Chapter One, A Lady's Point of View (Regency romance)

Miss Margaret Linley was variously known as high in the instep, a dull piece of business, and a great gawk. None of these terms was meant to be flattering, despite her passingly fair figure, soft brown hair, and large blue eyes. For if she was not slighting a gentleman altogether by her inability to see him properly, she was tripping over his boots or ignoring his conversation in her attempts to avoid collisions.

On this particular night the young lady, in her second season and garbed in cherry-red silk, stood holding a glass of lemonade in her gloved hand and trying not to squint. The month was May, the evening was Wednesday, and the place, as any of London's elite could not have failed to discern, was the fashionable if plain assembly rooms known as Almack's, in King Street.

Through the tapestry of the gathering wove gentlemen in finely cut coats in subdued colours as decreed by the master of style, Beau Brummell. Ladies, each the proud possessor of a voucher that permitted her entry to the premises, danced and laughed and flirted behind painted fans, displaying an almost shocking amount of bosom above their lace-trimmed, embroidered gowns. Those in their first season wore white, while their older sisters displayed themselves in lilac, apricot, peach, and primrose.

The anxious mamas formed a dark border of blues, greens, and purples as they hovered about the dance floor, each hoping for her daughter to make a fine match. The assemblage overall presented a fabric of rich colours that delighted Meg, who could perceive little beyond the bright hues.

Several ladies strolled by, nodding politely, and Meg nodded and smiled back. But when the ladies turned away without speaking, she wondered if she had mistaken headshakes for nods.

She felt exceedingly uncomfortable. Her mother, Lady Mary, had insisted on dampening her petticoats to make the gown cling to her slender form, and Meg wished fervently that she might change into the old, modest bombazine she wore about the house. Dampened petticoats might be alluring, but they felt deucedly clammy.

Meg's musings halted as a figure in black approached and asked for a dance. She agreed with enthusiasm until, after setting aside her lemonade, she recognized her partner as a confirmed old bachelor who had no doubt made the offer out of respect for her late father.

Walking across the floor took far more courage than others might suspect, for the whole of the room posed a giant blur for Meg. She attempted to move forward with grace, dreading one of the hideous stumbles that plagued her life.

She must keep her weak vision a secret. No one, so Lady Mary insisted, would marry a chit who at nineteen already required spectacles, although Meg suspected this was more a fancy of her mother's than a dictum of society. Men were known to use quizzing glasses, often raising the single lens to gaze in a quelling manner at those of whom they disapproved. A few fashionable ladies wore lorgnettes, a pair of framed lenses with a handle. Still, Lady Mary was not a figure her daughter cared to cross, even when, with the unconscious arrogance of one who could spot a paste jewel or hennaed hair across a ballroom, Meg's mother insisted that anyone could see well with a bit of effort.

She refused to permit her daughter any sort of lens, and had it not been for the generosity of the nearsighted housekeeper, Mrs. Pickney, who was willing to share her eyeglasses, Meg's needlework would have been speckled with blood from her pricked fingers, much the way her life in society thus far had been blotched by her bumblings.

"Are you enjoying the season, Miss Linley?" her partner asked as he guided her awkwardly through an approximation of the waltz, that daring new dance which permitted a man and a woman an almost indecent amount of intimacy.

"Indeed." She gave a silent prayer of thanks for this new dance, however it might distress her elders. With a man's hand on her waist and the other palm-to-palm with her own, she felt far safer than trying to navigate unaided through the intricacies of a quadrille.