Chapter Eighteen

Lady Grantham’s soirees were always unbearable.

Everybody had to go, of course. Lady Grantham was important enough to make it a compliment to receive an invitation from her but dull enough to make the evening crawl.

Lady Grantham did not much enjoy dancing and although she would reluctantly allow a few sets as a special treat, she was very strict on the types of dance and which card games could be enjoyed in her ballroom.

The woman herself sat in state, surrounded by various matrons and dowagers, all friends of hers, all equally dull and serious and unfriendly, eyes peeled for any misbehaving gentleman, any lady treading the thin edge of Propriety with a capital P.

Eleanor curtsied in front of her hostess – it was like being presented to the Queen, not that Eleanor ever had been – and tried not to shrivel under the woman’s steely glare.

Lady Grantham was of the generation where any connection with any business at all was shameful. Times were changing, and the Fairfaxes were generally allowed to mingle in the best circles, and she was more or less obliged to admit them.

Still, that doesn’t mean I intend to approve of you, said the woman’s glare, raking Eleanor up and down, taking in every flaw in her person and dress.

As if to highlight the point of Eleanor’s unsuitability, none other than the Redfords came sweeping in next. Eleanor’s heart sank.

Lady Grantham’s face lit up.

“Ah, my dear Miss Sophia Redford! How lovely to see you.”

She actually rose from her seat – a great honour – and went waddling over to greet Sophia.

Eleanor drew away to one side, trying not to compare her simple blue gown with Sophia Redford’s beautiful yellow silk confection, dotted with red silk roses and cut daringly low around her shoulders. The woman looked like a vision, and ladies and gentlemen alike stopped to stare admiringly at her .

Lady Grantham grandly extended her hands, and Sophia took them, smiling perfectly up at her.

“Such a model of beauty, elegance, and good breeding. Such a rarity these days,” Lady Grantham pronounced. She didn’t exactly look sideways at Eleanor to make her point, but she might as well have done.

Eleanor was forced to stay rigidly smiling, ignoring the insult as best she could. Charles had disappeared somewhere, probably towards the few card tables already set up, and that left Eleanor alone. She turned on her heel and strode away from Lady Grantham, who was still gushing over Sophia Redford.

Marcia was probably here already, but that didn’t mean that Eleanor would be able to find her in this crush. She pushed her way through the crowd, standing on her tiptoes to try and see a familiar face. A few gentlemen glanced down at her, annoyed, as she pushed past them. One or two snippily offered to find her a chair – a none-too-subtle hint that they thought she should have been sitting quietly along the walls, waiting for gentlemen to approach and talk to her, or perhaps even ask her to dance – and they visibly bridled when she politely refused.

“You’re looking lost, Miss Fairfax.”

A familiar voice came in her ear, and warmth radiated all down Eleanor’s spine. She glanced up at a smiling, annoyingly handsome face, and scowled.

“Well, if I was a beanpole like you, Lord Henry, I’d be able to see over the heads of the crowds easily enough. If you’ve come to offer to find me a chair, don’t bother.”

“I was going to do nothing of the sort,” Lord Henry responded easily, keeping pace with her as she pushed through the crowd. People moved aside for him , she noticed sourly. “If I could find a place to sit down, I’d take it for myself.”

“What a gentleman you are.”

“And what a lady you are, calling people beanpoles. Ah, I think I see a little space over there.”

Without asking permission, Lord Henry seized Eleanor’s hand and towed her through the crowd. His fingers were warm, slipping against her silk gloves, and the heat in her chest indicated something more .

Then, quite abruptly, they were through the crowd, in a little corner of space near the mantelpiece, and Eleanor could breathe at last.

“Thank goodness,” she sighed, drawing in a breath of air that didn’t have people in it.

“Agreed,” he said, smiling wryly. “Lady Grantham might be a formidable person in Society, but I’m not sure her company is particularly fabulous.”

Eleanor snorted, an unladylike noise which did her no favours and would be particularly looked down upon where people like – say, Lady Grantham were around to hear it.

Lord Henry only grinned, though, and that warm feeling in her chest fluttered. Like butterflies.

“Can I tempt you to cards? I believe a particularly sedate game of cards is being played.”

