Courtship and Curses (3 page)

But Mama and Harry were gone, and so was Sophie’s magic—vanished, as if she’d never had it. For the first year, there hadn’t been a glimmer of it, and all her concentration and will couldn’t move as much as a dead leaf. Life had been very black—at least, what she could remember of it. There had been no one she could ask about it, no one to explain why this had happened to her. Had her illness maimed her mind and spirit, just as it had maimed her body?

Over the last several months, though, she’d seen hints that perhaps she hadn’t lost all of it. Very occasionally she would point at a dropped pencil and it would drift up into her hand just as it had before. It could happen after fifty tries or after one; there seemed to be no pattern or indication that practice was helping her regain her power.

So perhaps Lady Lumley was right after all. Maybe she was feeble-minded. Maybe she had lost more than just her magic—maybe she’d lost that spark that made her
her
. Some days she couldn’t bring herself to care about anything … and on the days she did, someone like Aunt Isabel or Lady Lumley would happen along to remind her of what she was now.

Sophie sighed and stared out the carriage window at the passing London street. For years she’d looked forward to coming to London for her first season. Now that she was here—now that
it
was here—she understood that getting through it was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

Chapter

2

Much
to her surprise, Sophie had her fitting the following day and on several others, accompanied only by Amélie. When she asked Amélie how she’d managed to persuade Aunt Isabel to give up the shopping expeditions, Amélie shook her head.

“Do you need to know the ‘how,’
ma chère
Sophie? We discussed it, and I was able to make her see that it was an unnecessary burden on her time that I could take instead.”

Sophie wasn’t quite sure she believed that, but she could well believe that Amélie could face even Aunt Isabel down. So she had the apple green sarcenet walking dress as well as four others in gray and rose and fawn and blue. She had the cherry pink dinner dress made from Amélie’s sari fabric, with its elegant gold embroidery about the hem, and three others in pale pink and white and blue trimmed with lace flounces and roses and forget-me-nots formed of ribbon. Her new riding habit in deep sapphire blue, looking dashingly military, would be ready next week, along with three carriage dresses, two opera dresses, four promenade dresses, and four morning dresses suitable for shopping or receiving calls.

But the ball dresses! They made her ache with both longing and sadness. Amélie had insisted she have them, even when she protested that a cripple would hardly be attending balls.

“Are you so sure? I think it will be expected that you still must attend them and the Almack’s
assemblées
, even if you do not choose to dance … and
eh, bien
, who knows that someday you won’t?” she said.

“And call attention to myself quite spectacularly by falling on my face? No, thank you.”

“Ah, but a partner who cared about you would never permit you to fall.”

“What makes you think I shall ever find such a partner?” Sophie asked, rather tartly.

“What makes you think you shall not?” Amélie shrugged. “Whatever you say,
petite
.”

Of course, after that it seemed inevitable that their first invitation of the season was to a ball.

*   *   *

Sophie sat next to her father in the carriage, facing Aunt Molly and Amélie. Aunt Molly returned her regard smugly, Amélie less so.

Sophie’s dress was … well, it was perfection. Amélie had chosen the pale gold crepe, with its delicately fluttering skirt and modestly rounded neckline. The color brought up gold highlights in her boring brown hair—

Her hair. Sophie closed her eyes and tried not to think about her hair.

Aunt Molly and her ancient maid, Bunty, had cornered Sophie after Amélie left to be dressed by her little Indian servant, Nalini, who had accompanied her from India and seemed to be perpetually round-eyed and shivering.

“Since you’ve no maid here yet”—Sophie’s maid had not yet arrived from Lanselling due to a sprained knee—“we’re here to help,” Aunt Molly proclaimed, closing Sophie’s bedroom door and leaning against it, concealing something behind her back. “You know what a genius my Bunty is with hair. Must come of all the pruning and training she does on the shrubbery walk at home.”

Sophie, seated at her dressing table, involuntarily put protective hands to her head. Did she
look
like a shrub? Aunt Molly was the one who looked shrubby. She still wore her hair in the fashion of her youth in the 1790s, cut short and spiky in the style that had come from Revolutionary France called
la mode Titus.
“Thank you so much, Aunt. I know Bunty’s a genius, but really, I’m nearly done.”

