How to Marry a Marble Marquis(48)
“Oh, I do, dear girl. A woman’s burden is never-ending. It is the one thing that transcends species. It makes no matter if one is human or minotaur or orcish or gargoyle. The burden falls on us to pick up the pieces when our menfolk cannot, which is always. The burden is on us to forge alliances and bear children and provide heirs, and for all our sacrifice, we get very little in return. I completely understand your reasoning, Miss Eastwick. I hope you’re able to find a lord who is at least a little worthy of you.”
To receive such a generous gift now tightened her throat.
“This ivory would be lovely to wear to breakfast tomorrow, miss. Especially with her ladyship in attendance.”
She sucked in a long breath and looked around. Her room was on the third floor, and she knew that in the grand hierarchy of these sorts of events, that was a slight. But not one that she decided to care about. You are untitled and a pauper. Just be glad you’re here. And now, she had a dragon’s hoard of lovely dresses, the likes of which she had never owned, even when things were good. From pauper to princess. The only question was, were any of them bold enough to heat the blood of one of these monstrous lords. The scandal is the point. Eleanor shook her head, clearing the space between her ears of the cobwebs of his voice.
“Ivory is perfect for breakfast. And obviously, the moth for the ball tonight and the purple for dinner. We’ll take stock of what to wear tomorrow afternoon once we decide what we will be doing.”
The moment before taking the stage was pregnant with anxiety. It didn’t matter where she was singing. It didn’t matter what she was thinking. It didn’t matter if she was simply introducing someone else or following the pianist to his bench in order to shuffle music as he played. It wasn’t the same as the moment before the music started. It was the existence of the maybe.
Maybe a scrim would fall in the midst of her aria, or maybe she would tread too close to the edge of the stage and go tumbling into the orchestra pit. Maybe the crowd would be empty; maybe it would be full of hecklers and blackguards who would not hesitate to boo a missed note. Maybe it would be a great triumph . . . Or maybe she would be a laughingstock. The moment before taking the stage was so horrid because there were any number of ways the evening could progress and no scrying stone to tell her what lay in store.
It was how she felt as they were introduced one by one. She’d entered into the queue behind the two other women with rooms on her corridor – a lovely, dark-haired young woman with her chaperone beside her and a bookish-looking redhead with furtive eyes. She spied the horrid shrew from earlier that day – Stephana Skevington — and a host of other lovely women there in their best dresses, all angling for the same thing — a monstrous husband. Some of the women looked anxious, while others looked as if they were champing at the bit. A handful looked as if they would rather be anywhere else in the world, and one or two, she thought, looked near tears.
It was the first opportunity any of the men in attendance would have to see them, and she hoped that the lovely purple dress showed off her assets well. Trilby had indeed dampened her chemise, soaking until it was dripping, and hanging it to dry some so as not to completely spoil her dress. She had wound up dressing twice. The first time she donned the wisteria satin, the fox girl had frowned, shaking her head.
“Not wet enough, miss. It’s not giving us the effect you want.”
Over her head came the dress, and Trilby scooped handfuls of water from the washbasin, patting it onto the bodice of her chemise until she was satisfied with the moisture level. When she turned away to dry her hands, Eleanor took advantage of the moment to pinch her nipples, coaxing them to hardness. After all, isn’t that the point? The scandal?
When the dress was pulled back over her head and each tiny pearl button fastened, Trilby beamed in triumph. “If catching a husband is your aim, miss, you’ll be beating them off with a stick tonight.”
And now she stood waiting, waiting for her name to be called, for her presentation to the rest of the ballroom, for the moment of truth. She was not the only one with a dampened dress, she was almost relieved to see. She wondered what the lord would catch her eye. Perhaps the orc she was anticipating, or maybe something completely foreign to her, like a minotaur or serpent. Her heart was thumping in her chest like a timpani, and her lungs felt crowded. Not butterflies this time. Moths. It was the herky-jerky movement of moths fluttering within her, nervous and weaving, bumping into her lungs in their clumsy panic. You only have to get through this moment once. You can’t afford to trip and fall. You are doing this for the girls.
“Miss Eleanor Eastwick, daughter of the late Philip Exeter Eastwick, Esquire, of London.”
Stepping to the center of the grand staircase, she smiled in a way that she hoped conveyed she was both a lady and a seductress, and an excellent candidate for marriage. She kept her eyes on the unfamiliar steps, looking out at the small sea of potential suitors on every third one. There was indeed a minotaur, she saw, as well as the long, twisting tail of a serpent. There was a reserved-looking man who cast a blue glow, and the lord standing beside him had the long ears of a rabbit.
And there, directly in her line of sight, with the same lofty look and half-smirk he’d worn for the majority of the past month, was the Marquis of Basingstone. Silas Stride smiled as their eyes met, shining sapphires and blinding white fang, upending her heart and all of her plans.