“Go on, try then,” George dared him, dropping his hands from about Katherine’s waist and shoulders and signalling for Jack to take his place. “Though what you say is true. Many a young lady, and not so young, has complimented me on how well I take the lead while ensuring she has such a pleasurable experience along the way.” He glanced at Katherine as if to gauge the effectiveness of his words, and Jack caught Katherine’s secret eye roll as she tilted her face to glance at her new partner. A moment of shared hilarity reverberated through them as Jack rose and took George’s place, truncated with great effect by Jack’s loud objection that Katherine had started before the proper beat.
“Do you really have two left feet, Jack?” Katherine said crossly as he pulled her closer to him, pretending to try and keep his balance.
Together they lurched about the dance floor until the music finished after which Katherine threw up her hands and declared, “You’d have to be the worst dancer I’ve ever had the misfortune to partner.”
“Jack! Jack, old chap, do watch more closely,” George admonished as he returned to squiring Katherine about.
“But just for this one last dance,” warned Katherine. “My feet are bruised all over from Jack stepping on my toes, but George is such an athlete it quite takes my breath away. Really, George, with the pace you set, I truly can only manage one more dance.”
Outside, alone together as George had reluctantly answered a summons from his uncle, Jack and Katherine had to hurry behind the broad trunk of an old oak tree before they collapsed into laughter.
“Goodness, did you see how smug George looked when I called him an athlete!” Katherine giggled.
“And how he loved to put me in my place,” Jack replied.
“George is so easy to manage if he thinks he has the upper hand.” Katherine wiped the tears of laughter away from her face with the back of her hand and, still breathing rapidly, said, “Do say you’ll come to London with us. George is coming, and I don’t think I can bear even a week staying at Uncle Quamby’s townhouse if it’s just George and me. Didn’t your mama say it was a possibility?”
“A possibility, but one already discounted,” Jack said feeling disappointed. “I board my ship for the West Indies in ten days, and I’d decided to forgo London and return home to pack.”
“Then change your plans.”
The way Katherine looked so imploringly up at him decided Jack in an instant. He shrugged. “All right, I will. Mama and Uncle will be in London in any case, though I can only stay a couple of days before the house is overrun with the Hampshire cousins.”
“Then you can stay at Uncle Quamby’s townhouse, I’m sure.”
Jack saw that her suggestion was genuine. “In that case, we’ll all go to London. It’ll be grand!”
Chapter 4
“So I have day dresses, two spencers, two walking dresses, three shawls, one opera cloak, four pairs of dancing slippers, one pair of walking boots, three bonnets—” Katherine broke off her inventory to greet her aunt while her maid laid out each item of her lavish wardrobe on the bed before folding it to put away in the wardrobe. “Aren’t I going to be the best-dressed debutante in all of London, Aunt Antoinette?”
Katherine was feeling remarkably chipper this morning despite the hour at which she’d returned from her very first London ball. After their day of travelling between Bath and London, they’d only reached Mayfair at four o’clock the previous afternoon, and Mama had said that of course it was too late to look in at Lady Eddison’s Assembly Ball. However, Katherine had had her way, partly because the Patmores had already arrived and Jack had turned up on their doorstep with all the encouragement needed. Which wasn’t much. For Mama was tired and Jack was persuasive, saying his own mama hoped very much for Katherine’s company, which was all it took to make a compelling case.
It had been entirely worth everything. Aunt Antoinette had accompanied her to last night’s ball, naturally, though Katherine suspected her aunt had her own scheme for the evening already laid out if the warmth of Aunt Antoinette’s familiar greeting of a young man considerably younger than herself, who had then paid her a great deal of attention all evening, was anything to go by.
Katherine had only been t
o London once, and she’d been too young to dance though she’d attended a few quiet house parties.
This was different, though. She was officially out. A debutante. And it only took last night to realise she was a popular one.
This, it transpired, was the reason for her aunt’s visit to her bedchamber now.
Aunt Antoinette draped herself across a chair she pulled at right angles to the bed, looked at the selection of clothes and accessories, and said, “I think my favourite is the crimson silk.”
“Though I shall wear the pale blue, naturally, since Mama will be accompanying me.”
Her aunt nodded approvingly. “Of course. Your mama was such a wicked girl in her day but, of course, now that she has her own daughter, she is as overprotective as a mother hen.”
Katherine rubbed the side of her nose, not quite thinking this an appropriate analogy, though it was true that her mama had shown herself surprisingly cautious and occasionally critical about the way Katherine’s conducted herself in public.
She sat down at her dressing table and picked up a rabbit’s-foot brush. “I can’t believe the things you say about my mama, sometimes. About her being wild. She seems so…proper.” Katherine was fishing for more tidbits, it was true, but true also was the fact she found it hard to reconcile her mama—devoted wife and mother who had eyes only for Katherine’s papa—with the bold and beautiful debutante she’d learned had scandalised society with her antics.
“Marriage has made her proper.”
“Marriage didn’t make you proper,” Katherine dared, with a smile. She’d always been aware that Aunt Antoinette was ‘different’ and that her marriage to the Earl of Quamby was ‘different’ yet she still didn’t quite understand it.
“Oh, being proper is only for people who have to be,” Aunt Antoinette said airily. “The ugly girls, the wallflowers—they can’t get away with anything. Last night made it clear you’ll never fall into that category, my dear, which is why I’ve come to talk to you.”