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The Viscountess Bridgerton’s midsummer masquerade glittered as if someone had taken the night sky, shaken every star loose, and scattered them over silk.
Candles burned in their hundreds, caught in chandeliers and wall sconces, reflected in polished silver and champagne glasses, in jewels at throats and wrists, in the glossy feathers of masks. Music flowed through the ballroom in bright, practiced waves. Laughter followed it. So did whispers.
There were always whispers.
Penelope Featherington had once believed whispers were small things. She knew better now. Whispers could ruin a girl. Whispers could save one. Whispers could open doors, close ranks, redirect suspicion, summon ruin, or lift a name from the mud with no one quite understanding how the miracle had occurred. Whispers were not small. They were seeds.
And Penelope had become very, very good at knowing where they had been planted.
She stood near the edge of the ballroom, not hiding, exactly, though old habit still knew the shape of shadow. Her mask was a delicate thing of dark green and gold, shaped to flatter the curve of her cheekbones and the brightness of her eyes. Her gown was emerald silk, deep enough to make the candlelight seem to sink into it rather than glance off it. Genevieve had cut it with the ruthless confidence of a woman who knew what she was doing and had no patience for English mamas who thought yellow flounces were a personality.
The bodice fit. The sleeves flattered. The skirt moved when Penelope moved, not against her, but with her. It was astonishing what proper tailoring could do.
It was more astonishing what no longer being afraid could do.
Penelope let her gaze pass over the room with the ease of a young lady admiring the decorations. That was what anyone watching her would have seen. Miss Featherington, much improved, standing with a glass of lemonade in one gloved hand, perhaps waiting to be asked to dance, perhaps simply enjoying the music.
They would not have seen the rest.
The nearest exit was half-obscured by two matrons discussing a wedding settlement. The terrace doors stood open, though the footman stationed there favored his left leg and would be slow if anyone pushed past him. A loose ribbon trailed from Miss Livingston’s sleeve and might trip her partner if the next set turned too sharply. Cressida Cowper was across the room, golden and gleaming and pretending not to stare. Colin Bridgerton was near the card room doors with his brothers, speaking too brightly, laughing too loudly, looking anywhere except where Penelope stood.
Benedict Bridgerton looked once. Then again. Penelope pretended not to notice. It was kinder that way.
She lifted the lemonade to her lips and tasted sugar, lemon, and the faint metallic tang of a spoon left too long in the bowl. Her hearing had grown troublesome during the off season. Unfortunately not in any way that could be politely explained. Merely enough that rooms had become layered things. Music above. Conversation beneath. Silk dragging over floorboards. A slipper catching. A fan snapping shut. A man’s breathing quickening when a woman he wanted walked past.
Once, the noise of a ballroom had overwhelmed her. Now it sorted itself. Useful. Useless. Threat. Opportunity. She was not certain whether she liked what that said about her.
A burst of masculine laughter rose from behind a cluster of potted palms and painted screens not far from the refreshment table. Penelope did not turn. Not yet.
There was a particular shape to men’s laughter when it had teeth in it. She had heard it often enough. At schoolroom doors. In ballrooms. Behind open windows. At the edge of dances where gentlemen believed wallflowers belonged to the furniture and furniture, naturally, could not hear.
Her fingers remained loose around her glass.
Another laugh.
Then Lord Fife’s voice, low with wine and smugness and the kind of confidence that only ever flourished in groups.
“Miss Featherington’s transformation is nearly miraculous,” he drawled. “Though one still wonders…does the carpet match the drapes?”
The laughter came at once. Not loud enough to be openly vulgar. Not quiet enough to be private. Cowards, Penelope thought.
There had been a time when the words would have struck her like a slap. She would have gone hot, then cold. She would have looked down at her slippers and wished herself smaller. She might have fled to the retiring room, or hidden behind a column, or spent the rest of the evening hearing the sentence over and over until it became larger than the room itself.
But that had been before. Before hearing courting her would be mad. Before the off-season changes. Before Alice had taught her that freezing was what prey did, and that prey survived less often than women who knew where to put their elbows.
Before she had learned what real teeth looked like.
Penelope lowered her glass. Slowly.
The laughter behind the palms softened into satisfied murmurs. They thought the moment had passed. That was the way of such men. They released their little cruelties into the air and expected them to vanish once they had taken their pleasure from them.
