“Lady Serena is not dancing,” said Benedict. “I am pledged to keep her company.”
“I will sit with Serena for the first dance,” Ludham said generously. “What’s more, I will dance the second with Lady Rose, if I may.”
“Certainly, my lord!” cried Lady Matlock in triumph. “Hurry! The set is forming.”
“Mother, please!” cried Rose, clearly horrified by the prospect of standing up with the baronet. “He’s old enough to be my father, for heaven’s sake.”
Lady Matlock stabbed her daughter in the back with the sticks of her fan. “Thank the gentleman for asking you,” she insisted, quite forgetting that Benedict had done no such thing.
“I thank you, sir,” said Lady Rose, regarding Benedict with revulsion.
“Indeed, I am in your debt, Lady Rose,” he replied.
“Hurry, my dears. The set is formed! The musicians are tuning up!”
Exhausted, Lady Matlock sat down to fan herself. “Thank heavens there are only two cotillions performed in an evening,” she confided to Serena. “If this new waltzing catches on, there will be so many partners to get.”
“I don’t like this Sir Benedict sniffing around you, Serena,” Ludham said darkly.
Serena lit up. “Felix! Are you jealous?”
His face turned red. “Don’t be daft! He’s probably a fortune hunter, that’s all. We’re cousins, and we have to look out for one another.”
“Are you implying that a man can’t find me attractive?” she snapped.
“No, of course not,” he said. “Just be careful, that’s all.”
“I’m not the one who needs to be careful,” she said, still angry.
Rose Fitzwilliam did not believe in mincing her words. “I am not in love with you, sir,” she told Benedict, on the very first occasion when the dance brought them close enough for such an intimate disclosure.
“How very kind of you to put me on my guard,” he answered as they parted.
“If you ask me to marry you, I shall kill myself,” was her next tragic communication.
“You mean to flatter me, I see.”
“You are old enough to be my father!” she snapped, nettled by his cool reply.
“Fortunately, however, I am no such thing,” he said pleasantly.
“I wish you were my father! Then you could not ask me to marry you!”
“No,” he agreed, “but I could take away your pin money, and you wouldn’t like that.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “I think you are hateful and odious,” she declared. “I wish you had left me in the mud! I was happier then!”
At the end of this delightful exercise, Benedict conducted his partner back to her mama, and the tea interval was announced. Lady Matlock claimed the right to leave the ballroom first, before the crush of the crowd, but Lady Dalrymple and her daughter were not far behind her to the first table.
Lord Ludham had gone to the card room. Lady Dalrymple took advantage of the earl’s absence to warn Serena that Miss Vaughn had designs on him.
“I do not believe she is a fortune hunter!” Rose hotly declared. “She may be poor, and she may wish to marry, but that does not make her a fortune hunter.”
Lady Dalrymple had not expected to find Miss Vaughn so well defended. “How innocent you are, my dear,” she murmured. “You will understand when you are older.”
“But not everyone can afford to marry for love,” Benedict pointed out, annoyed by the woman’s self-righteousness. “In our society, a poor woman can only better herself through marriage. What would you have poor women do, Lady Dalrymple? Starve?”
Lady Dalrymple glared at him. “In our society, Sir Benedict? You make us sound like savages! Is there anything you like about England? Is there anything you would not change?”
Benedict saw that he had spoken too seriously for his company. He smiled ruefully. “The weather, my lady. I would not change good English weather for the world.”
Puzzled silence. No one seemed to realize the gentleman was making a joke.
Nothing could prevail on Benedict to stand up with anyone else for the second cotillion, and he spent the last half hour of the ball pleasantly engaged in conversation with Lady Serena while Ludham danced with Lady Rose.
“Now that would be an equal match,” said Benedict.
“She is absurdly young,” said Serena. “But, I daresay, so is Miss Vaughn!”
“You should encourage him to return to London,” Benedict suggested. “He would soon forget Miss Vaughn in London, I am persuaded.”
Serena sighed. “He cannot go to London, Sir Benedict. They have published the letters! The entire body of criminal correspondence between that wretched Pamela and her Frenchman! I have not seen it, of course, but I understand it is perfectly unexpurgated.”
“Ah,” said Benedict.
“So embarrassing for poor Felix. Besides which, London is full of opera dancers! At least I can keep my eye on him here in Bath. In London…!”
“Quite,” said Benedict.
“It would be just like Felix to rush headlong into another disastrous marriage. He is so susceptible to a pretty face, and so blind to everything else. I don’t wish Miss Vaughn ill, of course, but…” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “It would be as much a mistake for her as for him.”
“Someone should explain to Miss Vaughn the evils of an unequal marriage.”
“I say! That’s a good idea. As her cousin, Sir Benedict, you must be able to exert some influence over her. You can see I have no influence over my cousin,” she added ruefully, “but he is a man. Any assistance you can offer me in this matter would be most gratefully received,” she added persuasively.
“I will call on Lady Agatha tomorrow,” he promised. “And then, I would like to call on you, if I may, Serena. Would one o’clock be convenient for a private interview?”
“A private interview to discuss Felix and Miss Vaughn?”
“You must know I am going to make you an offer of marriage,” he said impatiently.
She smiled. “I believe you just did, Sir Benedict!”
The ball ended punctually at eleven o’clock, and the doors of the ballroom were thrown open to admit the chairmen, who strode right into the ballroom with their sedan chairs. Owing to the steepness of Bath’s streets, carriages were rarely used.
Benedict
