Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(47)

And she waltzed. After another minute or so he was aware that Riverdale and his sister waltzed too while their mother clapped her hands on the sidelines. But he kept his eyes upon Anna, who had surely been born to dance—strange thought. Stranger was the thought that he had never until this moment realized what a very— What was the phrase the dowager had used? He had never realized what an impossibly romantic dance it could be. He had only ever noticed the intimacy and the suggested sexuality of it.

“Very good, my lady,” Robertson said when the music came to an end and the dowager countess too clapped her hands. “We will polish the steps and refine the positioning of your body at your next lesson. I thank you for your kind assistance, Your Grace.”

Avery ignored him. “No frills or flounces, Anna?” he said. “No curls or ringlets?”

“No,” she said. “And I do not care that you disapprove. I will dress as I see fit.”

“Dear me,” he murmured, “whatever gave you the notion that I disapprove?”

And he strolled away to converse with the older ladies for a few minutes before taking his leave.





Eleven




Dear Joel,

You would not recognize me if you were to see me now. My hair has been cut. It is not short, but it is definitely shorter, and Bertha Reed is learning from my cousin Elizabeth’s maid how to dress it more becomingly than its usual style. I am even to have a few curls and ringlets when I venture out to an evening event—which I will be doing soon when I attend the theater as the Duchess of Netherby’s (my aunt’s) guest. She thinks it is time the ton had a chance to look at me now that I have been at least partially transformed. As though I were a prize bull—though that does not sound like a particularly appropriate analogy, does it? But I shall feel like a prize something. An idiot, perhaps?

And my clothes! I have refused to bow to that society idol, FASHION—what is it, after all, but a ploy to keep people buying and buying so that they will not become UNfashionable?—but even so I have been made to understand that I simply must change my dress at least three times every day, and often more than that. What one wears in the morning will not do for the afternoon, and what one wears in the afternoon will certainly not do for the evening. What one wears at home will not do for walking out or riding in a carriage or going visiting. And one cannot be seen to be wearing the same old thing—even if it is only two weeks old—or even the same old little collection of things wherever one goes. The goal of any lady, it seems, is to give the impression that she never wears the same garment twice. I resisted as far as I was able, but you cannot imagine the strain of pitting my will against those of a duchess (aunt), a dowager countess (grandmother), other titled ladies (aunts), and a French modiste, who is all French phrases and waving hands, though she slips occasionally into what I believe is a Cockney accent. I have so many clothes that Bertha declares she could open a shop and make her fortune. I went shopping with Lady Overfield (Cousin Elizabeth) one morning on fashionable—one cannot quite escape from that word—Bond Street and Oxford Street, and we came home with so many packages, most of which were mine, that it is amazing there was room left in the carriage for us or indeed that there were any goods left in the shops.

But, having already written so much, I realize that you probably have no interest whatsoever in all the details of my changed appearance, do you? I now know everything there is to know about the English upper classes. They—we, I suppose I should say—cannot all be lumped together as rich and privileged with nothing to distinguish them from one another except perhaps size of fortune. Did you know, for example, that if there are four dukes in a room—which heaven forbid there ever would be—all waiting to be seated at the dining table, they cannot be seated in any random order. Oh dear me, no. For no duke—or any other title or rank for that matter—is quite equal to any other. One will always be more important than the other three, and then one of those remaining will be more important than the other two, and so on. It is dizzying and ridiculous, but so it is. I have had to learn not only all the various titles and ranks, but also exactly who fits where into each and who must take precedence over whom. Anyone who makes a mistake has committed social suicide and will be consigned to aristocratic purgatory with only a faint hope of being sent back for a second chance.

I am learning to dance. Oh, you may well protest that I already knew how since you have danced with me on a number of occasions. It is not so, Joel. Our dancing education was woefully inadequate, for it taught us only what to do with our feet and not what do to with our hands and fingers and heads and facial expressions. I shall pass along just one hint for your own future use. Never, ever smile while you are dancing, at least not to the extent of showing your teeth. It is just not done.

But the waltz, Joel—oh, the waltz, the waltz, the waltz. Have you ever heard of it? I had not. It is—well, it is heaven upon earth. At least, I think it must be, even though I have tried it only once. Aunt Matilda, the eldest of my father’s sisters, thinks it quite improper because one dances the whole set with just one partner, face-to-face and touching the whole time, but my grandmama describes it as impossibly romantic—her very words—and I have to agree with her. I believe I like my grandmother, though that is another subject altogether.

There is one other thing I will be able to tell you about only in retrospect, for I hardly dare think of it in advance. I am going to be presented to THE QUEEN, Joel!!!! (Miss Rutledge would have an apoplexy.) I am going to have to walk up to her chair (her throne?) and make my curtsy. I am in very intensive training, for there is a way to walk up and a way to retreat and a way to curtsy that applies only to the queen—and to the king, I suppose, but he is said to be mad, poor gentleman. I shall report after the ordeal is over—if I survive it, that is.