But whispers were seeds. And Penelope had never cared for weeds.
She turned and stepped out from behind a tasteful wreath. The gentlemen saw her at almost the same instant.
Fife first.
His expression did not change much, but Penelope saw the slight hitch at the corner of his mouth. The arrested breath. The swift little calculation behind his eyes as he wondered how much she had heard, how much she had understood, and whether she would do what she had always done before.
Nothing. Penelope smiled. It was not a sweet smile. It was not yet a cruel one either. It was merely awake.
The little circle of gentlemen shifted as she approached. One of them looked at his glass. Another adjusted his cuffs. A third gave a nervous laugh that died almost immediately when no one joined him.
Penelope stopped before them, emerald silk settling around her ankles like still water.
“How very brave of you all,” she said, her voice soft enough to be ladylike and clear enough to carry, “to concern yourselves so deeply with my drapes and carpets.”
No one spoke.
The music continued behind her. The dancers turned. Fans fluttered. But nearby, conversations began to thin as attention, that most ravenous creature of the ton, lifted its head.
Penelope let the silence breathe. Then she tilted her head.
“Nothing?” she asked. “Not one of you has the courage to repeat it now that I am standing before you?”
Fife’s jaw tightened.
One of the gentlemen opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.
“How typical,” Penelope said. She glanced over them, one by one, with bright, guileless eyes and a smile sharp enough to draw blood. “The bark really is worse than the bite.”
A faint sound moved through the nearest onlookers. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a laugh. Something better.
Recognition. Penelope took one small step closer. “Still nothing?” she asked, almost kindly.
The gentleman nearest the screen swallowed. “Oh well.” Penelope’s smile widened. “Run along, then, you cowardly boys.”
For a moment, no one moved. Then one of them did.
That was all it took. The little pack broke at once, scattering with the stiff, insulted dignity of boys who had been caught throwing stones and could not decide whether to be ashamed of the stone or the catching.
All but Fife. He tried to go with them. Penelope’s hand closed lightly around his sleeve.
Not hard. She did not need hard.
“Not you, Lord Fife,” she murmured. He stopped.
Around them, the ballroom pretended not to watch and failed exquisitely.
Penelope stepped closer, close enough that anyone observing might think the intimacy scandalous. Close enough that her emerald silk brushed the edge of his coat. Close enough that he had to bend his head if he wanted to hear her.
He did. Men like Fife always did, in the end. Curiosity was simply another appetite.
Penelope lifted her face toward his ear and whispered, “Tell me, Reginald darling. What makes you think there is a carpet?”
He went very still. She felt it through his sleeve. Her smile did not move. “Have you ever heard of sugaring?”
His breath caught. There it was. Not laughter now. Not cleverness.
Fear, small and startled and suddenly naked.
“How unfortunate for you,” she continued, softly enough that the words belonged only to him, “that I am very good friends with Siobhan O’Leary. Very good, intimate friends. I happen to know you are among her most devoted clients.”
Fife’s face had begun to lose color. Penelope looked up at him with all the sweetness the ton had ever mistaken for stupidity.
“Keep going to my echo, to my shadow, if you must. She is paid to endure what I would never lower myself to even notice.”
His eyes flashed then, anger trying to save pride from drowning. Penelope’s fingers tightened just enough to stop him from stepping back. “But do not mistake purchased attention for worth.”
She released his sleeve. “You are beneath me, Reginald Fife,” she whispered. “You always were.”
Then she stepped away. Her smile returned to something soft and public and perfectly useless for proving murder.
Lord Fife stared at her.
For one suspended moment, he looked as if he might speak. As if some last scrap of masculine vanity might compel him to answer, to sneer, to recover himself before the eyes of the room.
But he did not. He bowed. Badly.
Penelope curtsied perfectly and properly.
Then Fife turned and left the ballroom.
Penelope watched him go.
Only when he had vanished through the door did she turn back toward the refreshment table, reclaim her glass of lemonade, and take a delicate sip.
It was too sweet. Still, she thought, not everything could be perfect.
Meanwhile, several of the ton had seen Penelope approach the men speak to them and saw the men disperse with alacrity and with a face as if they had been boys caught in a prank…not grown men.
Even Lord Fife usually known to be a leader of a certain fraction of peers had been left destabilized and had been observed to flee.
