A Debutante's Guide to Rebellion (2 page)

Ezekiel nodded. He understood. There was no point in trying to avoid the lesson. Once his father decided on something, there was little anyone could do to dissuade him, whether they applied minutes or years to the endeavor. It wasn't that his father disliked him, precisely, or that he was ashamed of him. In fact, he only wanted the best for him. It was only that he was desperately convinced that Ezekiel must be unhappy. His father understood one version of happiness: his own.

The twenty years of Ezekiel's life ought to have provided sufficient empirical proof that this version of contentment—one that involved the advanced development of the muscular structure and engaging in sportsmanlike activities—was entirely antithetical to Ezekiel's own. One might imagine that his father would have accepted defeat. It was illogical to be concerned with continuing to attempt such a fruitless task as turning Ezekiel Blackwood into a “proper man.”

But the human mind was not always amenable to logic.

“Do what you must,” Ezekiel said, and carefully set his spectacles behind him.

“Oh, darling, that dress is magnificent,” Lady Copeland cooed.

Eddie had been trying to catch a stray breath of fresh air from the slender breeze through the carriage curtains, but now she straightened up. Such compliments were, she knew from long experience, barbed reminders to watch her posture or her diction or whatever Lady Copeland had most recently found fault with.

“If you like yellow,” John said. He grinned at her and mouthed the words “It's
marigold
” exactly in time to their mother's protest. Luckily, as he sat beside her and slightly behind the overlarge feathers decorating her hair, she didn't see.

Mildred pressed her lips together to hide her own smile. She had treasured the years her parents were in India, leaving her in Sussex under the care of her aunt. The one good thing about their return was that they'd brought her brother back with them. If not for him, she didn't know how she would have survived the past two years.

Their father, sitting on Eddie's right, was reading correspondence, and likely would not have looked up unless one of them spontaneously exploded. Which meant he was paying as much attention to his daughter as he ever did; he seemed confused about what to do with her on the rare occasions he found himself in her presence without a distraction.

“Remember, you must be sure to dance with Lord Averdale,” Lady Copeland said.

“Mother, he's three times her age,” John said with a wince. “He's been married twice already.”

“And still has no living son. And you with all those uncles!” She winked. Eddie groaned inwardly. When her mother had latched on to this idea, she'd conducted an informal study of her acquaintances and tried to convince her mother than a proliferation of uncles did not appear to have any effect on the ability to throw sons. Lady Copeland had responded that sums should be used only to manage a household, and never to argue with your mother.

“He has an heir,” Eddie said. “That nephew of his.”

“Lord Averdale would be a fool to let that boy inherit, and everyone knows it,” Lady Copeland said with a sniff.

“And Eddie's only nineteen,” John pointed out. Quite sensibly, Eddie thought, but at the same time she wished he would be quiet. If those arguments would make any difference, she might have tried them. “Eddie, don't you have anything to say? What do you want?”

Eddie only smiled and shook her head, knowing better than to say anything at all. Silence was always the best solution when it came to her mother. And if she were married to a man thrice her age, at least she would be out of her mother's house. And anyhow, Lord Averdale was only two point seven nine times her age (rounded to the nearest hundredth, of course), and not bad-looking for his age, if a tad portly.

“Oh, I nearly forgot!” Lady Copeland threw up her hands and then dove for her reticule, causing John to lean swiftly away from encroaching feathers. “I wanted this to be a surprise.” From her reticule she drew a jewelry case. Eddie blinked at it. It couldn't be. “It just arrived today.”

She opened the box and held it out to show Eddie. Inside lay a necklace of silver chain and minute, sculpted leaves, twining around the settings of three huge diamonds. The one at the center was the color of honey; the two flanking it were smaller, but perfectly clear. The Indian diamonds.

“The new setting is exquisite,” Eddie said, a little in awe. She had only been allowed to look on the diamonds a handful of times since her mother brought them home, and only once had been allowed to touch the center stone—and then only with a single, gloved finger, lest she somehow damage it.

If there is a way to shatter a diamond with a fingertip, Mildred will find it,
her mother had sighed.

“Much better than that horrid old design,” Lady Copeland agreed. Mildred frowned. Lady Copeland was already wearing a necklace, a long string of pearls. And she was taking the diamonds from their case, and leaning forward as if—

“I'm to wear them?” Eddie asked, her voice more a sigh than a sentence.

