Free Lady Roma's Romance by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

from the sideboard.
    As she sipped it, glad to have something to do with her hands, she noticed Dina making faces at young Mr. Bascom, the sort effaces a mother would make at one of her more thick-witted young. Catching Roma’s looking at her with alarm, Dina showed a smile. “Mr. Bascom is a friend of Mr. Derwent.”
    Roma doubted that. Mr. Derwent was well into his fifties, and Mr. Bascom had the appearance and mannerisms of one but newly come into his majority. Recalling that Dina had said Mr. Derwent had not yet been called to be guardian to minor children, she could yet believe that he’d been Mr. Bascom’s trustee.
    A moment later, Mr. Bascom confirmed her guess. “He’s been like a father to me,” the young man said. “I have a father, of course, but he’s in India. Mr. Derwent has stood by me in his absence. No one could have been kinder or... or more awake on every suit. And he never scolds, you know, not even when I deserved it.”
    “Mr. Derwent is a great man,” Roma said, moved by Mr. Bascom’s evident affection for his mentor.
    Dina agreed, but absently. Once again, she’d begun to widen her eyes, this time giving little encouraging side flips of her head. It dawned on Roma that Dina was trying to get Mr. Bascom to ask her to dance rather faster than it occurred to Mr. Bascom. “What a charming tune they are playing,” Dina said archly. “Can it be a waltz?”
    Given this broad hint, Mr. Bascom bowed to Dina and asked her to favor him. Her brows frowned, but her voice remained gay. “Not I. We matrons know it is only politeness when a man asks us to dance when younger, prettier girls stand by.”
    At the end of their turn on the floor, Roma found a sweet child of seventeen, only just fledged, and introduced Mr. Bascom as an excellent performer in the dance, as indeed he was. After a moment, she excused herself and left them on the best of terms, watched over by her mother. Mr. Bascom’s voice dropped an octave when deferred to as an undoubted Man of the World.
    Roma returned to the refreshments, only to find her father and Bret were gone. Quite a few people milled about, greeting acquaintances and choosing their dainties. Dina, however, sat by and looked up with interested eyes when Roma approached her. “Such a time I had preserving this seat,” she said, waving Roma to the other side of the small settee. “You would think people pay merely for the privilege of sitting beside me.”
    “Where’s my father?”
    “Oh, he and that Mr. Donovan went off to play loo or whist or some such. But tell me your opinion of Mr. Bascom.”
    “I have none.”
    “None?” Dina squeaked, fanning herself. “What do you mean ‘none’?”
    “He’s a pleasant boy.”
    “He’s twenty-one,” Dina said. “Well, just.”
    “And that isn’t a boy?”
    “Perhaps you are right. I must be growing old, Roma. They all look like children to me. Even girls I knew as babies have babies of their own.”
    “Poor Dina,” Roma said, with a teasing smile. “But I notice you don’t lack for admirers.”
    “No, thank heavens. What it must be to have not one devotee left to you.”
    Though she knew Dina hadn’t thought about Elliot when she’d said it, Roma decided not to tease her anymore. It was, indeed, dreadful to feel that no one noticed how she did her hair or whether she was ill. Well, Pigeon always noticed, but it wasn’t the same. At least Elliot would guess that she’d altered in some way if she prompted him.
    Dina put her fan to her chin in the way that meant she was thinking. Roma saw her cousin’s eyes flickering under their smooth white lids as she categorized and sorted the men present. That one was too old. Another had been cosseted by his mother from birth. A fortune hunter, discretely corseted, bowed with a creak as he passed. This one was too recently widowed, another too young, yet a third had thirteen sons....
    Roma put her hand on Dina’s and pressed lightly. “No,