Royal Regard

Chapter 1

1820: London, England

Teeth clenched against the wrong thing she was sure to say, shoulders cramped and stomach churning, Baroness Holsworthy smoothed down the tiers of ruffles on her borrowed dress, tapping her toe out of rhythm to the music. The stays she wore so infrequently, but would never abandon in London, dug into her waist like a fork into flummery.

Bella tried not to stare into the looking glasses lining the Almack's ballroom, hoping to appear insouciant, well above silly concerns of wardrobe and hairstyle, ignoring the sight of her lips trembling. However, this only left her to look at the overwhelming crowd of vexatious people, not just their harmless reflections.

She picked at the poorly fitting, delicate tulle floating around her body, a borrowed dress better suited to her prettier cousin Charlotte at age seventeen than either woman in their thirties. Wriggling her shoulders beneath the almost-adequate alterations Charlotte's maid had accomplished in the fifteen minutes allotted for the impossible task, Bella thoroughly regretted her spontaneous decision to call on her cousin so late in the day.

The music had already started for a contredanse, but she paid little attention to the dancers taking their places, distracted by the bright candlelight mirrored in the gilt trim along every wall. She stopped her toe drumming against the parquet floor; given her situation, there was no prospect of dancing, so it made no sense to engage even one foot with the music. Of course, the only other activity to engage in was gossip, from which she would be excluded by virtue of being the primary topic.

The aristocrats peering at her through quizzing glasses over the bannister of the upper floor set her heart trembling, so she turned the corner of her eye, her peripheral vision next caught by a grouping of at least half a dozen women, just outside her hearing, staring at her as they chattered behind their fans.

It seemed a fine moment to take in the frescos above the bas-relief mouldings, all pretty enough, but no masterpieces here. The sculpture might as well be plaster pasted onto the cheapest marble veneers, and the paintings could have been commissioned from any student at the Royal Academy. Having seen so many masterworks around the world, she could find nothing to keep her attention from wandering back to the echoes of guests in the wavy pier glass, which had been silvered poorly and was, if she looked closely, somewhat unclean.

She patted at her chignon, searching out loose tendrils of her stick-straight hair. Surely, it would be falling out of the tight ringlets by now, a style that made her face look a half-stone heavier and had no chance of surviving the heat of the crowds, no matter how chilly the spring evening outside the door. As suspected, loose strands were already sticking to the back of her neck above her nearly bared shoulders, and she grimaced, envisioning the sweaty mess in plain view of anyone behind her.

She sought her husband in the crush of bodies, mindful of her fluttering hands, but unable to quell them. Craning her neck, her nose wrinkled against too many colognes barely masking the smell of too many people. Her cousin, the Marchioness of Firthley, appeared at her side and snapped her fan across Bella's arm.

"You look like you have a palsy, Bella. Stop twitching. They will be along shortly."

Between her rigid carriage, the height of her coiffure of black curls, the steep heels of her dancing shoes, and the sleek velvet gown making her appear more slender than her figure allowed, Charlotte seemed to tower above Bella, though she wasn't more than an inch taller. Less than a year older, the unyielding lines of her proud visage added a decade to her show of superiority.

Bella reined in her movements, but continued to eye the throng. "I merely—" She crumpled a ruffle near her hip without noticing the fists she had formed.