“They will dazzle, and you need to dazzle,” Lady Copeland said. She secured the necklace and ran her hand down it, smoothing it into its proper place. The stones were cold against Eddie's décolletage, the silver like wisps of winter, until the necklace warmed against her body. Lady Copeland clasped her hands, her eyes bright. “My treasure,” she said softly.

For a moment, Eddie's stomach jolted. She had never been called that; had never heard such loving words from the woman.

“And it
does
draw the attention, doesn't it? That's where the eyes should be, after all. Pity we couldn't do more about . . .” Lady Copeland's eyes flicked from Eddie's chest to her face, and she sighed.

My treasure.
Of course.

Eddie smiled blandly. She was getting so very good at it. “I will take very good care of your treasure,” she assured her mother. “And I am sure it will be the talk of the ball.”

John gave her a look somewhere between horrified, amused, and exhausted, as if to say,
I don't know how you put up with it.

Luckily, they had arrived, and the jolt of the carriage distracted Lady Copeland from noticing. John was lucky like that. Eddie never was. The hint of rolled eyes from across the house and Lady Copeland sensed insurrection. Disobedience was never worthwhile.

Lady Copeland clasped both of Eddie's hands in her own. “My darling, you
must
succeed tonight. If you do not . . .”

“It's not as if it's the last ball for all eternity, Mother,” John said. “It's not even the last ball this week. It's not even the only ball
tonight
.”

“It's the only one worthwhile,” Lady Copeland said. “My point is, you have a very narrow window here. There are many other girls of middling prospects who might swoon to have a chance at Lord Averdale.”

“I have the diamonds, Mother. How can I fail?” Eddie asked, and then the carriage door was opening.

She had the diamonds. She would succeed. And get the hell away from Lady Copeland once and for all.

Lord Averdale had a residence in Scotland, she remembered. She'd always wanted to visit Scotland. As soon as they were married, she'd arrange to do so. And then forget to come back.

***

It was very difficult to make progress through the crowd at the ball. Ezekiel found large numbers of people to be stressful at the best of times. Now, with every jostle setting off fresh bouts of pain where Mr. Holliway's lesson had left an impression, it neared a literal form of torture. He was willing to admit that his prior use of the word should be categorized as hyperbole, now that he had this fresh experience as a comparison.

Nor did it help that every three feet (more hyperbole; judging by the average length of his stride, he estimated an average of seven-foot intervals) some young man stopped Sophie to ask her for a dance later in the evening. By the time they reached the far side of the room, she had booked the whole evening.

“I can see that I shall be on my own for the night,” he said glumly.

She patted his arm. “I know, Z. But I come to these balls because I like them, you know. Not just because you hate them and need the company.”

“My father's opinions on balls and boxing are similar. If I am forced into them, I am certain to develop some sort of skill as a survival mechanism. I expect he would throw a fish from a cliff to provide it the proper motivation to discover flight.”

“You're not a falling fish,” Sophie said. “If you get along fine with me, you'll get along fine with someone else. Maybe even multiple someones. We just haven't found them yet.”

“I suspect that this is the wrong environment for such a search,” Ezekiel said.

“Stop moping, Z. Where's that American gumption?”

“I'm not actually American. I've never been to America,” Ezekiel reminded her. His stepfather had come to England three years before he had even laid eyes on Ezekiel's mother. “And I'm afraid my father has entirely failed to impart any modicum of frontier spirit.”

Sophie shook her head in mock despair. “What are we going to do with you, Mr. Blackwood? Sometimes I think you should have been born a medieval monk, so you could sit all day copying manuscripts. But you'd never survive a vow of silence.”

“Am I talking too much again? You are supposed to tell me when I'm talking too much,” Ezekiel said.

“No. We're having a perfectly lovely conversation, even if it does have the stink of self-pity about it. And you are going to go have a perfectly lovely conversation with someone else in a moment.” She was looking over his shoulder. He half turned, and swallowed. Lady Mildred—or, as he had begun to think of her, the girl of the Strawberry Incident—was standing a short distance away. She appeared to be absorbed in conversation with her brother. What was his name? John, Ezekiel recalled, or more properly Lord Welford.
He
would have no trouble with boxing lessons, Ezekiel was sure. He had broad shoulders and the sort of firm, squared jaw that Sophie informed him made a man look “properly manly.” Ezekiel's thin face and pointed features did not qualify him for this distinction.

