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Five

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

Aristotle

AUGUST 14, 1821

Gwen opened one eye to find that morning had long since arrived. A thought, not yet formed, tickled the back of her mind. Something about the ball …

She turned over, settling down again to return to sleep. The night had been long, and she was far too exhausted to rise just yet.

Her eyelids flew open.

The vague, niggling thought erupted into vivid memory.

“Stuff!”

Across the room, a blur of movement resolved into Octavia Hanning, her lady’s maid, who came bustling into view as if she had been standing vigil for the slightest sign of Gwen’s waking.

“Is it true?”

Gwen fluttered her lashes, trying to shake free the cobwebs and catch up to Octavia’s breathless urgency. “Is what true?”

“You are betrothed? To Lord Moreland’s heir?”

Gwen groaned, pulling the coverlet over her head and burying her face in her pillow. Last night had not, as she had half-hoped, been a dream.

“Well? Are you to wed?” Octavia pressed, clearly too secure in her post after seven years to respect any notion of boundaries. The thin, sharp-featured woman in her early forties was a mix of dry wit and crusty pragmatism, entirely lacking deference when behind closed doors. Gwen would not have changed her for the world. Octavia was her stalwart. Practical, loyal, and entirely her own woman.

“If Lord Moreland does not raise an objection and forbid the match, then I suppose I am to wed.”

“You let a gentleman put his hands on you?”

Gwen groaned again, burrowing deeper into her pillow.

“And he kissed you? On the lips?”

“Go away!” Gwen mumbled. She recalled now that her father had uncorked champagne in celebration after announcing the betrothal to their guests, who had then lingered well into the early hours.

Champagne.

That would account for the dull ache behind her eyes.

“I’m so impressed!”

Gwen frowned into her downy sanctuary, then slowly lifted her head to glare at her maid. “Impressed?”

“You landed your gentleman by compromising him!”

Gwen scowled, her disbelief sharpening. “I did not compromise him! He laid his hands on me!”

Octavia shook her head, a trifle too large for her reed-thin frame, not listening to a single word Gwen had uttered. “I knew you could do it. I told everyone belowstairs that Gwendolyn Smythe is not destined to be left on the shelf. Our mistress would see to it herself, she would. The right man would come along and notice her, and she’d wed, I told ’em.”

Gwen pulled a face. There it was again. The right man. Had everyone in her household been awaiting the mysterious arrival of this mythical paragon?

“That is sentimental claptrap! What even is a right man?”

Octavia turned those round, watery blue eyes on her with exaggerated amazement, tilting her head as if Gwen were the simpleton. “The man who sees you for the original you are, of course. Lord Abbott is the one! Why else would he’ve followed you onto the terrace, if not to pursue you?”