“Nonsense! You young girls wear your hair so primly these days.” Aunt Molly left the door and came to stand behind Sophie, squinting at her in the mirror over the dressing table. “None of the flair we had, eh, Bunty?”

Bunty made a grunting noise that sounded like assent. Sophie glanced at a bulge in her apron pocket that looked suspiciously like pruning shears. Oh, dear. “I know, Aunt, but really—I’m fine.”

Aunt Molly’s shoulders drooped. “Of course you are. I just thought … your mother should be here to help you get ready for your first ball, but since she’s not … I know I’m a poor second best, but…”

“Oh, Aunt.” Sophie twisted on the stool to look at her. Aunt Molly was a plant-obsessed old maid who rarely stirred from the country—Mama had hinted that she had been Crossed in Love in her youth—but she
was
her aunt. “That’s so sweet of you. But … um … no trimming, if you don’t mind too frightfully much.”

Aunt Molly beamed at her. “Gracious, there’s no time for that. We can take care of it tomorrow. Now, let’s see. We could manage cadogan ringlets, couldn’t we, Bunty? There’s nothing prettier than that, I think. And just look what I made for you to wear with ’em!” She whipped out the hand that was still behind her back and flourished something at Sophie. It was a very large wreath of yellow roses twined with ivy. “I thought it would go with your dress—y’know, the yellow and the gold.”

Sophie hadn’t dared to look herself full in the mirror when they’d finished, but the long curls of hair hanging over her shoulders were unavoidably in her view and would have been perfectly fashionable if this were twenty years ago. They contrasted almost ridiculously with her lovely, modish gown, and she didn’t even want to think about what the wreath might look like, plopped atop her head so that she was sure she looked like a crazed Greek nymph. Flowers were a fashionable adornment for hair right now, but this looked more like the wreath worn by the winning horse at Goodwood.

She’d managed to scoop a handful of hairpins into her reticule before going out to the carriage. Now if she could only find the opportunity to slip away from Aunt Molly, she could disappear into the room set aside for ladies as soon as they arrived at Lady Whiston’s house, deposit the wreath in a drawer somewhere, and pin the long curls into something less old-fashioned. Maybe Aunt’s attention could be diverted to a potted palm. Yes, that might work.

“Your hair, Sophie,” Amélie ventured after a few moments as they clattered around the square. “It is quite … how do you say it…?”

Sophie could not meet her eyes. “Aunt Molly’s Bunty kindly did it for me,” she said.
Perpetrated
was perhaps a better word, but why hurt Aunt Molly’s feelings now? A slight ache settled itself low on her forehead, as if her head were independently protesting the treatment it had received.

“Brings back memories, don’t it?” Aunt Molly said, wiggling in her seat like a proprietorial puppy. “That’s just how I wore my hair when I came out. Isn’t she darling, Gil?”

“Hmm?” Lord Lansell turned away from the window and glanced at his sister. Light from one of the new gas streetlamps deepened the shadows etched by the lines in his face. There were a lot more of them than there used to be. “What was that?”

“I said, isn’t Sophie adorable?”

Sophie watched her father try to force his attention from wherever it lived these days back to the present. He’d been buried in his work at the ministry now that Napoléon was back and further war looked inevitable. She knew how important his work was, how valued he was by both Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, and Lord Palmerston, the head of the War Office. Would he be able to unbury himself once the war was over … if it ever ended? Or would he find somewhere new to hide from Mama’s memory?

“Oh. Yes, quite. Is that the style for ladies now? I can’t keep up with them anymore, I confess,” he said, trying to sound jovial.

Amélie coughed delicately. “Indeed, monsieur, one hears that in London the styles change sometimes over the course of an evening. Sophie may find it necessary to redo her hair at least twice tonight. It is fortunate that I brought a comb just in case.”

Sophie met her eyes. Amélie’s expression hadn’t changed, but it didn’t need to. Dear,
dear
Amélie.

They arrived at the Whistons’ house shortly thereafter. Lady Whiston had been caught up in the craze for Egyptian antiquities that had followed Napoléon’s conquests there, and her London house showed it: The classical Greek columns lining her entrance hall had been remodeled with plaster and paint into lotus-topped Egyptian ones.

Aunt Molly squinted up at them as they finished being welcomed by Lord and Lady Whiston. “Wrong number of petals for a lotus,” she muttered.

