Free One Final Season by Elizabeth Beacon

sign that she was even conscious of Lady Tedinton’s darts of dark-eyed resentment, as that lady barely even bothered to pretend her attention was centred on her husband or the dance.
    ‘I wish you a good evening, my lord,’ she managed to say expressionlessly enough as they neared Eiliane, who was gossiping happily with one of her cronies on the dark rose-coloured sofa that now reminded Kate almost insupportably of their hostess for the night.
    She curtsied to him with formal grace, he bowed with almost as distant a hauteur as he’d used to depress her ladyship’s pretensions and they parted before Eiliane had even spotted them returning together and been able to come up with a pretext for keeping them so.
    ‘This must be one of the most tedious parties either of us ever had the poor judgement to attend, Kate,’ her mentor greeted her cheerfully, once the friend she’d been so absorbed in pumping for the more interesting secrets of the haut ton had departed to bully some hesitant youth into dancing with her débutante daughter.
    ‘Indeed,’ Kate managed as she resorted to the small amount of cover allowed by her fan to conceal some of her confusion.
    ‘You’re overset, my love,’ Eiliane exclaimed, even more concerned when the hectic colour in Kate’s cheeks ebbed as she recalled Edmund’s cold fury with her at even the mention of his rumoured amour with their hostess.
    ‘I’ll do well enough once I’ve got my breath back,’ she managed to say calmly enough as she wondered why on earth she’d let her tongue run away with her in such an appalling fashion just because the very idea of Edmund making love to that vixen had made her feel ill.
    ‘Nonsense, we’ll call for our carriage and go home. I’ll be glad of an early night and you look as if you could do with a week of them all of a sudden.’
    ‘No!’ Kate thought of how insufferably Lady Tedinton would triumph and smirk if she was weak enough to turn tail and go home like a whipped dog after that obnoxious encounter. ‘I would rather stay a little longer and perhaps go on to Mrs Farnborough’s as we had planned. That last dance was quite a vigorous one and I shall be perfectly fine in just a moment.’
    ‘Will you, my love?’ Eiliane asked shrewdly and Kate wished her a little less acute for once, but hoped her friend had no idea of the real reason why she was feeling so out of sorts and low spirited.
    ‘Yes, I shall feel quite restored once I’ve had a rest. It would never do if I gained a reputation for giving myself die-away airs after all, for you’d never get me off your hands then,’ she joked weakly. She refused to even consider the fact that it felt as if she’d never look at another man for the rest of her life and feel the least desire to marry him, or even stand up with him for a waltz after her bittersweet ones with Edmund had spoilt her expectations of any other partner.

    She certainly refused all invitations to waltz for the rest of the evening, but brazened out the remainder of the pantomime it rapidly became to her. Seeing the daughter of the house dance with the suitable young gentleman she and Eiliane managed to throw into her path helped and, from Lady Tedinton’s petulant expression, Kate thought her new enemy was probably having an even less satisfactory evening than she was. She allowed herself a brief smile of triumph when they finally left the Tedintons’ ballroom, quite certain there was a metaphorical dagger in her back this time.

Chapter Five
    ‘T here it all is then, shipshape and neat as you like,’ Ben Shaw, the other half of the firm of Stone & Shaw Shipping that he and Kit Alstone, now the latest Earl of Carnwood, had set up long before his lordship even dreamt of inheriting the family wealth and titles, informed Edmund the next day. As this came after an exhaustive tour of the warehouses and the new enclosed dock Stone & Shaw were building by the side of the one they’d already outgrown, then a return