~*~
Penelope had just decided that the lemonade was almost tolerable, provided one did not expect it to taste more than a hint of lemons. She went to the next table to try one of the ices. Although eager to try something new she took a rather large spoonful and frowned at the resulting headache. A headache sufficiently severe to have her lightly startle when a voice beside her said, “Are you quite well, Miss Featherington?”
She turned.
Lord Debling stood at her elbow, one hand loosely clasped behind his back, his expression mild in that way some men cultivated when they wished to appear harmless and observant at the same time. His mask did little to disguise him. There were very few gentlemen in the room who could look simultaneously earnest, severe, and faintly as though they would rather be studying a beetle than making conversation.
“Yes,” Penelope said. “Forgive me. Cold headache.”
“From the ice cream?”
“Most likely.”
Debling’s gaze shifted past her shoulder. “Or from the very congenial-looking miss with the sneer?”
Penelope followed his glance and found Cressida Cowper watching her from across the room with the expression of a woman who had mistaken another woman’s improved appearance for a personal insult.
“Do not worry yourself over that,” Penelope said. “I have been the recipient of an untold number of withering looks. Hers was mediocre at best.”
Lord Debling’s mouth twitched.
“Lord Debling, is it not?” Penelope asked.
“It is.” He inclined his head. “And why do I have the feeling that you, in turn, know how to make one wither if you so choose?”
In another year, Penelope might have widened her eyes and denied it. She might have stammered. She might have performed innocence because innocence was what everyone expected of her.
Tonight, she simply smiled. “Perhaps,” she said, “if sufficiently provoked.”
Then she winked. Lord Debling blinked once. Then, to his credit, he smiled.
From several yards away, Lady Danbury watched the exchange with narrowed eyes and a growing sense of satisfaction.
Lord Debling. Hm. Not the worst possible match, she supposed. He was odd, certainly, but odd was not always a flaw. Often it merely meant a person had resisted sanding himself smooth enough to bore everyone. Still, Debling had the air of a man who would speak at length of migration patterns over breakfast and expect his wife to find it riveting.
Not the worst match, no. A terribly boring one, perhaps.
But Miss Featherington had already made a pack of gentlemen scatter like frightened geese and sent Lord Fife from the ballroom looking as if he had swallowed a live coal. Lady Danbury was not yet prepared to believe the evening would settle into dullness merely because Lord Debling had arrived.
She shifted her cane and began, with deceptive idleness, to move closer.
Across the room, Colin Bridgerton had seen none of the exchange with Fife or Debling, intent as he was to ignore Penelope as she had been cold to him earlier that day. Colin had, however, seen Cressida Cowper begin to move.
That, he understood.
Cressida did not cross a room toward Penelope Featherington with good intentions. Colin knew that much, at least. He had seen enough over the years to recognize the tilt of her chin, the practiced drift of her steps, the smile that meant some small cruelty had already been selected and polished.
“Benedict,” Colin said sharply.
Benedict, who had been watching Penelope with the unfocused intensity of a man trying to solve a painting from across a gallery, followed his brother’s gaze.
Cressida was nearly upon her. Colin started forward. Too late.
Cressida passed behind Penelope with a rustle of expensive silk. Her slipper came down with delicate precision upon the emerald hem.
The fabric tore. Not loudly. That would have been kinder.
It made a soft, intimate sound, the sort of sound meant to be felt before it was heard. A little surrender of thread. A small destruction.
Penelope looked down. For one instant, the old ballroom seemed to hold its breath around her.
Cressida put a gloved hand to her mouth.
“Oh,” she said, with a performance of horror so polished it was practically lacquered. “How mortifying. I am so clumsy. My deepest apologies.”
Lord Debling frowned at the torn silk.
“Heavens,” he said. “Accidents will happen, I suppose. Miss Featherington, I shall find a maid to help you.”
“That is very kind of you,” Penelope said, “but unnecessary. Thank you, Lord Debling.”
Then she turned her face back to Cressida. She had sensed her approach of course and had let it happen as she had something in mind for just this type of situation.
“Miss Cowper.”
The tiny pause before the name was exquisite.
Cressida heard it. So did Benedict. So, judging by the sudden alertness of her posture, did Lady Danbury.
Colin did not. He was still looking at the tear in Penelope’s dress, guilt and alarm warring across his face, as if he could somehow mend silk by feeling badly enough about it. Even Eloise at odds with Penelope felt conflicted…feeling this was a step to far from Cressida.