“It’s just a decoration, Molly,” Papa replied patiently.

“Hmmph. That’s no excuse.”

“Perhaps it is a different species from what you know,” Amélie suggested.

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that! Maybe I ought to have another look.” Aunt Molly started to veer back toward the entrance hall.

“Later, my dear.” Papa took her arm and guided her toward the grand staircase that led to the ballroom.

Sophie gazed up at the tall bank of stairs with dismay. She knew that ballrooms were generally on an upper floor—
knew
it, as their ballroom at home was. So why had she made the idiotic decision to leave her cane at home tonight? Vanity, of course … but having to cling to the banister all the way up the stairs would look even less attractive. What an entrance to make to her first event of the season.

“Sophie.” Amélie stood next to her. When Sophie looked at her, she held out her arm. “Will you go up with me? I dislike to go alone to a room full of strangers.”

“Oh, Amélie … I was an idiot,” Sophie whispered. “I should have brought my cane, but who brings a cane to a ball? And mine’s so ugly—”

“Sssh. It is not important now. Besides”—her voice dropped—“we can look out for Lady Whiston’s boudoir, in case the fashion for hair changes in the next few minutes. I have a presentiment it may already have.”

The Whistons’ ballroom was devoid of lotuses, adorned instead with botany-free copies of Greek and Roman statuary (apart from a stylized laurel wreath on an Apollo’s head). They found seats under a bust of Zeus set on a very tall pedestal.

Aunt Molly plumped down onto one of the delicate chairs and started fanning herself violently. “Shockingly hot in here with all these people. I’d forgotten what balls were like. Don’t stand there, Gil—you’re blocking the air.” She closed her fan and thwacked Papa’s backside with it.

“Sorry, Molly.” He stepped to the side, under Zeus.

Sophie chose a chair on the opposite side of the statue from Aunt Molly and slid it as far back against the wall as it would go. Once everyone’s attention was occupied, perhaps she could at least take off the wreath and hide it under her chair. Or else she could do a quick transference spell and relocate it … except that any spell she tried probably wouldn’t work, or would go awry and plop her wreath on top of the lobster patties in the supper room.

But this was an emergency. If she didn’t do something about her hair soon, she’d shrivel up and die of embarrassment. She leaned close to Zeus, slightly behind Papa, who was standing in front of the statue’s plinth, then bent over as if to examine one of her slippers and yanked the wreath off her head and under her chair in one motion. There! Now if only her head would stop hurting and she and Amélie could escape and fix her hair, then she could relax and at least enjoy watching the crowds at her first party of the season—

A flourish of music made her look up. A minuet was commencing its graceful ordered steps, and she watched the dancers keenly. Hmm, she could maybe consider dancing that if the orchestra could be convinced to play a little more slowly, but the turns could prove to be tricky if she used a cane, which she’d have to.

“Your dress is among the prettiest,” Amélie murmured, sitting down next to her. “Did I not tell you it would be so? Over there—that young man has been gazing at you for the last several minutes.”

Sophie sat up straight, very quickly. A young man? Looking at
her
? “Where? Which one?”

“There—
doucement
, Sophie, do not turn so sharply in your seat—that young man with the dark hair, not too far away. See?”

Sophie tried not to stare too conspicuously, but it wasn’t easy. “I can’t … oh—is he wearing a dark blue coat?”

“I think so. He looks very sincere, I think, as well as handsome. Do you know who he is? No? We must find out. And see how those young women over there—to your right, by the statue of Venus—are looking at you.”

“They’re whispering behind their fans,” Sophie muttered back. “It’s probably my hair they’re discussing, not my dress. I managed to—er, remove the wreath, but can’t we slip away now and fix—”

“Lansell!” A burly, graying man in a maroon coat and limp cravat strode up and bowed to Papa. “A surprise to see you here, sir!”

“Sir William.” Papa bowed as well.

“So they let you out of Whitehall occasionally, do they?” Sir William laughed and elbowed him. “A man’s got to get a breath of air occasionally, I suppose … though I wouldn’t take it amiss if old Boney stopped breathing.
À la lanterne
, wasn’t that what the frogs used to say during their filthy Revolution? Hang him from the next lamppost! So when do we go to war?”