“She's already talking to someone,” he said, but Sophie had given him a firm push in that direction, and he found himself stumbling forward.

Lady Mildred saw him. A tentative smile appeared briefly on her features, and then vanished. She looked away, as if searching the crowd.

“Talk! To! Her!” Sophie instructed in a hissing whisper.

He tugged nervously on his jacket. She was a very, very lovely girl. Not, perhaps, by the standards that most men seemed to employ. The mole on her chin and the slight bend to her nose ensured that she would never achieve an ideal facial structure, and her complexion was considerably darker than those displayed by the women Sophie most often deemed fashionable.

In fact, though he had seen her at nearly every ball this Season and watched her with great interest, he could not specify any one feature, or even any combination of features, which could be objectively presented to explain the curious effect she had on him. She made his mouth dry. She made him feel light-headed, and she drove coherent thoughts from his mind until all he could think about was Latin nomenclature and the botanical histories of common fruits.

Of course, that might have had something to do with the gaudy lumps of precious gem at her neck, flashing in the light as if trying to blind everyone in the near vicinity. He could not imagine how she managed to navigate with such a distraction.

She was eating a grape. She popped it into her mouth with a furtive glance around, as if someone would catch her doing it. Then she looked at him and smiled again.

“Are you going to tell me the name for grapes?” she asked.

He blinked. He had somehow approached quite near to her. Now he was hovering at an entirely awkward distance. His options were retreating completely or dedicating himself to the approach. Feeling Sophie's eyes on him, he opted for the latter. “
Vitis vinifera,
” he said. “But in fact, I was rather determined to open with a different mode of conversation. My previous attempt at a botanical opener seemed to have a deleterious effect on the social exchange.”

Lord Welford made an odd sound; almost a laugh. It was a sound Ezekiel was entirely familiar with.

“I apologize,” Ezekiel said. “When I get nervous, I tend to use nonstandard—” He paused. “I'm told I sound very strange.”

“You do,” Lord Welford assured him. “I didn't realize you two knew each other,” he added pointedly.

“Relax,” Lady Mildred said. “We were introduced weeks ago.”

The introduction had been all that had passed between them, however, until the Strawberry Incident.

“Excellent. Mr. Blackwood, my sister has not yet had the opportunity to dance this evening. Perhaps you two would like to . . . ?”

They both stared at him, then at each other.

“If you . . .” Lady Mildred began.

“Only if you . . .” Ezekiel said. He despised the rules which prevented them from simply stating outright whether they were interested or not. He had more than once discovered himself dancing with a very sour young lady after inadvertently leaving her with no polite means of refusal. He had
tried
to explain to Sophie that he would not be hurt if they simply told him they didn't like him—after all, he was well aware of his difficult personality, and anyway, with the variety of humanity available to the world, what were the odds that any two random people at any one time would prove to enjoy one another's company?

Sophie had suggested that he pick his battles.

“Excellent!” Lord Welford declared. “Off you go, then.”

The decision had been made for him.

“I should warn you,” Lady Mildred said as they joined the throng, “I am terrible at dancing.”

“I'm afraid my skills are merely adequate,” Ezekiel said with regret.

“Then you won't show me up too badly.” Lady Mildred smiled. She had the most dazzling smile, he thought, and
dazzling
was not a word he could recall using prior to this moment. It was imprecise and metaphorical, both things he normally had little patience for. Light could dazzle. A smile should not. And yet here he was, tripping over his feet as if dazed, putting his claims of adequate skill to a swift and unceremonious death.

The dance took them apart, and for a moment Ezekiel regained his equilibrium. Then he nearly knocked into Mildred as they reunited. Her curls bounced, and she stumbled back, barely catching herself before she toppled into another couple.

“You see?” she said. “I am possibly the worst dancer that was ever born.”

“That would be extremely difficult to prove,” he said, meaning to be reassuring. She laughed. He hadn't meant to make her laugh. Granted, people frequently laughed at him when he said things, though he could rarely determine the humor in the situation. But her laugh was entirely different. And it had banished the brief look of melancholy that had occupied her features. “In fact,” he continued, wanting her to laugh again, “proving that you were the worst dancer
ever
born would be impossible. Written records hardly encompass the whole of history or span the globe, and do not include a strict ranking of such skills.”