Cressida gave the torn hem a pitying look.
“It is a shame you did not choose something sturdier,” she said. “Perhaps if the fabric were not so cheap, it would not have ripped.”
There it was. The little bite beneath the apology.
A few nearby young ladies looked down. A gentleman shifted awkwardly. Colin went red with anger and took half a step forward before Benedict’s hand closed around his sleeve.
Penelope did not flinch. Instead, she lifted one hand and adjusted her mask. No. Not adjusted. Lifted. She slid it onto her head to let the candlelight catch the full roundness of her face, the soft curve of her cheeks, the wide innocence of her blue eyes. It was a small gesture. A vulnerable one, to anyone foolish enough to mistake exposure for weakness.
Benedict’s grip tightened on Colin’s sleeve. Penelope smiled at Cressida with devastating sweetness.
“Oh, I am sure you are quite right, Cressida,” she said warmly. “You would know far better than I, of course.”
Cressida blinked.
“You always wear only the finest and most expensive things.” The words were praise. The room heard praise.
Then the room began, very slowly to listen more closely at what it regarded as an atypical reaction.
“French silks,” Penelope continued, with the soft wistfulness of a girl admiring treasures in a shop window. “Imported lace. Trimmings from Paris. Gloves that never seem to see a second evening. Ribbons so fresh one suspects the modiste’s scissors have barely cooled. Why, I do not think I have ever seen you wear anything that did not announce its own cost from across the room. Nor have I ever seen you wear the same evening gown twice.”
A gentleman nearby coughed into his hand.
“I can only dream of having even a quarter of your budget,” Penelope said. “Truly, I count myself fortunate if I look half as pleasing as you in far lesser fabrics and simpler styles.”
Lord Debling looked moved. “That is a most generous thing to say,” he said solemnly.
Penelope inclined her head. “Thank you, Lord Debling.”
Benedict’s mouth twitched.
Colin looked from Debling to Penelope and then to Cressida, entirely lost. Eloise was equally confused.
Cressida’s chin rose, but there was an uncertain tightness at the corners of her mouth now.
Penelope touched the torn emerald silk with rueful fondness. “But I suppose one must make do with what suits one. And I have always been grateful that simpler things do not object too terribly to me.”
The nearest matron’s eyes sharpened. Costly, the room was beginning to whisper without whispering. Cressida Cowper was costly.
Cressida’s smile grew brittle. “As I said,” she replied, “it was an accident. My apologies.”
“Oh, Cressida.” Penelope’s expression softened into such immediate concern that Lord Debling looked even more impressed. “Please, do not distress yourself. Of course I forgive you.”
Cressida’s eyes narrowed.
“You know I always forgive you for your little accidents.” The word landed lightly. Too lightly. One of the young ladies nearby glanced up.
Penelope lowered her gaze to the torn silk, then back to Cressida’s face. “Truly, I know you cannot help your clumsiness.”
“My clumsiness?” Cressida repeated.
“Yes.” Penelope’s brow furrowed. “I have often thought it must be terribly trying for you.” Cressida stared at her.
Penelope continued, still soft, still sweet, still apparently merciful.
“There was the lemonade at Lady Danbury’s musicale, was there not? And the cake at the Ashbourne supper that somehow landed on my tangerine gown. And my puce sleeve at the Islington card evening. And the lace on my cream cuff, which I am sure simply caught itself on your bracelet by accident. And that dreadful business with my pink floral gown last spring.”
A faint murmur moved through the gathering.
“All accidents, of course,” Penelope said quickly. “I would never suggest otherwise.”
Every woman in hearing distance understood the blade. Most of the men heard only a forgiving girl being generous. Lord Debling looked at Penelope with open admiration. “It is rare,” he said, “to see such a forgiving nature.”
Lady Danbury’s mouth pressed tight. Not in displeasure. In effort.
“But such repeated mishaps must be distressing,” Penelope went on. “Have you spoken to a physician? Or perhaps an apothecary? A young lady with such uncertain coordination must find a ballroom terribly dangerous.”
Cressida’s eyes flashed. “I assure you, Miss Featherington, I am perfectly well.”
“Oh, I am glad.” Penelope’s relief was angelic. “For a moment I feared you might be afflicted. It would be a shame, would it not? To be so very beautiful and yet so troubled by one’s own feet.”
