Belle of the ball

One

Biting her lip to keep the tears from coming, the Honorable Miss Arabella Swinley, daughter of Baron Swinley, deceased four long years before, stood in the shop with her head held high. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, even including hearing that her father was dead, for after all, she had barely known the old man, though he had professed a careless affection for her on the few occasions when she did spend a day or two at Swinley Manor as a girl. This was worse . . . much worse.

"Annie, we must leave," she whispered through clenched teeth.

Her maid, looking confused, placed the gloves her mistress had intended to buy down on the polished countertop.

Arabella, quivering from mortification, steeled herself to go. With one swift, heartbroken glance at the stiff couple who had pushed in front of her at the counter, she turned.

And faced a wall.

She stepped back and looked up. And kept looking. He was the tallest man she had ever seen, and she was of no mean height herself, for a lady. But he was much taller, over the six foot mark, surely, by at least a few inches. And with shoulders that would make Weston weep.

"I believe this lady was first," he said in a loud, booming voice, as if he had had to make himself heard often over long distances.

The couple at the glass display counter turned and glared. The clerk had the grace to look abashed, but it really was not the poor man's fault that Lord and Lady Snowdale had cut Arabella, elbowing past her and taking her place at the counter. She wanted to sink through the floor at that moment, but it was to get worse still.

"I beg your pardon," Lord Snowdale said with a haughty expression on his pudgy face. He glared up at the man who had spoken so loudly. "Were you speaking to us, sir?"

"I was. If I am right, you deliberately snubbed this young lady," the man said, frowning down at the elegantly dressed couple. "Now, what can have induced such finely dressed and appearing folk to give what, if I remember correctly, is called the 'cut direct' to this girl?"

His voice was cultured, but my, was it loud! Other people in the dim shop were turning to see what the commotion was, even as they inspected cloth and made their selections. One older gentleman put an eyeglass up to his eye and harrumphed loudly. Arabella gave an embarrassed smile to the clerk and started to back away, hoping to make it to the door and bolt. She was not generally hen-hearted, but she was sure she knew why she had been given the cut by the Snowdales, and she did not want her humiliation canvassed in public. She wished those who did not know to stay in the dark, if that was still possible, after her mother's outrageous behavior at the country manor of the Farmingtons.

"Do not leave, miss. You shall have your gloves." The loud gentleman smiled down at her and winked, his eyes glittering in the dim interior of the shop. He threw a gold coin on top of the gloves on the counter and said, "For the young lady's purchase. If she is served first, as she should be."

"Well! I have never been so insulted . . .** Lady Snowdale started, spluttering frostily.

"No insult intended, ma'am, but I do wonder what you meant by your behavior?"

Could he not just let it go, Arabella thought, sending a pleading look up at the stranger. His response was a friendly smile.

Lord Snowdale, despite the considerable size difference between him and his adversary, said, "See here, young man, I do not know from what backwater you have arisen, but this is London, b'God, and we have courtesy and a way of doing things that perhaps you colonial chaps don't understand."

Arabella, rooted to the spot now as much by her obligation to the stranger as by a queer sort of fascination with the proceedings, gazed at the unnamed gentleman. Not only was he tall, but she had to admit that despite the aspersions cast on his manner by Lord Snowdale, he was not merely good-looking, but charismatic. He had dark straight hair unfashionably long, and though his suit looked to be of recent vintage, its cut was more generous than any London tailor would countenance, meaning he likely did not need to be shoe-horned into the sleeves, though the looser cut did not conceal a kind of massive strength and intimidating breadth to the man.

He had been accepting his change from the clerk and counting it, but now he glanced at the viscount before him. "So you have twigged to my recent arrival from 'the colonies,' as you put it. Interesting. But at any rate, sir, where I come from courtesy does not include making a lady wait" He scooped up the gloves from the counter and presented them to Arabella with a flourish.

If it were not so desperate a situation, Arabella would have found it funny, the way Lord Snowdale goggled up at the tall man in front of him, and the sight of Lady Snowdale cackling in the background like a . . . well, like a chicken about to lay an egg. That homely metaphor suited the plump woman and the clucking sounds she emitted.

