by Leenie Brown
“I will allow that to be true,” Jack said, “but it also still stands that I would not like to be remembered twice for some folly, whether small or large.” He raised his brows and gave her a pointed look.
“Take me around the ballroom. Alistair can hold up that pillar just as well as you can.”
“Would you not rather take a turn of the room with your husband?” Jack asked.
“No, he already knows my plan,” Anne replied. “And he agrees it might work.”
Jack looked at his staid and steady friend, Alistair Pratt. “You approve?”
Alistair nodded. “I do.” He shrugged. “It is not without its risks, but it is unlikely to end with your name in the paper should things go sour.”
“That is not reassuring. What do you see going wrong?”
Alistair was a contemplative sort of fellow, well-versed in logic and reasoning, and able to see problems before they appeared. Therefore, if Alistair saw a reason for caution, Jack wished to know about it.
Alistair shook his head and smiled. “I have been promised a most pleasant reward if I allow Anne to explain her plan before I begin casting aspersions about.”
Jack shook his head. He could just imagine what sort of reward the blushing Mrs. Pratt had promised her husband to make him agree to hold his tongue. “Very well, Mrs. Pratt, shall we take a turn about the room?”
Anne placed her hand on his arm but turned to her husband before beginning their walk. “When Georgiana arrives, you must claim two dances for Mr. Ralston.”
Jack chuckled at the look of dismay on Alistair’s face.
“I shall not hear it, Mr. Pratt,” Anne said with a laugh. “He is doing you a favour by taking your wife for a walk around the ballroom, so you are being gracious and making his request for him — which he will be most grateful for when he returns. I walk more slowly these days, so he feared he would not be back in time to ask Georgie for those dances, and you were noble enough to offer to do it for him.”
Alistair sighed and shook his head, but Jack could see the admiration in the man’s eyes at his wife’s cleverness.
“She’s very creative,” Jack said with a laugh.
“That she is,” Alistair answered. “She has taken up writing,” he added.
“Have you indeed?” Jack asked as he and Anne began a slow circuit of the ballroom.
“Oh, I have — but not horrid novels — I do not like gruesome stories. I did at one time, but no longer. I prefer happier tales. However, that is not why we are here. I shall allow you to read my stories when you visit. For now, we must discuss how you are going to persuade Miss Darcy to marry you.”
“This plan of yours does not involve a flight to Gretna Green does it?” Jack asked as they began their slow trek around the ballroom. “Mrs. Armstrong, Miss Armstrong,” he said with a polite nod of his head as they passed a matron who was smiling in his direction. This was Miss Armstrong’s second season, and she had not been at all subtle in her hopes that he would pay her more attention than he did. She was a lovely girl, but she was no Georgiana Darcy.
“No, we will save Scotland for later if it is needed,” Anne replied.
Jack’s head snapped around to look at the lady beside him instead of the others in the room. She was smiling widely, and he shook his head. She enjoyed a scandal far too much!
“Seriously,” she added, “if it is needed, we will spirit her away, but it would do you far more good to secure her without a scandal. Darcy is not the sort of man to approve of a scandal, and you do not wish to have him displeased with you for the remainder of your life and beyond.”
Jack chuckled. “I do not believe Mr. Darcy is quite as dreadful as your words and tone imply, but I will agree that I would rather not begin my life as his brother-in-law with his being unhappy with me.”
“Oh, he is dour,” Anne assured Jack. “Perhaps not so much as he used to be before he married, but he is a Fitzwilliam, and as such, Fitzwilliam Darcy has an unyielding temper.” She shook her head. “He’s very much like my mother in that regard.”
“I will allow he is serious, but I cannot agree that he is as recalcitrant as your mother.” Lady Catherine, Jack had learned, was twice as obstinate as Alistair’s mother, and Jack had always considered Lady Metcalfe to be excessively stubborn. That was perhaps why the two ladies, Lady Catherine and Lady Metcalfe, had been able to tolerate each other for so many years.
