little secretive smile, apparently she was not past the age to feel desire.
Constance started back down the corridor and slipped into the great room. The crowded room was stifling, and the noise was loud and grating on her ears. She wound her way through the people, coming at last back to her aunt and uncle.
To her surprise, her aunt did not take her to task for the length of time that she had spent away. Instead she beamed at Constance and wrapped her hand around her arm, pulling her closer.
“What did she say?” Aunt Blanche asked eagerly, leaning close to hear above the noise. Then, without waiting for a response, she charged on. “To think of Lady Haughston taking notice of us! I could have dropped dead in my tracks when Lady Welcombe introduced her to us. I’d no idea that such a one as she had even noticed us, let alone wanted to make our acquaintance. What did she say? What was she like?”
It took a little effort for Constance to pull her mind back to her stroll about the room with Lady Haughston. What had happened afterward had driven it completely out of her head.
“She was very nice,” Constance said. “I liked her a great deal.”
She wondered whether she should tell her aunt about Lady Haughston’s offer to take her shopping the next day. It seemed, in retrospect, unlikely that the woman had actually meant what she said. The conversation had been pleasant, but it was absurd, surely, to think that a woman of Lady Haughston’s position in the Ton would make such an effort to befriend her. Constance came from a respectable family, certainly, one that could trace its ancestors back to the Tudors, but her father’s title had been merely that of a baronet, and her family was not wealthy. She and her father had lived a quiet life in the country; she had never even been to London before this Season.
Constance could not imagine what had driven a woman like Lady Haughston to seek her out. She had not seemed inebriated, but Constance could only think that she had tippled too much punch. Whatever the reason, by tomorrow, Constance suspected, it would be forgotten…or, if remembered, it would be regretted. In any case, she doubted that Lady Haughston would call on her the next day, and she did not want to tell her aunt that Lady Haughston wanted to take her shopping and then be proven wrong.
“But what did she say?” Aunt Blanche asked in some irritation. “What did you talk about?”
“Commonplaces, mostly,” Constance said. “She asked if I had been to London before and I told her no, and she said that I must be sure to enjoy myself while I was here.”
Her aunt gave her an exasperated look. “Surely you did not keep all the conversation on yourself.”
“No. Lady Haughston said that it was kind of you to bring me here,” Constance told her, hoping that Aunt Blanche would be well enough pleased with that information that she would cease her questioning.
But Constance’s words only seemed to cement Aunt Blanche’s determination to discuss Lady Haughston. She continued to talk about the woman the rest of the time they were at Lady Welcombe’s rout and all the way home in their hired carriage, extolling Lady Haughston’s looks, lineage and virtues—though what her aunt could have known about the latter, Constance could not imagine, since she had talked to the woman for no more than three or four minutes.
“Such a lady,” Aunt Blanche said enthusiastically. “There are some would say she is a trifle showy. But I would not. Not at all. Her appearance is exactly what is pleasing. Her dress was clearly sewn by the best modiste. I have heard that she favors Mlle. du Plessis. She is always in the forefront of fashion. Her family is the very finest. Her father is an earl, you know.” She paused, looking almost starry-eyed. “And to take an interest in us…well, it is just the most complete luck. When I think of what her patronage will do for Georgiana and Margaret!”
Constance had not noticed any particular interest on Lady Haughston’s part in Georgiana and Margaret. Indeed, it had been Constance herself whom she had singled out, though she had no idea why. But she thought it prudent not to point this out to her aunt.
Aunt Blanche looked at her eldest daughter, Georgiana. “You were in your best looks tonight, my dear. No doubt that is why she noticed us. That dress is the loveliest we bought. Although I do think it would have been better with that extra ruffle the dressmaker would not put on.”
Again Constance held her tongue. As far as she was concerned, Georgiana’s dress was far too ruffled as it was, and if it had drawn Lady Haughston’s attention, it would only have been because that elegantly dressed woman had been appalled. Her aunt and cousins were given to flounces, ruffles and bows, bedecking the girls’ frocks with far more ornamentation than was attractive. It seemed to Constance that the ruffles usually served to make Georgiana look stouter than she was, just as the fussy curls she wore around her face only served to draw attention to its roundness.
But Constance had learned long ago that any attempt to convince the girls and Aunt Blanche that a little more simplicity would favor them had only ended up with all three of them vexed with her and certain that Constance spoke only out of jealousy.
So she said nothing as Aunt Blanche and the two girls happily speculated upon what knowing Lady Haughston would do to improve their status and on how they might improve their gowns for their next outing. Indeed, she scarcely listened to them all the ride home, for her own thoughts were far away from the carriage and her family. Nor did she think of the mystery of Lady Haughston’s interest in her, or whether she would in fact call on her the next day, though under normal circumstances she would have wondered about these things a great deal.
But tonight, as she left the carriage and climbed the stairs to her small room in their rented house, as she undressed for bed and brushed out her long, thick hair, her mind was on the laughing blue eyes of a certain viscount, and the question that would not let her sleep for a good hour after she had retired was whether she would ever see him again.
CONSTANCE DRESSED WITH some care the following morning. Though she refused to let herself get carried away by the thought that Lady Haughston had said she would call on her, neither was she going to ignore the possibility and therefore possibly wind up riding out with the woman in her second-best day dress. So she put on her best afternoon dress, made of brown jaconet muslin. And though she wore the little spinster’s cap her aunt assured her was suitable for her age and station in life, she pulled a few strands out from it and twisted them into curls to frame her face. Her pride would not allow her to be seen at Lady Haughston’s fashionable side looking like a dowd.
At one o’clock, when Lady Haughston had not arrived, Constance tried not to be too disappointed. After all, she had known that the introduction last night had been a fluke. Perhaps Lady Haughston had assumed she was someone else or had taken pity on a poor wallflower of a girl, but this morning she would have had no interest in actually pursuing the relationship.
Still, it was difficult not to feel somewhat downcast. Constance had liked Lady Haughston and, she was truthful enough to admit, she had felt a degree of pride at being singled out for attention by one of the leaders of the Ton. But most of all, meeting her had enlivened the boredom of life in London.
In truth, Constance was finding that she preferred life in the country to the glittering world of the capital. The parties, it was true, were far grander and more lavish, but she knew scarcely anyone at them, and she spent most of her time simply standing or sitting with her aunt and cousins. As a chaperone, she was paid no more attention than the furniture or the wallpaper. She was not asked to dance, and she was rarely even included in the conversations that her aunt or cousins conducted with others. Had her relatives been attentive to her, then she supposed that others would have talked to her, as well. But what few people the Woodley women knew they guarded
