Chapter Text
The past few months of Elizabeth’s life have led up to this:
The lively music of the ball, outpaced only by the rhythm of her heart. Young women—many younger than her, girls, even—dancing in perfect twirls and sidesteps, bright-faced and breathless. Members of the ton wearing the most expensive gowns, gliding across the floor with effortless regality. Men of all ages scribbling on dance cards, claiming the next set.
Then there is Elizabeth: twenty years of age at her first Season, her best gown a year outdated, her reticule clutched tightly in her hand. That she is not alone is her only comfort—Meera Malik, niece to the Marquis of Ainesbury, stands at her side.
The marriage mart is a battleground, Lord Ainesbury had proclaimed before they left, partly in jest. Lady Ainesbury had not been so blunt, but had given them well-meaning advice of her own. Do not be discouraged, but keep your hopes at bay. It will be difficult, for the both of you, she had said, her eyes resting on her niece. But I have faith.
It is not the same, the difficulties of a poor white baronet’s daughter and a half-Indian woman—granddaughter of an earl or not—coming out into society. But they had been friends as children, and remained as such, even after all the years they’d spent apart. Elizabeth would stand beside Meera no matter what, and she knew Meera would do the same. In a battleground, it is important to have allies, and Meera is hers.
Lady Ainesbury guides them over to a few of the other chaperones, mothers with varying degrees of ambition for their daughters and sons, who look at Elizabeth appraisingly. Elizabeth smiles and nods as the proper introductions are given, but her attention wanders back to the centre of the floor. Her eyes have adjusted, now. The intimidating, almost idyllic picture of the ball comes into messy focus: the dancing is peppered with stepped toes and stifled winces, one of the violinists is a bar behind the others, and there are more wallflowers than there should be, the uneven ratio of men and women becoming alarmingly apparent.
All the young women with a single goal: to make a marriage match.
Hers is no different. But she could not burden Meera’s family for much longer, and the alternative—
Elizabeth thinks of all the funds spent on physicians and apothecaries, directed from her own pocket. The months spent in mourning. The single, damning fact that she, an unmarried women, was now alone.
So her plan: to marry, and to marry well. Her timeframe: by the end of this Season. There is no other alternative.
She turns her attention back to the women, catching the thread of their gossip. They’re discussing something about a viscount returning after more than a decade, a dead wife and daughter, devolving into wild rumours of the nature of his absence that paints him as some disreputable rogue. Then one of the women suddenly frowns, shifting the conversation away.
“You would think he would have some sort of propriety, not dancing at a ball with the number of young ladies waiting around!”
Elizabeth follows the line of gossip and looks at the man in question, who was, indeed, standing off to the side and not dancing. Somehow, he had managed to avoid being wrangled into a set. Her gaze is drawn to his hair—an unusual shade amongst the sea of brown and blonde.
Beside her, Meera tenses.
Lady Ailesbury glances in his direction. “Who? Are you speaking of Lord Morton’s son?”
“Are you acquainted with him, Meera?” asks Elizabeth in a low voice, so that the other women do not hear.
“I am,” she replies, voice clipped. “I am not familiar with the man next to him, though.”
At that moment, Lord Morton’s son glances in their direction, and the two men make their way over.
“Miss Malik.”
Meera dips into a shallow curtsy, and Elizabeth quickly follows. “Mr. Ressler, may I present Miss Elizabeth Keen. My aunt is sponsoring her for the Season. Elizabeth, this is Mr. Donald Ressler.”
Mr. Ressler introduces them to his acquaintance, a man named Tom Keen. He’s a merchant, venturing out into the city for the first time. He may not be part of the gentry, but he is closer to her in status than most of the other people in the room.
Mr. Keen smiles at her with easy familiarity, bending to press a kiss to her gloved hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
Before the ball, Elizabeth had fretted over her hair and gown by her dressing table, saying to her maid, panic pitching her voice higher and higher: I don’t know how to do any of this, and I’m nearly one-and-twenty.