Benedict’s mouth parted.
Colin leaned toward him. “Why is she being kind to her?”
“She is not,” Benedict murmured.
Cressida’s smile grew thinner. “You are very forgiving.”
“I do try,” Penelope said.
Lord Debling nodded, apparently satisfied that he was witnessing a moral example of the highest order.
Penelope did not give Cressida time to recover.
“And your hair,” she said, as if seized by fresh admiration. “Cressida, your hair is always so beautifully arranged. Truly. Such elaborate styles. So architectural.”
A few gazes lifted, obediently, to Cressida’s towering arrangement of curls, pins, ribbons, and jewels.
“It must take hours,” Penelope continued. “Pins upon pins. Ribbons. Pearls. Perhaps even a maid solely dedicated to preserving the structure. I could never manage anything half so impressive.”
“No,” Cressida replied coolly. “I imagine not.”
Penelope smiled. “There is simply never time. There is always something at home requiring attention. Menus, accounts, Mama’s correspondence, one of my sisters misplacing something, a servant needing an answer, a household expense needing to be balanced before it becomes a household disaster.”
Her voice remained soft. Almost apologetic. “But you are so very fortunate, dearest Cressida. I am sure everything is done for you.”
Cressida went still. Not dramatically. Not enough for most men to notice. Every woman nearby noticed.
“It must be quite peaceful,” Penelope added, “to have so little demanded of one.”
Lord Debling, who appeared to believe this was a sincere observation, said, “Peace is indeed undervalued in society.”
Lady Danbury made a small sound into her glove. It might have been a cough. It was absolutely not a cough.
Cressida had begun, at last, to understand.
Her eyes darted once to the nearby gentlemen. Then to the matrons. Then to the young ladies who had suddenly grown very attentive indeed.
Beauty, Penelope thought, was a splendid thing.
It was also, if left unsupported by kindness, competence, wit, or restraint, a terribly narrow platform upon which to stand.
“My dear Penelope,” Cressida said, too sweetly, “you must not diminish yourself so.”
“Oh, but I must be honest,” Penelope replied at once. “You are without doubt one of the most beautiful young ladies in all the ton.”
Cressida’s expression eased despite herself. Beauty was the bait she always took.
“Apart, perhaps, from the Duchess of Hastings,” Penelope added, “though I would never dare set myself up as judge between such paragons.”
That earned a few approving murmurs. No one objected to praise of the Duchess of Hastings. Her being a former diamond and certainly not within the orbit of Bridgerton House.
“I count myself lucky to stand in your shadow,” Penelope said. “My own beauty, such as it is, cannot possibly compare. You are quite the fashion, after all. Tall, slender, golden, perfectly arranged. A lady made for admiration.”
There. Take the sugar. Then came the knife.
“I am afraid I am made in a rather older style,” Penelope said, with a rueful little smile. “Quite unfashionable. Softer. Rounder. Terribly impractical for current taste.”
Benedict went very still.
“More like some soft thing one might find in a Rembrandt, perhaps,” Penelope said. “Or a Botticelli, if one were being terribly generous.”
Benedict’s gaze sharpened.
“Rubens, at least, was never cruel to a curve,” she said lightly. “And Venus herself was not made like a willow switch. Nor Juno, I imagine.”
Lord Debling stared at her with the faint concern of a man who had not expected so many painters and goddesses to enter a conversation about torn fabric.
Colin stared too, for an entirely different reason.
Eloise, who had drawn near enough to hear, stood frozen near a pillar, her brows drawn together beneath her mask. She had expected Penelope to be hurt. She had expected a flinch, perhaps a retreat, perhaps the old familiar ache of seeing Penelope made small by Cressida Cowper’s cruelty.
She had not expected this. Worse, she did not understand this. Why was Penelope…who could, as Whistledown, wield wounding wit…complementing Cressida on all fronts?
Lady Danbury’s mouth curved behind her fan.
Penelope returned her attention to Cressida with merciless sweetness.
“So you see, I do not despair entirely. We cannot all be made to suit the same fashion. Some ladies are arrows. Others are fruit.”
Cressida’s jaw tightened. Because there it was, laid out for anyone clever enough to see.
