Free A Reformed Rake by Jeanne Savery

featured matron, her hostess for the evening, had swept up to where the eighteen-year-old Harriet sat. Harriet, as usual, had been bored nearly to tears by the ball going on around her, a wallflower sitting amongst the chaperons and other unlucky young maidens who, for one reason or another, had not taken.
    Her hostess had a distracted Sir Frederick in tow and made the introduction. He bowed over the hand Harriet hesitantly presented. She saw that his eyes were directed elsewhere, however. “Your servant,” he said and asked, as forced to do by convention. “May I have the honor of this dance?” He still hadn’t truly looked at her.
    Harriet hadn’t known what to do. She’d been warned to have nothing to do with Sir Frederick, but wouldn’t it be wrong to refuse when her hostess had made the presentation? She glanced at her stony-visaged chaperon who glared at their hostess, but that well-padded matron was oblivious to everyone and everything but her duty to see that all the young ladies had partners.
    “Excellent. Very good,” muttered the hostess, already searching for other prey to introduce elsewhere. “Enjoy yourselves.”
    Still hesitating, Harriet rose to her feet. She almost laughed, biting her lip hard to repress it, when Sir Frederick found himself facing a young woman only a few inches shorter than himself. He blinked, offered his arm and they joined a set—not the set nearest where Harriet had sat, but one farther down the room. Even so, as soon became apparent, it was not the set Sir Frederick had wished to join. The faint scowl he’d worn deepened as he stared at a couple in the set beyond theirs.
    Harriet sighed. It would obviously be another miserable half-hour. She stood waiting for the music to begin, not quite knowing what to do with her hands. Sir Frederick was no help. He stared beyond her shoulder to where brittle laughter assaulted Harriet’s ears. But conversation was expected—or so it had been drilled into Harriet. She cleared her throat. “The weather has been unusually mild this winter, would you not agree?” she asked.
    “Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course.”
    “But spring seems delayed. I look forward to the flowers in the park.”
    “As you say, Miss, er, Collins?” He glanced at her, his gaze resting just below her chin, which startled him. He raised his eyes to meet hers.
    Harriet lowered her lids, seemingly demure, but really to hide a twinkle. Poor man. He so obviously wished to be elsewhere. But conversation. What could possibly interest the man? “What do you hear concerning the war in the Peninsula, Sir Frederick?”
    “War?” Again his eyes flicked, impatiently, toward her; again they lifted to meet hers.
    It was, she thought, quite horrid to be so tall. “Perhaps you would prefer to discuss horseflesh?” she suggested. “Or hunting? Do you hunt, Sir Frederick?”
    “No.” This time he didn’t pretend to attend her.
    Oh yes you do, she’d thought, half scornful, half amused. But not the poor fox or other creatures of the wild. And at the moment your prey seems quite happy with another. I hope she’s wise and avoids you altogether. Similar contemptuous thoughts flittered through her mind as she waited.
    The music struck up and, her mind on Sir Frederick, Harriet didn’t notice she moved with more grace than usual until the movement of the dance separated them and her new partner complimented her on her dancing. She blinked, chuckled, and decided she had discovered the secret of poise: one forgot oneself. When they met again, the forms bringing original partners back together, Harriet ventured another bit of conversation. “Do you think the king will be well enough to open Parliament this year, Sir Frederick? Or will there finally have to be a regency?”
    “What?” He frowned, obviously straining to hear what his quarry in the next set said to her partner. A remnant of good manners brought his attention to his own partner. “I’m sorry, Miss, er, Collwood? I