Her Caprice by Keira Dominguez

Author:Keira Dominguez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boroughs Publishing Group

Chapter Seventeen

Henry had been hovering on the edge of her vision all night, irritating her eyes like a speck of dust she couldn’t rub out. But now Beatrice could see him making his way across the ballroom and the mote was turning into a beam. Her breathing quickened and she turned to a gentleman who had just compared her to a Bengali sunset. He was young, all knobs and elbows, and would have to do. “Do you dance even better than you pour out nonsense?”

It was skirting the line—quite close to an open invitation—but Henry would be upon her in moments.

“Much better, miss,” the affable Mr Gordon answered as he offered his arm. The other gentlemen in the circle grumbled amiably but cleared a path. Beatrice took his elbow and sailed past the thwarted form of Henry Gracechurch.

The surge of triumph lasted until she took her place in the set, looking across the floor to Mr Gordon, who was, no matter how she squinted, nothing like Henry. “You’ve been to India?” she asked him.

“In books,” he replied, and then he went on, reciting their contents, seemingly by memory. Good. It would allow her to think—to consider the ruins of her life, she thought with a cold plunge into self-pity.

The dress hadn’t helped at all, though it had turned more heads than in the whole of her life. Maybe it had even turned Henry’s. That had been the gown’s purpose, to dazzle him past the point of reason and bring him around to her. Was that why he was, even now, standing on the edge of the floor, his eyes following her like a prowling tiger?

She’d had such high hopes for the dress from the moment she slipped the whisper-soft material over her head. It was of silk, and when she had seen herself in the mirror, with the ruby pendant Papa had given her on her eighteenth birthday clasped around her neck and her curls woven through with a silver ribbon, she was overcome. She’d spread the overskirt—as thin as a spider’s web and hung all about with swinging teardrop pearls—and dipped into a curtsey, the white silk of her gown pooling out on the floor.

“My word,” Papa had breathed when he saw her walk into the library clad in Madame Durand’s breath-taking work. “You look wonderful.” He’d patted his waistcoat as though searching for a watch or a snuffbox. “My word.” He’d walked to her and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I’m not going to disarrange anything, am I?”

Beatrice had shaken her head, her nervous gaze avoiding her mother’s chair.

“Come,” Papa had coaxed, holding out his arm. “Have a drink and tell me if I should increase your allowance.”

Beatrice had smiled and let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Maybe this wouldn’t be painful, she’d thought. Maybe it wouldn’t be a shock. Maybe they had come to see the necessity of all this as she, step by step, had come to see it. She’d opened her mouth to speak.

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