Kate managed to reply as she smiled ruefully at her chaperon and wondered yet again why she was still feeling so nervous about tonight.
It was true that her white silk gown with its corded and looped trim and belled-out skirt was considerably more sophisticated than anything a débutante would dare wear and she felt a little better at the sight of her looking elegant and surprisingly assured in one of the long mirrors probably placed to throw more light on to the stairs. The style was a little fussier than she liked, but as the dressmaker had informed her, when she’d tried to order it made up in a plainer style, that was the mode and it was unthinkable for Miss Alstone to be thought dowdy and behind the times. The belled skirt and very high waist undoubtedly suited her figure and one of the few advantages of red hair was that even the most severe critics could never accuse her of being insipid. Being one and twenty, she could also wear her mother’s pearl-and-diamond set without being informed she was fast and the fact of them at her neck and wrists and ears felt both reassuring and right.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t the débutantes she was most concerned about, but Kate smiled brightly and tried to look eager for the delights ahead of her when they finally reached the head of the receiving line and she met Lady Tedinton’s apparently sleepy-eyed gaze. Her ladyship’s dark gaze chilled and Kate was tempted to seek out another of those well-placed mirrors to check there wasn’t a knife plunged between her shoulder blades she was, as yet, too frostbitten to feel.
‘How lovely that you could both attend our humble little entertainment,’ her ladyship cooed as if utterly delighted they’d come.
‘Oh, we wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ Eiliane responded just as insincerely and Kate wondered once more at the polite lengths the great ladies of the ton would go to in order to best their enemies. ‘Such an interesting use of flowers and drapery to accentuate the colouring of such an angelically fair girl,’ Eiliane added with a pointed glance at his lordship, who suddenly looked thoughtful about the unsuitable cerise-silk swags that festooned the ballroom at such an innocent affair as a débutante ball.
‘Dear Philippa is such a passionate lover of this particular shade of dusky rose silk that nothing I could say would change her mind about ordering yards of it to drape the ballroom with. Wise heads are so seldom found on young shoulders, don’t you agree, Lady Pemberley?’ their hostess parried sleepily.
Kate saw ‘dear Philippa’ conceal a frown and shoot a helpless, hunted glance at her papa behind a fan that was also dark rose to match the silk draped behind her and quite the wrong colour for any débutante to carry, let alone a blonde and blue-eyed girl like Miss Tedinton. The expensive and elaborate fan looked distinctly odd against the stark white simplicity of the ball gown even her ladyship hadn’t been able to argue against buying for such a young girl, as if she’d been given it to hold while someone far more sophisticated was busy. After all, Kate thought cynically, why spend a penny more on her stepdaughter than necessary, when her ladyship could pass on her cast-offs to her and spend it on herself?
Lord Tedinton looked pitifully relieved at his wife’s implausible explanation and was obviously too blinded by his beautiful countess to see beyond the end of his own nose. Kate ardently pitied the children of his first marriage and smiled encouragingly at the unlucky Philippa while Eiliane exchanged insincerities with their hostess. Receiving a shy smile in return, Kate made a mental note to bully the more pleasant youths of her acquaintance into demanding Philippa Tedinton’s dance card, before her stepmama pushed her into more venial hands in the hope of getting her off her hands more swiftly, and cheaply.
‘Dreadful woman,’ Eiliane whispered as they walked down into the ballroom and paused to take a discreet survey of the company.
‘I doubt most of the gentlemen present would agree with you,’ Kate murmured, watching a few of the fascinated males and searching for one in particular, although she chided herself for being such an idiot all the time she did so.
‘Some have sense enough to see through the obvious,’ Eiliane said, sounding as if she was trying to reassure her protégée that Edmund was one of the wise who’d already done so, although why she should when he meant nothing at all to Kate was quite beyond her.
‘And some do not,’ Kate said bleakly, her eyes briefly pausing on Edmund’s golden-brown head. He was bending over one of the prettiest of the current crop of débutantes to initial her dance card. Then he gave her a gallant bow and an altogether too charming smile of farewell, until later.
‘Not that you care what he thinks,’ Eiliane continued blandly and Kate stopped pretending not to watch Lord Shuttleworth long enough to give her so-called friend a long cool look instead.
‘No, not that I have so little sense as to do that,’ she agreed silkily.
‘Liar,’ Eiliane murmured softly, then spying out the best seat in the house, again managed to procure it with a polite, ruthless smile that suddenly made it hers by right. ‘I’m far too old to stand about like an exhibit at a fair and too young to sit on a chaperon’s bench,’ she said placidly when Kate raised her eyebrows at her tactics.
‘And you only ever lay claim to whatever age you’re admitting to at the time when it suits you to make use of it.’
‘One of the few gifts middle age offers is the opportunity to exploit it at regular intervals.’
‘And your rank?’
‘Oh, yes, that, too, of course. A sensible person must make use of any unfair advantages the good Lord gifted them in support of a good cause, don’t you agree, Shuttleworth?’ Eiliane asked the one man Kate didn’t want to see until she’d got over watching him either court an overgrown schoolgirl, or be eyed by their hostess as if she were a hungry cat intent on catching the finest prey she could spot.
Kate told herself she was merely disappointed not to be given the chance to avoid him all evening and greeted him with the brusque nod he deserved for all the self-doubts and turmoil he was putting her through. She then could have cheerfully hit him—if she weren’t such a rational person—when he returned it with a distant bow.
‘That depends on the circumstance, your ladyship,’ he replied with an easy smile Kate envied her friend as she felt her own face stiffen into a chilly mask so she’d be ready for the contrast when he finally deigned to meet her eyes.
‘Always so cautious, Shuttleworth?’ Eiliane teased.
‘Not always,’ he parried rather dourly and Kate would have been a fool to read his cool glance as approving of her in any way. ‘But I always agree with you, your ladyship, as it saves me so much energy,’ he said with a lazy smile that did such unfair things to Kate’s breathing she wondered if she was coming down with more than just bruised pride and dented self-esteem. A severe cold? Influenza, perhaps?
‘The rest of us have to live with the consequences when she becomes more certain of her own omnipotence than Madame Marchioness here has any right to be though, my lord,’ she reproached him lightly, wondering why she was bothering to speak to him at all when he didn’t seem to welcome either her presence or her conversation.
‘Neither of us will ever attain such a happy state whilst we have the corrective of your abrasive tongue available to put us right, Miss Alstone, isn’t that so, Lady Pemberley?’ he parried.
‘It is,’ Eiliane said with such heartfelt sincerity that Kate felt her confidence in her own judgement falter once again.
‘Am I really so brusque and disagreeable?’ she asked unguardedly.
‘Only when you’re not being right all the time. It really is most annoying in you,’ he said, openly taunting her now and Kate told herself she was a fool to feel shaken and deeply unsure of what she’d built on the wreckage she and Izzie had been left with after the collapse of their once-safe little world.
‘Just because you happen to think it’s your divine right to be correct instead?’ she asked him smoothly enough, refusing to even try to meet his eyes this time.
‘Of course,’ he said with the hint of a frown between