Anne shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Jack raised a quizzical brow at her.
“Very well, no one is so unyielding as my mother.”
“Except perhaps for her daughter?” Jack asked with a playful grin.
“I will not protest that,” Anne replied with a laugh. “One must learn to be assertive if she is to survive as the daughter of Lady Catherine.”
Jack patted her hand where it lay on his arm. “You are more sensible than your mother — most times.”
She laughed again. It was a delightful sound that was filled with enjoyment. Jack admired that about his friend’s wife. She never did anything by halves. She threw herself into an activity or plan wholeheartedly, or she did not begin it. There were no in-betweens with Anne Pratt. In that, she and he were rather alike, for Jack also enjoyed entering into projects in which he could immerse himself.
“Mr. Henson, Miss Henson,” he greeted as Anne and he attempted to slide between where Mr. Henson and his sister stood and the wall without causing a scene.
Anne pulled him ahead. “Stop talking to all the debutantes,” she chided. “They will expect you to ask them for a dance.”
“Am I not supposed to dance with them?”
“Not until you have secured your two with Georgiana.” She huffed. “What if we enter into a conversation where you feel obliged to ask for a dance, and then, upon returning to Alistair we discover you have just given away one of your two dances with Georgie?”
“I see your point,” he conceded. “Now, perhaps you could share your plan with me?”
Anne leaned a little heavier on his arm so that she could whisper to him from a safer distance. “You are to be her friend. Treat her well. Make her laugh. Find ways to help her.”
“I think I already do that,” Jack replied.
“You do,” Anne answered. “However, you do it with such an air of desperation, as if she were the sun, the moon, and the stars all wrapped into one, and you would be lost without her.”
“She is, and I will be,” Jack replied. He knew that his heart would never recover from the blow of not winning Georgiana Darcy’s hand. The happiness of his life would be at an end if she were to become someone else’s. When he met her, he had thought it was merely because she was beautiful and all that a young woman should be — demure, polite, well-spoken, amiable. However, having spent the past year in her presence as much as he had, thanks to the connection his best friend Alistair now had with the family, Jack had discovered that Georgiana Darcy was as lively as she was beautiful and that her beauty extended deep into her very being, and, as a result, he had fallen from infatuation into love — painful, unrequited love.
“But you are not to let her know that,” Anne chided. “There must be a coolness about you. You like her as a dear friend but not as a possible wife. You must appear to be looking elsewhere to find a Mrs. Ralston. You will dance with her twice at each ball for a time and then, you will dance with her once, and then not at all. You will call on her, daily, if you wish, for a time, but then sporadically and finally, you will not call at all.”
An uneasy, fluttering sort of dread settled in around Jack’s heart. “I do not like this plan. I do not see the point of it at all other than to allow her to spend more time with other gentlemen and possibly lose her to one of them.”
Anne sighed. “You sound very much like Alistair.”
“Those were his objections?”
She nodded.
“So, then, what is the point of this charade?” They had almost completed their circuit, and Jack could see Alistair wa
s writing on Georgiana’s dance card.
“To make her miss you,” Anne said with a smile. “She enjoys your company. She has said she does, but she does not see you as someone she must have in her life. She has only just had her come out and is enamored with the newness of the season — first soirees, new dresses, new beaus — it is all quite distracting and alluring, I assure you. But she will tire of it all and come to realize that you are better than all the other gentlemen who come to call. There is nothing more enticing than the gentleman who used to be in your pocket but treats you coolly now.”
Jack looked at Anne skeptically. “Are you certain?”
“No,” Anne replied honestly, “but I imagine it to be true, and you have been attempting to court her and gotten nowhere. And do not forget that there is always Gretna Green if we must rescue her from making a match that is not you.”
Jack grimaced and shook his head. “I do not know if this is wise.”
“Try it your way, if you wish, but…” She shrugged. “I have read no announcements in the paper.”
“I will consider it, but I will not commit to anything just yet.”