But her reputation was at stake. Arabella assumed her frostiest, most aristocratic manner, and said, "Sir, I cannot accept the gloves from you, as you must know. I thank you for your concern, but I assure you it is misplaced. You . . . you misunderstood the situation. His lordship and Lady Snowdale did not cut in front of me. They had . . . had been there first, and . . . were merely browsing before coming back to make their purchases." She clutched her hands together to stop them from shaking as she fabricated her story, hoping to rescue a hopeless situation from becoming even worse.

Allied against the common foe. Lady Snowdale nodded to Arabella with approval and then whispered to her husband, in tones loud enough to be heard, "We must have been misinformed, Rupert, for surely a young lady with such perfect manners could not have done such a thing as we heard she did to Lord Conroy. It is all a hum, I swan! She is everything a modest young lady should be, that is quite clear."

Lord Snowdale nodded to his wife. "You must be right, m'dear." He bowed to Arabella. "I do apologize, Miss Swinley. If we cut in front of you at all, it was not intentional."

"Not at all, my lord, it does not matter in the least. As I said, I believe it was merely a misunderstanding." Arabella, her heart pounding, congratulated herself on her good sense in turning such a desperate situation around. Perhaps, oh, perhaps this had saved the day! She curtsied to the Snowdales, who moved off at a majestic pace, eschewing their shopping for the day after saying that they hoped they saw her the next night at the Parkhurst ball. When she glanced up, it was directly into a pair of amused gray eyes.

"What did you do to offend them, I wonder? And what does this Lord Conroy have to do with it?" the stranger said. He stuck out his large callused hand. "By the way, I am Marcus Westhaven, and I—"

"Sir, it is the worst manners to introduce yourself to a lady, as any simpleton knows," she said, furious that he had made her the object of such a scene. Some people were still staring, and he stood there like a great idiot with his hand still stuck out. "And I could only make it worse by acknowledging such an inappropriate introduction! Come, Annie," Arabella said, whirling on her heel and leaving the shop and her lovely gloves behind.

Marcus Westhaven stood staring after her. How very beautiful she was, and yet a little termagant, by all indications. Flashing green eyes, blond ringlets, a turned-up nose, and the sweetest little pursed-up mouth he had ever seen. The complete London belle. He chuckled and shook his head. What a little firebrand! He glanced over at the clerk and shrugged. "Keep the money," he said, tossing the gloves back on the counter. "Someone may as well profit from this absurdity."

He strode from the stuffy, dim shop out into the street, for his business had already been completed when he had seen the two snobs push the young lady out of the way and take her place at the counter. It had made him burn as injustice always did, and so he had stepped in. He had certainly been too long out of England. It had apparently been the wrong thing to do and the girl, a "Miss Swinley," it seemed, had been more concerned about kowtowing to those old frauds than in being properly thankful for his intervention.

He marched down the street, still a little uneasy in the presence of so much traffic; gigs and phaetons and barouches careened along the road as sweepers darted between them. He had not remembered it as so damned crowded, but then it had been many years since he had trod the streets and roads of his native land. Hawkers shouted of their wares as they rolled barrows and carts heaped with produce and flowers and all manner of goods. And besides the noise there was a smell that assailed his nostrils every minute of every day, a smell of excrement and rotting fish and smoke, and over it all the stale odor of unwashed bodies and greasy hair was impossible to avoid, as impossible as stepping around the rotting cabbage and horse manure in the gutters.

London. How far removed he was from the stillness of the Canadian wilderness, soaring pines, the howl of the wolf, a breeze stirring the leaves as he paddled down a gurgling stream with George Two Feathers, his best friend these past years. The funny thing was, those smells—horse excrement, rotting fish, smoke—they were all a part of the wilderness, too, but he supposed it was not in such overwhelming power. And in the wild they were cut with the scent of pines and fresh air and water, always water, pure and clear, scrubbing man and beast alike to a vigorous cleanliness. He longed for just one good, big breath of that air, so he could hold it deep in his lungs.

