Sick of Shadows - M. C. Beaton [2]
It was an even more boring life for her companion, Daisy. Daisy, like Rose, was barely twenty, and yet she was not expected to dance and was condemned to sit and watch with the other companions.
And then, half an hour before they were all due to depart for the Duke of Freemount’s ball, Harry Cathcart telephoned to say that an urgent case had come up and he could not be there. Folding her lips into a thin line, Lady Polly, Rose’s mother, asked the earl’s secretary to telephone Sir Peter Petrey to come immediately and escort Rose. Peter was a willowy effete young man who specialized in filling in at dinner parties when someone had cancelled at the last minute and escorting ladies to balls whose escorts had failed to turn up. He was handsome with thick fair hair and a lightly tanned face.
Lady Polly suppressed a sigh when she saw him. Why couldn’t Rose have picked someone like that? The unworldly Lady Polly did not know that Peter had no sexual interest in women at all, her lack of knowledge in sexual matters being hardly surprising in this Edwardian era where an eminent surgeon had declared that no lady should ever enjoy sex—only sluts did that.
“Where is the wretched man?” asked Peter as he led Rose up the grand staircase at the Freemounts’ town house.
“Working, I suppose,” said Rose.
“My dear, a beauty like you should never have involved yourself with a chap in trade. There, now. That was too, too wicked of me. But were you mine, I would never leave your side.”
Rose’s companion had put her mistress wise to Sir Peter and so Rose smiled amiably and accepted the compliment. She often toyed with the idea of marrying Peter. It would be an arranged marriage, of course, but that way she would have her own household and be spared the labour of producing a child every year.
Rose curtsied to her hosts and entered the ballroom. “With Peter again,” she heard the duchess say loudly. “Too sad.”
Her voice carried. With so many of the aristocracy hard of hearing because of blasting away at birds and beasts with their shotguns, the duchess, like so many, spoke in a high clipped staccato voice which carried right cross the ballroom.
Rose usually derived some comfort from being the most beautiful lady in the ballroom. But that evening, she was eclipsed.
A new arrival to society was pirouetting around the floor on the arm of a besotted guardsman. She had masses of thick blonde hair woven with tiny white roses. Unlike Rose’s slim figure, hers was of the fashionable hourglass variety, with a generous white bosom displayed by the low cut of her evening gown. Her eyes were enormous in her heart-shaped face and of a deep brown, which contrasted seductively with her fair hair and perfect skin.
Daisy, sitting next to an elderly dowager, Countess Slerely, whispered, “Who’s the new beauty?”
The countess raised her lorgnette and then lowered it. “Oh, that. That is Miss Dolly Tremaine. Her father is only a rector. She really has nothing more than her looks to recommend her. I’m afraid she’ll have to marry someone very old. All the young men want money. Where is Lady Rose’s fiancé?”
“Coming later,” lied Daisy.
“Most odd. For her sake he should really stop being a tradesman.”
“Being a detective isn’t really trade,” said Daisy defensively.
“The only trades that are acceptable,” declaimed the countess, “are tea and beer. Nothing else.”
Daisy sighed. Her stays were digging into her and the ballroom was too hot.
She rose and curtsied to the countess and made her way to the long windows which overlooked Green Park, slid behind the curtains, opened the window and let herself out onto the terrace and took a deep breath of sooty air. She wondered if she and Rose would ever have any adventures again.
Rose was making her way to the cloakroom. One of her partners had trodden on her train and ripped the edge of it. The maid on duty in the cloakroom set to work to repair the train. The door opened and Dolly Tremaine came in, tears pouring from her eyes.
“My dear,” exclaimed Rose. “May I help you? What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” sobbed Dolly,