“That is understandable,” Anne assured him. “But do not wait too long. The season does not last forever, and I shall be unable to help you in a month.” She placed a hand on her belly. “If Alistair does not confine me to our townhouse before that.”
“He only wishes to see you healthy and happy,” Jack said softly.
Anne smiled. “I know, and it is sweet.” She patted his arm. “One day soon it will be you tucking your wife away to ensure her and her baby’s safety.” Her lips pursed, and she cocked her left brow. “If you follow my plan, it might be even sooner.”
Jack chuckled. “I have promised to consider it.”
Anne sighed. “Very well. Now, take me back to my husband. The dancing will commence soon, and if Georgiana is not your first partner, you will need to procure one.”
“Do you have a card?” Jack asked as they returned to where Alistair stood with the Darcys.
“No,” Anne replied.
Jack’s brows drew together as if concerned. “Well, dance card or no dance card, I will spend the third set with you in the card room.”
Anne giggled behind her fan. “Did you bring enough money with you to lose tonight, Mr. Ralston?”
He nodded. “I brought it especially for your entertainment.”
Alistair shook his head. “You are a horrid influence on her, you know?”
“I had thought it the other way around,” Jack quipped in return. “Mr. Darcy, it is a pleasure to see you. Mrs. Darcy, Miss Darcy, you are both looking well this evening. It certainly looks as if Lady Winsley has outdone herself again tonight.” He made a sweeping motion toward the ballroom. “Mrs. Pratt and I have made a thorough inspection, and all looks to be in order.” He winked at Anne, who once again giggled behind her fan. “Miss Darcy, did Mr. Pratt make my request of you?”
Georgiana turned her smiling face from regarding her cousin Anne to Jack. “He did. We have the first and the dinner set. He thought it would be best for me to begin and dine with a friend whom I know well.”
“That is Pratt for you. Always thinking and always practical,” Jack replied lightly. Friends. There was that word again. He would have to give Anne’s plan careful consideration. Perhaps if Georgiana Darcy were to miss him, it might shift him out of that spot as her friend and into a place more amenable to his desires. He offered her his hand. “Shall we take our place then?”
“I have never seen my cousin so happy,” Georgiana said as they made their way onto the dance floor.
“Alistair has never been a dreary sort of person, but there is a rather pleasant aura of happiness about him that was never there before he married,” Alistair returned. “They are good for each other.”
Georgiana took her place across from him. “They are, but Mr. Pratt is not the only reason for my cousin’s happiness.”
“He is not?” Jack said in surprise as the musicians played the first notes, and he bowed.
“No,” she replied with a smile upon rising from her curtsey and crossed behind him. “She is fortunate to have you for a friend. Not everyone can abide my cousin’s exuberance with such aplomb as you do.” They joined hands and made their way down the line. “Of course, none of us knew she possessed such liveliness until last spring.”
“I find her charming,” Jack replied as they turned and moved back to their place before separating.
Their conversation regarding Anne continued in snatches — a word here, a comment there, as they crossed and returned, joined hands, circled and changed places.
“I had worried she would always be lonely,” Georgiana said as the dance concluded. “I am so happy she has found friends.”
Jack inclined his head. “I am delighted to have met her acquaintance, and might I say your tender heart does you great credit? For it does.”
Her eyes danced with pleasure, and she darted a look toward the edge of the ballroom.
“Is she still standing there watching?” Jack followed her gaze and saw that Anne was indeed standing almost precisely where they had left her. He took Georgiana’s hand and circled around the others as they took their place for the second dance. “Alistair is no doubt attempting to convince her that she should take a seat.”
“He does worry about her.”
The expression in Georgiana’s eyes softened and took on a wistful complexion. Yes, Anne’s advice about continuing to provide concerned care for Miss Darcy would likely grant him a place of some sort in her heart. He only hoped that it would be the place he desired.
“He does dote on her,” Jack agreed as the next dance began. “I only hope to be so fortunate as my friend.”