Cressida was beautiful. Beautiful and costly. Beautiful and idle. Beautiful and either vicious enough to ruin other girls’ gowns on purpose or so alarmingly clumsy that no ballroom was safe from her feet.
Beautiful, yes. But perhaps not much else.
Penelope smiled at her as if none of those thoughts had ever crossed her mind.
“Oh, dear Cressida,” she said. “You look so distressed.”
“I am not distressed,” Cressida said.
“No, of course not,” Penelope said soothingly. “And truly, you need not be. I promise it will be no trouble. Even my pink floral gown ...the one that was somehow accidentally torn straight down the middle of the back ...was mended in the end.”
The silence that followed was small. Perfect.
Penelope touched Cressida’s arm with gentle reassurance. “You need not fret over that, my dearest Cressida after all I have known and forgiven you for years.”
For a moment, Cressida Cowper had no expression at all. It was glorious.
Then she snatched what remained of her smile around herself like a cloak.
“You are too kind, Penelope.”
“I do always try to be,” Penelope said.
Lord Debling looked solemnly impressed. “A remarkable degree of grace,” he murmured.
Cressida curtsied, stiff as a blade, and withdrew. Her usual little flock hesitated.
That hesitation was almost better than the retreat. Miss Goring, who had trailed after Cressida for two seasons with the faithful persistence of a duckling, looked first at Cressida’s departing back, then at the emerald ruin of Penelope’s gown, then down at the lace on her own cuff that Cressida had also accidentally torn once.
Her mouth tightened. “I believe,” Miss Goring said abruptly, “I promised Mama I would speak with Lady Trowbridge.” She did not wait for an answer before slipping away.
Miss Livingston, whose sleeve had also once been ruined with pie before an audience large enough to matter, followed half a breath later with a face gone very pink.
The third young lady lingered just long enough to make the mistake visible, then abandoned Cressida as well, fleeing toward a cluster of debutantes near the musicians.
Cressida did not try and hold her usual followers back. That was wise of her. Trying to hold them back would have shown her awareness and drawn even more attention to what was happening.
The space around Penelope did not close again at once. It remained open, bright and strange, as if the ballroom itself had drawn a careful breath and was now wondering what sort of creature had been standing in its corner all along.
A mother with two unmarried sons looked after Cressida with newly narrowed eyes.
“French silks every evening?” she murmured.
“Imported lace,” another replied behind her fan.
“And no household duties at all, it would seem.”
“I heard her dowry is very large.”
“Perhaps it needs to be.”
A gentleman in a blue waistcoat, who had been staring appreciatively after Cressida not ten minutes earlier, looked suddenly less appreciative and more thoughtful.
“She is remarkably beautiful,” he said, as if making an argument to himself.
His companion gave the torn emerald hem a glance.
“Beauty is a fine thing in a portrait. Less fine if it ruins one’s finances.”
The first gentleman winced.
Another, younger and less cautious, whispered, “Do you think she truly tore the pink gown down the back?”
An older married lady heard him and turned a cool eye upon him. “My dear Mr. Ellington,” she said, “Miss Featherington was most generous. She did not name every incident and she labeled them all accidents. I should take care not to imply Miss Cowper capable of anything worse.”
Mr. Ellington flushed and bowed at once. “Yes, of course.” But the thought had been planted. That was the useful thing about thoughts. Once planted, they rarely asked permission to grow.
Lord Debling, still standing beside Penelope, looked at her with grave admiration. “I must say, Miss Featherington,” he said, “you possess a remarkably forgiving nature.”
Penelope lowered her lashes. “How kind of you to say so, Lord Debling.” Her unmasked face cherubic features and big blue eyes conveying an air of innocence and goodwill.
“I mean it sincerely. Many would have been most distressed.”
“I assure you, I am perfectly well.” That was mostly true. The dress was torn. Her reputation, for once, was not.
Rae appeared at Penelope’s side as if conjured from the floorboards, her face composed, her eyes missing nothing.
“Miss?” she murmured.
Penelope turned toward her maid with genuine relief. “Rae. I fear my gown has suffered a small casualty.”
“So I see.” Rae’s gaze flicked once toward Cressida’s retreating figure. “Shall we see to it?”
“Yes, I think we had better.”
Lord Debling bowed. “May I escort you?”
“That is very kind,” Penelope said, “but unnecessary. I would not wish to deprive the room of your company merely because Miss Cowper’s foot has had an adventurous evening.”