It hadn’t been her father’s fault, of course, and he’d tried to teach her as much as he could before his illness had overtook him. She remembers those days where he’d tried to teach her how to sew after she’d run off her third governess, but he had turned out to be even worse at it than she had been. So he stuck to the things he knew: horse-riding, reading and writing, and even, at one point, how to shoot. Her father had liked puzzles, too, and taught her how to write and read ciphers. It had been a fun thing to do between the two of them, to write each other secret letters only they knew how to read.
(That had been before, though. Before the recurrent illnesses, each period of recovery shorter and weaker than the rest.)
She’s decent at the pianoforte, but it is only because of Meera and her impromptu lessons that her embroidery is not the unmitigated disaster it had been before. I’ve no idea how to court a man, Elizabeth had said, too, and her maid had burst into giggles.
Don’t you worry, that’s his job! Becca had let a few curls loose from Elizabeth’s up-do to frame her face, then patted her cheeks lightly with rouge. All you have to do is smile.
How she regrets it, not listening to her governesses. She cringes to remember how she’d behaved as a child, the stress she had put upon her father. If only I had known—no. There is no room for that kind of thinking, now. Not here, in the ballroom, with her future in her hands, fragile and malleable. Not here, where she feels an imposter in her worn muslin, where she feels more a girl than a woman, unbalanced and out of step.
So for now, Elizabeth watches. How Meera wears her grace like armour, her head lifted high and her spine straight. How long the lady in yellow holds her partner’s gaze, and how the one in white brushes her hand by her ear, the picture of innocence. How to strike that delicate balance—to invite courtship, not seduction.
When Mr. Keen asks her for the next dance, she curves her mouth into a smile. Looks at him for one beat, two. Then lowers her eyes.
For all of her shortcomings, she’s always been a good actress.
“Well? Is London society everything you had hoped for?” Meera asks in between sets.
“It's—” Exhausting, Elizabeth thinks, and misses home more than ever. “Extravagant,” she says aloud.
“I still can't believe you gave Lady Margaret the cut direct. She will not forgive you for that.”
Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “She cut you first.” The insult had been a subtle one, and she would have forgiven the barb against her, but not the one against Meera, who had stiffened and withdrawn in response. Who had looked at Elizabeth with a certain wariness, too. After that, Elizabeth had not cared what political or social missteps she made.
“I appreciate your support, that will not endear you to her side of the ton. It’s alright, Elizabeth, really.” It is a quiet reminder that Meera has already been through this before, and without her.
Still, though—“No one who treats you like that is worth associating with.”
Meera sighs softly, almost in resignation. But she’s smiling, just a little. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A small pause. Then, with a grin, “Did you see the look on her face? Her eyes—”
“I thought she was going to hurl her lemonade at me! I had an old governess who made the exact same face—”
Elizabeth twists her face in an exaggerated imitation, and Meera bursts into laughter.
“That Mr. Keen seems to have taken an interest in you, Elizabeth,” Lady Ainesbury remarks the next morning.
Elizabeth had danced her first set with Mr. Keen, her second with Lord Swanthorpe (who had one drink too much and kept stomping on her toes), her third with Mr. Ressler (who was taciturn and stiff-shouldered), and the supper dance again with Mr. Keen. That he had chosen the supper dance and become her dining partner for the evening is—not insignificant.
He had been easy to talk to, filling in the spaces where they would have lapsed into an awkward silence. He did not talk endlessly about himself, as Lord Swanthorpe had, but asked about her as well. When he smiled at her, she had found herself smiling back.
“He seemed agreeable,” Meera chimes in. “At supper, do you remember that story he was telling us, about that mishap with the dog at the park? Even Mr. Ressler laughed at that.”
“Speaking of Mr. Ressler—” Elizabeth begins, cutting off in a wince as Meera’s foot digs into hers.
“He danced with the both of you, did he not?” Lady Ainesbury says. He had, though he had not nearly been as uncommunicative with Meera. “It’s a shame, what happened to him last Season, the poor man.”
Elizabeth’s brow rises further, and she glances sidelong at her friend. Later, Meera mouths at her.