“Ugh. No. No thank you.”

“Dancing? There’s a… jig, I think, but an oddly somber one. I didn’t realise jigs could be slow and stately.”

“Either way, I’d much prefer going home early.”

Eleanor wasn’t sure why she’d said that. Perhaps it was her father’s pale face in the carriage as they drove here, face bone-white, skin thin as paper. He hadn’t had any turns like before, but steadfastly refused to discuss his health with anyone, least of all Eleanor. She tried suggesting he pay Jonathan a visit, but he refused, and it wasn’t as if she could make him.

Henry’s expression faltered, and he opened his mouth.

“Eleanor, there was something odd your father said to me before, only today when he had that fit of illness. He said…”

“Lord Henry! Lord Henry Willenshire, I do declare!”

Eleanor could have sworn she saw dismay cross Lord Henry’s face, before it was smoothed away. He turned, a quick smile lighting up his features, towards the resplendent woman in yellow silk trimmed with red, gliding effortlessly towards them.

“Miss Redford, good evening.”

Sophia Redford swept an excellent curtsey to them both, her bow to Eleanor’s markedly shorter and shallower.

“Ah, Miss Fairfax, I thought I might find you here, beside our dear Lord Henry,” Sophia said smoothly, flashing a glint of a smile Eleanor’s way. “How do you do? I am surprised you could tear yourself away from your shop-work to join us civilized folks in Society.”

It was a thinly veiled insult. No, it wasn’t even veiled . Eleanor clenched her teeth and tried unsuccessfully to smile.

“And I’m surprised you could tear yourself away from your looking glass.”

There was a spluttered noise from Lord Henry that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh. The smile dropped off Miss Sophia Redford’s face altogether, but just for a second.

“How droll you are,” she remarked recovering herself. “Come, let’s take a turn around the room. I want to talk to you. As for you, Lord Henry, you may admire us from a distance.”

Throwing an arch look over her shoulder at Henry, she drew her arm through Eleanor’s and dragged her away, not giving her any time to object.

The two women walked in less-than-companionable silence for a few minutes.

Well, to the extent that any soiree – even one as dull as Lady Grantham’s – could ever be silent . All around them, the babble of chatter sprang up, laughter and clinking glasses creating a thick layer of ambience, making it nearly impossible to hear oneself think.

They finally reached a little space at the corners of the room, behind where the dowagers’ chairs circled the dance floor. At last, there was enough quiet to speak at a normal tone and be heard, as well as some relief from the oppressive heat.

“Tell me, Miss Fairfax,” Sophia began, in a light, jovial tone, “what exactly do you think you’re about?”

Eleanor glanced over at her. The woman’s profile was infernally perfect.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, I’m sure that you do. You’re making a dead set at Lord Henry, aren’t you?”

Eleanor wanted to laugh. “If you knew me at all, Miss Redford, you’d know that I’m not interested in the Season. That means I’m not out to catch anyone, or any of the other vulgar terms you care to use. ”

Sophia bristled almost imperceptibly. “Not interested in the Season? Goodness. Well, that’s not what I heard. I heard that your tradesman of a papa intends to marry you off. It makes perfect sense that shop-people like yourselves would want a member of the aristocracy. You’d never catch a proper Duke, of course, especially not one as eligible as the Duke of Dunleigh, but his younger brother – well. That’s a match of some repute, I’d say.”

Eleanor tried to tug her arm free, but wretched Sophia Redford had a powerful grip.

“I’m not trying to catch Lord Henry,” Eleanor said finally, when it was pretty clear that she wasn’t getting away anytime soon. “I’m not standing in your way, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The woman made a little moue of impatience.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Somebody like you, Miss Fairfax, would never be in the way of somebody like me.”

Eleanor was beginning to get annoyed. She finally wrenched her arm free, swinging around to block Sophia’s path and make her look her straight in the eyes.

“Listen to me, you air-headed fool,” she hissed. “I don’t want Lord Henry. I’m not out to catch a husband, no matter what you have heard. You’ve got it wrong, as I imagine you often do – you wouldn’t know a ledger if somebody dropped one on your head. And tell me this – if I’m so beneath your notice, why have you taken this special occasion to warn me off? We don’t bother with competitors who aren’t really competitors to us, we focus on our true rivals. I think you find me more threatening than you’d care to admit, Miss Sophia Redford.”