Debling considered this with the solemnity of a man weighing a naturalist’s observation. “Feet can indeed be troublesome,” he said.
Penelope had to bite the inside of her cheek.
Rae did not. Rae merely looked ahead with the profound discipline of a woman who had heard worse and would laugh later.
Penelope turned back to the room.
For a moment, she found more eyes upon her than she had expected. Some curious. Some startled. Some amused. Some wary.
Good. Wary was an improvement.
She inclined her head, not deeply, not humbly, but with the calm acknowledgment of a queen receiving notice from a court she did not entirely trust.
Then she allowed Rae to guide her away. Her emerald skirt was torn. Her spine was not.
Across the ballroom, Colin stared after her as if he had missed several pages of a book he had believed he knew by heart.
“But she praised her,” he said.
Benedict did not answer at once. His eyes were on Penelope Featherington, small and round-cheeked in torn emerald silk, walking from the ballroom with her head held high enough that the damage to her gown seemed less like humiliation than evidence of a battle already won.
Then, very softly, Benedict said, “No, Colin. She did not.”
Colin frowned. “She said Cressida was beautiful. That she forgave her. She said her gowns were fine.”
Inside Benedict was thinking Colin was an absolute dunce. She said beauty was all Cressida had. She called her either vicious or too clumsy to be trusted in public. She told every unmarried man in this room that Cressida Cowper would be ruinously expensive and utterly useless in a household. And you think those were compliments.
Colin stared at him.
Benedict finally looked away from Penelope’s retreating figure and gave his brother a faintly pitying glance.
“Good God, Colin. She did not compliment Cressida. She destroyed her.”
A small sound came from behind them.
Eloise stood near the pillar, half-hidden by a spray of greenery, her face tight with confusion.
“But she was complimentary and forgiving” Eloise said.
Benedict turned.
Eloise’s eyes were still fixed on the doorway through which Penelope had vanished.
“She even diminished herself,” she continued, almost accusingly. “Quite a lot. Penelope always does that. Or she used to. I—”
She stopped.
The old familiarity struck something raw between them. There had been a time when Eloise would have dragged Penelope away herself, furious on her behalf and entirely incapable of understanding why Penelope would not simply say the cruel thing plainly.
There had been a time when Penelope would have let her.
Benedict’s expression softened, but only for a moment.
“Eloise,” he said, “if you do not understand what just happened, I am not going to explain it to you.”
Her mouth fell open. “That is rather rude.”
“Yes,” Benedict said. “It is.”
Colin looked between them. “What is happening?”
Benedict ignored him.
“Why did you quarrel with Penelope?” he asked Eloise.
Her expression closed at once.
“I am not discussing that.”
“No,” Benedict said, his voice mild and therefore more cutting. “You have made that abundantly clear. Over the off-season and yet continue to be in a foul mood.”
Eloise’s eyes flashed. “You know nothing about it.”
“I know you befriended Penelopes childhood bully and walked into this ball with Cressida Cowper as well.”
“That has nothing to do with…”
“With Penelope?” Benedict asked. “No? Fascinating. Because I have rarely seen two decisions look more determined to insult the same person.”
Eloise drew herself up.
Colin made a strangled sound. “Benedict.”
“No.” Benedict shook his head once, his gaze flicking back to the doorway. “No, I think I am rather tired of pretending none of us have eyes.”
Eloise looked wounded then, which was unfair, because Benedict had not meant to wound her. Not very much.
“I said I am not talking about it,” she said.
“So you said. But perhaps you ought to.” Benedict stated.
She turned sharply and walked away before he could say anything worse.
Colin watched her go, then looked back at Benedict with the helpless expression of a man who had entered a room after the argument and somehow been blamed for the furniture. “What was that?”
Benedict sighed. “An excellent question.”
At the other End of the refreshment table, Lady Danbury lowered her fan just enough to reveal the curve of her smile.
“Well,” she murmured to no one in particular, “that was rather more interesting than the dancing.”
Then her gaze went to the doorway too.
Miss Featherington had left the ballroom with a torn gown, a maid at her side, and half the room reconsidering every easy thing it had ever thought about her.
Lady Danbury tapped her cane once against the floor.
