity followed their example and looked to see what had caught the dancers’ attention.
Her smile died. The laughter drained out of her. Her pleasure disappeared as if in a magician’s puff of smoke.
He was standing at the door. Victor St Clare, the Duke of Greystone. The man who had ruined her last season.
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