“I am quite certain you will be,” Georgiana replied.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Jack replied with a wink before they were separated, and their conversation was once again relegated to bits and pieces woven between and around their companions.
Chapter 2
Georgiana stretched and sighed as her maid, Alice, drew the curtains open, allowing the sunlight to flood the room.
“Do you want the blue dress or the green today, miss?” Alice asked as she crossed the room to stoke the fire.
“The blue?”
“‘Tis not my choice, miss, but you do look lovely in the blue.”
“Then the blue it is,” Georgiana said as she sat up in bed and pushed the blankets off her legs so that she could climb out.
“It will likely be a busy day of callers since your dance card was full last night,” Alice said with a smile.
“I hope it is not too busy.” Georgiana slipped her feet into her slippers and made her way to the dressing room. “I enjoy the soirees to a point, but the calls…” she sighed. “I find them to be a trifle taxing.”
“You will do well,” her maid assured her.
Georgiana knew that many ladies of her rank in society did not enter into conversations with their servants. However, Alice had been with Georgiana since before her father died and was very dear to her, for the woman had never once said a word about Georgiana needing to dry her tears. She had not even lifted a disapproving brow. Instead, Alice had provided Georgiana with fresh handkerchiefs and an ear to listen to things that were not possible for Georgiana to say to her brother. In fact, it was Alice who had helped Georgiana learn about the changes that occur for a girl as she becomes a lady. Fitzwilliam was understanding of her misery and provided what comfort he could, but he was not able to help her as Alice was. So, it was that Alice and her mistress often started their day with a little tete-a-tete.
“Tell me about the ball. Was it all that you expected?”
“Oh, it was beautiful! The Winsleys’ ballroom is about the size of three of our green drawing rooms.”
“A good size for forming sets then.” Alice poured warm water into the basin and placed a fresh towel on the hook on the side of the washstand.
&nb
sp; “Oh, it is,” Georgiana agreed, slipping out of her nightgown and taking up the soap. “And it was so well arranged and lit! Everything fairly sparkled.”
“Did the light catch your earbobs as you had hoped?”
“I could not see them, but Elizabeth assures me it did.”
Alice draped stockings over her arm and reached for a clean chemise. “And did you dance every dance?”
“I did.” Georgiana’s feet were still well aware of the fact that she had danced every set, but it was a satisfying sort of discomfort. “I danced every set with a new partner save for the two sets Mr. Ralston claimed.” She splashed water on her face and after drying it, reached for the cloth to remove the rest of the soap she had rubbed onto her person. “Actually, it was Mr. Pratt who claimed the dances for his friend as Mr. Ralston was taking a turn around the ballroom with Anne.”
“He is a fine young man,” Alice said as she waited for Georgiana to finish the last bits of her ablution.
Georgiana had to agree. Jack Ralston was everything a young man should be — sensible, good-humoured, lively, and in possession of happy manners as well as a healthy fortune. He was also rather handsome — tall with a muscular build, wavy hair the colour of a good cup of tea with just a splash of cream and eyes the colour of chocolate. Added to this, he was so good to Anne, teasing her, prodding her on, and yet watching out that all was well with her. It was endearing really. He would make someone a fine husband one day. The idea of him having his own lady for whom to care made her sigh and smile. Some lady would be very happy.
Her brows furrowed as she held her stays in place over her chemise. Perhaps she could help Jack find a lady who was worthy of him. From what she had been told by her aunt and grandmother, ladies of quality were not easy to come by in the ton. Many appeared to be all that was proper. They smiled and spoke softly as they ducked their heads demurely, but, according to her grandmother, it was often a ploy. Georgiana was not certain if it was true or not, but, based on what she knew of Caroline Bingley and Caroline’s sister Louisa Hurst, Georgiana found it challenging to refute the fact that Lady Margaret’s words might be true. And if they were true, Georgiana would be greatly saddened to learn that a gentleman as worthy as Jack Ralston had been taken in by such a lady.