Free A Useful Woman by Darcie Wilde Page B

Regent or the Lord Admiral.
    Mr. Whelks bowed with perfect aplomb and started up the last flight of stairs. Rosalind strolled across the gallery to keepthe cold from settling more firmly into her bones. As she turned, she could not help noticing that the ballroom doors were less than two yards from her left shoulder. Somewhat to her surprise, they were slightly ajar.
    I will not look.
    This resolution lasted even less time than her initial resolve not to look at Devon Winterbourne. The ballroom, at least, could not look back.
    Rosalind glanced up the stairs but saw no hint of motion. Slowly, she let herself drift toward the ballroom doors. When neither Lady Blanchard nor Mr. Whelks appeared, she gently nudged the right-hand door open a little farther. The hinges were, of course, perfectly oiled and made no noise.
    Inside the ballroom, the draperies were closed, turning the evening’s twilight to a deeper gloom. Pale gold light seeped under the velvet from a few remaining torches and lanterns in the street outside. It made a pretty sheen on the floorboards, but did little to alleviate the darkness. She could only just make out the shape of the musicians’ gallery at the farthest end.
    She’d seen this room when the curtains were fully open and light from great lusters and chandeliers sparkled on gilded pillars and framed mirrors. She’d felt like the queen of the world when she walked into the ballroom on Father’s arm. She remembered the weight of the pearls around her neck—a gift from her then-fond father—and the pink roses in her hair. By contrast, her white dress had seemed light as air. The music had swelled, as if that particular passage had been chosen specifically for her entrance. Every head turned. The ladies whispered and nodded. The gentlemen looked her up and down again. She’d blushed. She’d adored it.
    She’d curtsied to Lady Jersey and heard herself praised.
    So slender, so modest, such a pretty girl, Althea. And, ah! Here ismy particular friend Mr. Hammond. He will make you an excellent partner for the first waltz, Miss Thorne, should you agree to accept him.
    Of course she’d agreed. She would have agreed to the Man in the Moon. She’d just been given permission to waltz at Almack’s, and at last, life would begin.
    She trembled a little at this memory, and felt an unfamiliar trace of shame.
It’s all right
, she told herself.
It’s your life, after all. Why shouldn’t you remember being happy?
    But it wasn’t memory that made her ill at ease, at least not entirely. Rosalind frowned at the empty ballroom. There was something odd about the dark, still, soaring space in front of her, but she couldn’t quite make out what it might be.
    It was then she heard Mr. Whelks’s measured tread descending the stairs.
    â€œI’m sorry, Miss Thorne, but Lady Blanchard isn’t in the committee room. You must have missed her in the street.”
    â€œYes, I’m sure that’s it,” Rosalind replied, but didn’t turn to look at him. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, allowing her to see farther into the ballroom. There, almost hidden by the deeper shadow under the musicians’ gallery, lay an odd black bundle. It might have been a rolled-up rug, except it was too uneven, and it gleamed, in patches, as if the torchlight from outside were catching on glass or metal. She thought it might be a pile of burlap sacks, perhaps delivered by the workmen downstairs. But such things wouldn’t have been so inelegantly dumped in the Almack’s ballroom, no matter the time of day.
    And if it were a pile of sacks, what was the pool of thicker darkness that spread out around it? That wasn’t a shadow. It was the wrong shape.
    â€œIs there something the matter, miss . . .” Rosalind felt Mr. Whelks move to look over her head. “Great God!”
    Propriety forgotten, Mr. Whelks shoved past her. The boards echoed