Sophia narrowed her eyes. She probably couldn’t decide which part of that little speech to take offence at, or whether she should just be angry at all of it.

Probably the latter, although Eleanor would bet all her money that nobody had ever called Sophia Redford an air-headed fool. Not to her face, at least.

“I know what people like you are willing to stoop to,” she spat. “You’ll try and trap him. You’ll addle his mind, or get him alone and leave him obliged to marry you, won’t you? Lord Henry is too delightfully innocent to understand your wiles. And now he’s made the ill-advised decision to go into business with you and your wretched family, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to do so. I know your type , Eleanor Fairfax.”

Eleanor curled her lip in what might have been a smile, if somebody was so inclined to see it that way.

“I can assure you that you don’t know my type at all, and I think you’re rather underestimating Lord Henry. After all, you haven’t been able to catch him, have you?”

Sophia went beet red. Her hand flashed out as if she wanted to slap the other woman. Eleanor held her ground – Miss Redford slapping somebody at a party would be a talked-about circumstance, make no mistake.

At the last moment she regained control of herself, fisting her hands in her fabulous yellow dress instead.

“You’re going to get what’s coming to you,” Sophia hissed. “Oh, you really are. I intend to marry Lord Henry Willenshire, and I always get what I want, you see.”

“Yes, it shows.”

“Don’t interrupt, you wretch! When I am engaged to him, I shall tell my papa about this ill-advised business arrangement, and we shall take measures to extricate him. At any cost . Do you hear me? Any cost. We’ll own your wretched pots by the time it’s all finished, and I’m going to smash each and every one of your stupid, cheap, ugly teacups. What do you say to that , Miss Eleanor Fairfax?”

Eleanor drew in a breath. “I’d say that you ought to keep your voice down when you make threats, Miss Redford. People might overhear.”

There was a brief pause while Sophia took this in. On cue, she blanched, spinning around to find a group of shocked-looking matrons gathered behind them, obviously having listened in. They all had their gazes fixed on Sophia – as luck would have it, it was only her tirade they’d heard – and Eleanor would have wagered money that the story would have made it round the ballroom by the end of the night, and to the scandal sheets by the next morning.

It was likely that when Sophia went to say goodbye to Lady Grantham at the end of the night, she’d receive a much cooler response than she got this morning .

Perhaps it was a little cruel to be gleeful, but Eleanor did allow her a small smile.

“Good day to you, Miss Redford,” she said sweetly. “I think there are some of Lady Grantham’s friends there, wanting to speak to you. I must return to Lord Henry. I hope you have a lovely evening. I’m sure that you will.”

She turned on her heel and strode away without waiting for a reply.

***

When Eleanor finally made her way back to the quiet corner, she found Lord Henry standing where she’d left him, although Charles was there now, too.

She knew immediately that something was wrong. Charles’ face was grey, haggard and almost livid, and he wobbled ever so slightly on his feet. Lord Henry’s expression was grim, and he had one steadying hand on Charles’ elbow.

“Papa?” Eleanor asked, hurrying toward them. She could hear the note of panic in her voice.

“I didn’t want to bother you, not when you were having fun…” Charles trailed off, pressing his hand to his chest as if it pained him. Eleanor looked to Lord Henry for an explanation.

“I fear that your father is ill,” Lord Henry said quietly. “He had another turn again, like he did this morning. I would suggest calling a doctor…”

“Nonsense!” Charles interrupted peevishly. “A good night’s sleep and I’ll be right as rain.”

Lord Henry pressed his lips together, meeting Eleanor’s eye. “He’s not well, Miss Fairfax. I took the liberty of calling your carriage. It should be here now, so you can get straight in and go home immediately. Mr. Fairfax needs rest, I think.”

“I can see that,” she murmured, the panic spiking again. “Thank you, Lord Henry.”

He stepped back with a nod, letting her take her father’s arm. Halfway across the ballroom, Eleanor glanced over her shoulder to see if he were still there.

He was.