power, Alice thought, and why should she not be confident when she was beautiful and rich and titled, and had all the self-assurance that came with inherited privilege? In her beautiful sea-green silk and lace gown Lizzie looked poised and elegant with an innate style that bespoke birthright. She looked glossy, Alice thought, in the same way that Miles Vickery also looked expensive and self-assured even though he was a pauper.
Alice shifted a little, sighing. In contrast to Lizzie she still felt a little unsure of herself whenever she went out into society. She had had the dancing lessons and she could converse and play cards and do all the things that a real debutante heiress could do, but every day she was conscious of the sideways looks and the whispered comments. She thought that she always would be. Even her gown of rose pink, which both Lizzie and Lydia had admired extremely, could not give her the inner confidence she lacked.
One of Lizzie’s admirers, a young army captain called John Jerrold, came over to carry her off for a cotillion, and Lowell arrived with two glasses of lemonade, one of which he handed his sister.
“I see I have missed my chance with Lady Elizabeth,” he said in his lazy country drawl, putting the second glass down on a ledge beside them, next to one of the carved marble busts of Grecian goddesses that adorned the alcoves in the ballroom. “Can’t drink this ghastly stuff myself and the Granby never serves beer on evenings like this.”
Alice smothered a snort to think of her brother bringing a tankard in from the taproom.
“I’d give a great deal to see you drinking beer in the ballroom in front of the Duchess of Cole,” she said, nodding toward Lydia’s mama, who was holding court in the chaperones’ corner, surrounded by her cronies. Faye Cole had managed to ride out the scandal of her daughter’s pregnancy by virtue of being the first and loudest to condemn Lydia, and she remained an arbiter of county society. Alice could not abide her. Neither could Mrs. Lister, who quite rightly blamed the duchess for being the architect of her social exclusion. Every so often the two of them would eye each other like prizefighters.
“The duchess will be distraught that Mama’s feathers are higher than hers tonight,” Lowell continued. “Could you not prevent her from buying such a monstrous headpiece, Allie? She looks like a cockatoo with such a high crest!”
Alice gave him a speaking look. “I would not dream of spoiling Mama’s fun, Lowell. If she wishes to wear pearls and feathers and artificial roses, that is her choice.”
“She’s wearing them all together tonight,” Lowell said gloomily. “Looks like an accident in a flower cart.”
“I did not think you would care about it,” Alice said, slipping her hand through her brother’s arm. “You never bother about what people say.”
Lowell shrugged moodily. The morose expression sat oddly on his fair, open features. Normally he was the most equable of characters but Alice sensed there was something troubling him tonight.
“Lowell?” she prompted. “You do not really have a
Lowell’s grim expression was banished as he gave her his flashing smile. “Good God, no! Did you think I was sulking because she prefers some sprig of the nobility to me? Lady Elizabeth is far above my touch. Besides, we would not suit.”
“No,” Alice agreed. “She needs someone less tolerant than you are.”
“She needs to grow up,” Lowell said brutally. “She’s spoiled.”
“She’s been a good friend to me,” Alice said, whilst not exactly contradicting him.
“I appreciate that,” her brother said. He shot her a look. “You’re not happy though, are you, Allie?”
Alice was startled at his perspicacity. “What do you mean? Of course I am-”
“No, you are not. Neither am I, and Mama is the unhappiest of all. She hates to be slighted like this.” Lowell’s gesture encompassed the ballroom with its neat rows of dancers, their reflections repeated endlessly in the long series of mirrors that adorned the walls. “Strange, is it not, that when you are hungry and exhausted from working all the hours there are, you think that to have money will cure all your woes?”
“It cures a great many of them,” Alice said feelingly.
“But not the sense that somehow you have wandered into the wrong party,” Lowell said, his eyes still on the shifting patterns of the dance. “I am coming to detest the way in which we are patronized. This isn’t our world, is it, Allie? If it was, you would be dancing rather than standing here like a wallflower.”
“The only reason I am not dancing,” Alice said, “is that I have refused proposals of marriage from so many of these gentlemen that there is no one left to stand up with me. No one except you, that is,” she added. “If we do not fit in, then the least we can do is stand out with style.”
Lowell grinned and let the matter go as he led her into the set of country dances that was forming.
“He dances well enough for a farm boy, I suppose,” Alice heard the Duchess of Cole say as the movement of the dance took them past her coven, “but I never thought to see the day a
Lowell laughed, executed a particularly ostentatious turn under the duchess’s disapproving eye and bowed to Alice as the dance came to an end. “Better be getting back to the byre, I suppose,” he drawled in his best rural accent. “Time’s moving on and the cows will need milking early. Dashed slow business squiring my own sister about, anyway, when I would rather be tumbling a milkmaid in a haystack.”
“Lowell, will you be quiet!” Alice grumbled, dragging her brother away as Faye Cole squawked like an outraged hen. “People will believe you!”
“Who says I am lying?” Lowell said unrepentantly. He glanced over her shoulder and his expression changed abruptly. “Alice-”
“Good evening, Miss Lister.”
Alice spun around. Miles Vickery was standing just behind her, immaculate in his evening dress. Her stomach tumbled as she looked at him. Her breathing constricted. Miles took her hand. Determined not to show him how much his appearance had affected her, Alice gave him a cool smile.
“Lord Vickery,” she said. “You are well?”
She saw Miles smile in return as he took her meaning.
“In the best of health, Miss Lister, I thank you,” he said. “The Curse of Drum has yet to carry me off.”
Alice could feel Lowell shifting impatiently beside her. He seemed incredulous that Miles should even approach her, which, Alice thought, was no great wonder given the nature of their previous acquaintance. She cast a quick look at her brother’s face and saw that he was frowning ferociously. “Alice,” he began again.
Alice turned to him, gripping his arm tightly in a gesture she hoped conveyed a plea for good behavior. “I am sorry,” she said quickly. “Lord Vickery, may I introduce my brother, Lowell Lister? Lowell, this is Miles Vickery, Marquis of Drummond.” She squeezed Lowell’s arm again and gave him a speaking look into the bargain.
Miles held his hand out to shake Lowell’s. “How do you do, Mr. Lister?” he said pleasantly. He did not adopt the patronizing air of superiority that most of the local aristocracy used when greeting the Lister family, the condescension of the great recognizing their inferiors. Alice noticed it and felt surprised.
Lowell, however, ignored both the hand and the greeting. “I know who you are,” he said. “You are the… nobleman…who made a wager concerning my sister last year.” His tone was steely.
Alice caught her breath. “Lowell-”
“I was,” Miles said truthfully, his gaze meeting Alice’s very directly. A smile still lurked in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Although,” he added, “I now regret it most profoundly.”
“Twenty guineas against my sister’s virtue, so I heard,” Lowell said, the contempt in his voice as cutting as a knife.
“You heard incorrectly,” Miles said. “It was thirty guineas.”
Alice drew a sharp breath. Why had she not foreseen that this might happen? This was such an inconvenient moment for Miles to start telling the truth on everything. The tension radiating from Lowell was so powerful as to be palpable. He clenched his fists.
“When my mother told me that you wished to renew your addresses to Alice, I thought there was some mistake,” Lowell said. His eyes were narrowed pinpricks of fury. “Is it true that you still seek to marry her for her fortune?”
“My interest is not entirely in Miss Lister’s fortune,” Miles drawled, making his meaning explicitly clear. Alice felt the color rush into her face. She saw Lowell take an involuntary step forward.
“Lowell,” she said again, “not here, not
Lowell turned on her. “I cannot believe that you are prepared to tolerate this man’s company for a single