“I think he might call on you,” Lady Ainesbury says to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth blinks. “Mr. Ressler?” He had looked so uncomfortable and uninterested in dancing with her that she had seriously considered feigning an ankle twist to put them both out of their misery.
“No—Mr. Keen. He danced two sets with you.” Unspoken is the implication that he would be a good match for her, if he decided to court her.
A merchant—untitled, but wealthy. That’s all that matters in the end, isn’t it? A bed to sleep in, food on the table, a reliable roof over her head. And he had seemed agreeable.
Lady Ainesbury rises from the table. “We’ll be attending the Abbertons’ dinner party tomorrow,” Lady Ainesbury says. “Perhaps we shall see him there.”
After the dinner party, one more ball, and a trip to the theatre, it is no longer a question of if Mr. Keen is interested in Elizabeth, but when he will offer for her. After the dinner party, he had begun to court her outright, calling upon her at the Ainesbury estate on multiple occasions, and even delivering flowers to her once. His proposal—even, it seems to Elizabeth, their marriage—is an inevitability.
She doesn’t understand. It’s been little more than a fortnight since the start of the Season. She had expected to spend months finding a suitor, not weeks. “Count it as a blessing,” Lady Ainesbury had said when Elizabeth confided in her, “that you have found a good match so quickly.”
How fortunate, she means, to have found someone who is not only wealthy, but handsome and amiable. Someone whose hands do not wander when they touch her, whose eyes are not cold and dismissive. He is, perhaps, a bit of a flirt, but he doesn’t have the reputation of a rake or a scoundrel.
He is a safe prospect. Safe, and secure.
Elizabeth had asked him once why he had taken such an interest in her, during one of the sets they’d chosen to sit out.
“You’re different from the others,” Mr. Keen had said, gesturing toward the crowd. “More down-to-earth, like you aren’t afraid to be yourself. It’s what I like most about you, Miss Scott.”
It had been a compliment, she supposes, that he saw something else in her that he didn’t in the other women. A small part of her had felt a pinch of guilt, too, at his underlying assumption that she was more genuine the others, as if she had not chosen him for his financial prospects, as if she had not changed the things she said or did in response his reactions.
But all she remembers is looking out at them—the ladies with the sharp eyes and composed smiles, each movement deliberate; the carefree heiresses and languid aristocrats; the young ladies at their first season, bright-eyed and flushed and hungry for love; the spinsters on the sidelines, watching with what could be envy or relief or neither one of them.
She remembers seeing some reflection of herself in each one and thinking, I am no different.
But he had meant well, and she had understood his perspective, so she pushed her disappointment aside and accepted his compliment with a smile.
“Every time Aunt Martha sees you, she looks like she’s planning the wedding breakfast already,” Meera remarks dryly.
Elizabeth flushes. “That’s a little premature, don’t you think?”
“Not really. He’s been openly courting you for weeks now.” Meera pauses, looking at her carefully. “Do you like him?”
So perceptive, her friend. Elizabeth focuses intently on her embroidery. “Mr. Keen is agreeable.”
“Yes, I know,” Meera says, amused.
“I just think—it’s happening a little quickly. That’s all.”
Meera is quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is gentle. “Elizabeth… Did he behave improperly? Toward you?”
Elizabeth’s head snaps up, her stitches forgotten on her lap. “No,” she says immediately. “No, he’s been perfectly courteous.”
“It doesn’t have to be him, if you don’t want it to be,” Meera says, considering. “There are always others.”
“Like Mr. Ressler?” Elizabeth says with a grin. “You never did tell me anything about him.”
Meera is suddenly very interested in adjusting her embroidery circle. “There’s nothing to tell. We’re friends. And don’t change the subject.”
Elizabeth makes herself imagine it: his proposal, the wedding arrangements, marrying and moving in with him. The twisting in her stomach is a good sign, she tells herself, like butterflies.
Her heels have lifted a fraction off the floor. She pushes them down firmly.
“He’s a good man,” Elizabeth says, almost to herself.
Meera doesn’t press further.