And yet there was a vitality in the London scene that entranced him. It was an overwhelming assault on his senses every moment of every day, and he was feasting on it in a way, fascinated by every small detail down to the rags on the little street urchins and the wilting violets a flower girl sold on the corner. He stopped and gave her a gold coin; she gazed up at him in awe, but then a look of world-weary suspicion darkened her young face and she bit it. He laughed heartily and moved on as she realized it was the real thing and called out an almost unintelligible thanks.

He could not say if he would want to stay—^he was interested for the moment but had the feeling the longing for fresh air and wide spaces would at some time overpower him—but for the time being he was ensconced at the Fontaine, one of the city's more modest hotels. His future depended in a large part on the health of a very old man, and he was not really certain what outcome he desired.

Arabella removed her bonnet and handed it over to Annie before sinking wearily into a chair in the front drawing room of the Mayfair House, loaned to her and her mother by the in-laws of their cousin, Truelove, now Lady Drake. What a morning it had been! March in London had always been her favorite time. The Season was just starting; there was the hustle and bustle of buying new clothes and accoutrements for all manner of entertainments, and there was the excitement of seeing friends again, and looking forward to balls and routs and musicales, Vauxhall, the opera, picnics at Richmond. Two and even three engagements in a day would not be unusual, with morning visits in addition. The frenetic pace suited her, for she could not abide idleness and had more trouble assuming the correct degree of languor considered appropriate for a young lady than in attaining any other social accomplishment.

But this Season was different.

First, there was the question of whether she would even be able to stay in London for the Season or not.

If the Snowdales' behavior was any indication, it was quite possible that she would be forced to leave in disgrace. She had saved that particular awkward scene, but how long could she continue if word got around? It was all her mother's fault.

Lady Swinley chose that inopportune moment in her daughter's reflections to enter the drawing room.

She was much shorter than her daughter and thin, with a pinched, ungenerous face and hard eyes. Her marriage to the Baron Swinley—she had been Isabella Trent of the Dorset Trents, a very good family indeed— had been thought by her family to be a step below what she could have expected, but somewhere deep inside she had known herself to be lucky. She had married a man of wealth and property and limited intestinal fortitude. The vulgar would no doubt say she had promptly assumed the breeches in the family, but she had looked upon it as merely her due, to take a measure of control to herself and learn quickly how to ensure her husband's acquiescence.

Her only child had turned out to be a daughter, and after that the baron had not bothered her much for a second child, which suited her just fine. She considered that she had done her duty in bearing one child; it was too bad Arabella was not a boy, but there was no help for it. Secretly, some wondered how such a plain woman had borne such a beauty as Arabella, but she considered that there was a family resemblance. Most thought that it was limited to that pinched look about the mouth when Arabella was displeased about something.

Lady Swinley entered the drawing room with a book of plates in hand. "I don't know how we are to do it with our finances at such low tide, but you simply must have a new spencer on the military line. Ever since Waterloo every gel is wearing these military duds with shakos and gold frogging. Perhaps you could sell your pearls ..."

"No!" Arabella snapped. "That is the only thing Papa gave me personally and they were his mother's. I will not sell them."

Lady Swinley pursed her lips, and the drawstring lines around her mouth were even more pronounced than usual. "Do not take that tone with me, young lady, I..."

Arabella stood and said, her voice shaking, "Mother, I was cut by the Snowdales."

The book dropped from Lady Swinley's hands. She sank into the chair just vacated by Arabella, quick to see all the ramifications of such an occurrence. "Cut? Oh Lord."

"Yes, cut! And it is all your fault If you had not pulled that absurd trick on Lord Conroy ..."

"I had no choice," Lady Swinley retorted. She sprang up from her seat again and faced her daughter. "You were no closer to eliciting a proposal from the idiot than you were when we left Lea Park after that debacle. And how you let Drake slip through your fingers only to have him wed your simpering, silly little cousin True-love Becket I will never know!"