Marquesses at the Masquerade(39)
Marcus nodded. “Like he’s pleased with himself.”
A moment passed, then Rosamund said, “He was a sort of matchmaker, when you think about how he brought us together.”
Socrates yipped insistently, and his master gave him a haughty look, though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the grin teasing his lips. “I don’t think I can tolerate too much smugness in a dog, but I suppose this is where I’m meant to admit I’m grateful that my mother gave me this creature.”
“I think it is,” Rosamund said, laughter filling her eyes. And he kissed her again, laughing.
“I am,” he said. “Oh, I am.”
THE END
A Note from Emily
* * *
Dear Reader,
I hope you’ve enjoyed ONCE UPON A BALL, my own spin on the Cinderella tale and the first story in the Hallaway Family series.
I’ve had such fun working with Grace Burrowes and Susanna Ives on this anthology collection! In addition to being wonderful writers, they’re both lovely people, and I feel pretty lucky to get to write Regency stories with them.
My next release, now available for preorder, is A ROGUE WALKS INTO A BALL, which is the story of the Marquess of Boxhaven’s younger brother, Jack, whom readers meet in ONCE UPON A BALL. Visit my Books page for more information and ordering links. You can also subscribe to my mailing list while you’re there if you want to be alerted to my new releases (the only time I send emails).
From one book lover to another, happy reading!
Emily
From A Rogue Walks into a Ball by Emily Greenwood
* * *
Sarah Porter knew that life was not fair. No sensible woman could reach the age of twenty-five and not know this in her bones, though Sarah had had particular and personal proof of this truth from a young age, in the shape of a nose that could not be ignored.
She’d first begun to experience the effects of her singular nose when she was thirteen and it became apparent that her nose was growing far faster than the rest of her face. Her mother began to wring her hands when Sarah appeared at the breakfast table each morning, as though startled anew at the sight.
“Oh, my dear, it’s your father’s nose,” Mrs. Porter would wail, her own button nose sitting unremarkably amid her fine features. “Why should you have been so cursed? If only there were something that could be done.”
“Don’t pay it any mind,” Sarah’s father would sometimes be moved to counsel from behind his newspaper. “Having a prominent nose has never bothered me.”
But as Sarah was to learn, large noses on men were not the same thing as large noses on women. And her nose was growing into the same shape and, she was dismayed to find as the years passed, nearly the same size as her father’s nose. What fate had given her was a hawk’s assertive beak, and the only question was how large it would ultimately be.
Quite large, it turned out. Large enough that it was the first thing anyone noticed about her, and people were never shy about remarking on it.
If people knew her family, the remarks were commonly expressed variations of “Oh, you have your father’s nose,” uttered in the tones one might use for a person who’d suffered a great calamity.
Then there were the ladies who condoled with her: “I know just how you feel— my feet are far too big.” Since feet could be hidden, Sarah could rarely take comfort in such expressions.
By far the worst were people who thought they were funny, and of these, the most disastrous was the shopkeeper who’d handed over Sarah’s purchase with a wink and said, “I nose you will like it!”
Gideon Grant, the most handsome and popular boy in the village of Scarborough, had heard the comment, and he’d laughed uproariously. He’d followed her out of the store, chanting “I nose you will like it” after her as she hurried away, willing herself not to cry. For years after that, whenever he saw Sarah, Gideon found a way to use the hated “I nose” construction, saying things like “I nose you don’t want to get wet” if he saw her with an umbrella, or “I nose you live nearby” if he passed her on the street.
By the time Sarah was sixteen, she’d decided that Gideon had done her two favors. The first was that his relentless teasing taught her to rely on herself. Sarah had always been clever, and she loved to read. She liked novels and poetry, but what she loved best were travel stories and maps. The allure of foreign lands, and the idea of an escape from the narrow world of Scarborough, helped her not to care about the likes of Gideon Grant.
The other thing that Gideon’s teasing did was to demonstrate, in a way Sarah learned to accept deeply, that people who were attractive were generally shallow. He was helped in imparting this lesson by other mocking boys, and several of the lovely young ladies of Scarborough, who tittered appreciatively at the witticisms he uttered at Sarah’s expense.
These lessons insulated Sarah from the, to her, entirely foreseeable disappointments once she was old enough to go to social events such as parties and balls, where she was an instant wallflower. And while she stood at the edges of dance floors and watched as the gentlemen’s eyes moved past her to rest on prettier women, she consoled herself with thoughts of Constantinople and Paris, of the olive trees of Italy and the fishing villages of Greece. She conjured daring schemes of how she might one day reach these places, and she mostly didn’t care that her nose made her a nobody.