Free Laura Kinsale by The Hidden Heart Page B

cannot understand why your uncle was not appointed trustee; it would have been so much more suitable. People will think it very odd. Your poor dear papa was so unpredictable, God rest his soul.”
    That lament had become increasingly familiar to Tess in the past three months. It was useless to debate the subject, and she addressed herself to the first question. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a Mr. Everett, Aunt, but I’m certain that if Mr. Taylor recommended him to you, then Mr. Everett is a person of merit.”
    “Well,” said her aunt, “he is invited, whomever he may be. I only hope he is presentable. Some protégé of your guardian’s, no doubt, who hopes to climb in political circles. The letter said he was attached to the governor in Trinidad, or some such place.” She waved the matter away with a snap of her fan and stood up. “Come now, it’s time to go down. Larice, you look charming. Do straighten your sash, Anne dear. Take shorter steps, please, Terese—do try to show some delicacy.”
     
    The ballroom at Morrow House was two stories tall, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a riot of plasterwork by the Francini brothers. Pristine white garlands of flowers, swags, and smiling, unclad cherubs cavorted across the arch and down the walls, outlined on a background of crimson and gold. Larice had complained ofthe house’s rococo dowdiness, and said that all the fashionable families had remodeled to the Gothic style, adding turrets and crenellations to their simple Georgian manors. Tess kept her opinion of that to herself, and resisted the advice on updating with what she considered to be admirable restraint.
    Now, the ceiling, the sparkling chandeliers, and the grand staircase made a splendid setting for the multitude of aristocratic guests. By her own admission, Lady Katherine Wynthrop, daughter of an earl and married to a baron of impeccable reputation, could command the attendance of the highest in the land. The guest list had mounted to five hundred before a limit was called, and the only reason the newlywed prince and his princess had not been invited was because Tess had not yet been presented at court.
    Tess’s feet ached horribly in her tight slippers, but she maintained a frozen smile as guest after guest was announced and brought to her for introductions. It seemed that the world consisted of nothing but viscounts and dukes and their ladies. She remembered none of their names, and little more of their faces. When the dancing began she was immediately dragged into a quadrille of thirty-two people with a young man whom she vaguely recalled was a distant relative. She missed many of the steps, and was quizzed and pitied by several elegant and self-possessed matrons of at least eighteen years, who made sure to tell her how they had suffered at their first ball, and how long ago it all seemed. Tess nodded and smiled, and nodded and smiled, and was glad that at least she did not have to worry about saying the wrong thing, for she seldom had the chance to say anything at all. A veil seemed to have come down over her eyes, making her surroundings a bright confusion of sound and color.
    Lord Thaxton, Lord Welborn, Lord This and Lord That; she was surrounded constantly by a suffocating crowd of punctilious gentlemen, most of them young and a few so old that they creaked in corsets as tight as the one she wore. Her card was completely filled with the hastily scratched names of her future dance partners and she glanced at it often to try to keep their names straight. Aunt Katherine had warned Tess, on pain of instant ostracism, not to dance more than once with the same partner. It had not sounded difficult at the time, but now, with all the faces a blur, she thought she might have been dancing with the same one over and over and never known the difference. She formed the habit of glancing toward Aunt Katherine at each request, and quickly learned from the degree of tilt of that haughty chin just how