Very interesting indeed. It seemed Lady Whistledown had decided to no longer contain her mind and whit to the written word alone….this season would be interesting…
~*~
By the time Penelope reached her bedchamber, the torn hem of her emerald gown had begun to fray.
Rae shut the door behind them and turned the key.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
The sounds of Featherington House settled around them: a footman moving somewhere below stairs, a distant door closing, Prudence’s laugh echoing briefly from the corridor before being swallowed by plaster and carpet. The house was not asleep. Not yet. But it was inattentive, and inattentive was often nearly as useful as empty.
Penelope stood before the glass and looked at herself.
The mask was gone. The candles on her dressing table threw warm light over her hair, her cheeks, the deep green silk, the torn place where Cressida Cowper’s slipper had bitten through Genevieve’s work.
Rae came to stand behind her.
“That,” Rae said at last, “was an expensive little stumble.”
Penelope’s mouth curved.
“Several gentlemen seemed to agree.”
“Several ladies too.”
“Better.”
“Much better.”
Rae crouched to examine the tear, her fingers moving carefully through the ruined fabric.
“It can be mended with some additional fabric I think.”
“Yes.” Penelope watched her own reflection. “I told Cressida as much.”
“So I heard.”
Penelope’s smile widened, just a little. “Did you?”
“Enough. If I may say so Nell rarely have I heard such vicious compliments.” Rae’s tone was dry enough to parch paper.
Penelope looked down at the emerald silk. It was beautiful. Even torn, it was beautiful. For a moment, she allowed herself to mourn it. Not deeply. Not dramatically. But Genevieve had made this gown with a kind of fierce, deliberate affection, and Cressida had damaged it because beauty on Penelope had offended her.
Once, that would have been enough. Once, Penelope would have stood in a retiring room with her eyes burning, fingers clutching ruined silk, heart thudding with humiliation. Once, she would have imagined every person in the ballroom laughing at her. Once, she would have let Cressida’s smile become the shape of the entire night.
Tonight, all she could think was that Cressida Cowper had very poor aim. The dress was torn. Penelope was not.
She lifted her hand and touched the place where her mask had rested.
“I used to be afraid of her,” she said, quietly.
Rae’s hands stilled. Then resumed. “You had reason.”
“I know.” Penelope’s voice softened. “That is the strangest part. I did. She was cruel. She was pretty and rich and cruel, and everyone let her be. That was frightening.”
Rae said nothing.
Penelope looked at the torn silk again, then at her own face in the mirror: round cheeks, wide eyes, red hair unpinned by the evening’s heat, mouth still curved with the faintest remnant of satisfaction.
“Now she seems…” Penelope paused, searching for the word.
“Small?” Rae offered.
Penelope considered that.
“No.” She drew one breath, then another. “Inconsequential.”
Rae glanced up at her reflection. “That is worse.”
“Yes,” Penelope said. “I rather think it is.”
The emerald gown came off with pins, hooks, and patience. Rae worked quickly, unfastening the visible Penelope Featherington layer by layer. Silk. Stays. Gloves. Slippers. The delicate things. The ballroom things. The soft, bright, breakable things a young lady was meant to wear while men decided whether she was worth choosing and women decided whether she was worth fearing.
Beneath it all, Penelope’s body hummed.
It had begun during the confrontation with Fife, low and eager beneath her skin. It had sharpened when Cressida stepped on her gown. It had settled briefly into satisfaction when Cressida retreated, and the room whispered in Penelope’s favor.
But satisfaction, Penelope had discovered, was not the same as stillness.
Her body had not wanted stillness since the off-season.
Rae opened the lower drawer of the wardrobe.
Not the upper drawer, where lace and ribbons and stockings lay in tidy innocence. The lower one.
Penelope stepped out of the remains of the evening and into the night.
First came the dark split drawers, fitted close enough not to tangle. Then the plain apron made to look like a skirt front, black wool and cleverly altered. A dark bodice followed, reinforced with leather where it needed reinforcement and flexible where movement mattered. Soft boots, worn supple at the ankle. Gloves. A cloak with no fashionable gleam to catch the moonlight.
Rae passed her a narrow leather sheath. Penelope strapped it to her thigh.
A dagger slid home there with a familiar whisper.
A second blade went into her boot. A vial of recently acquired blessed water into a pocket inside her bodice. A little cross, tarnished and plain, tucked where it would not swing loose at the wrong moment.
Then Rae lifted the stake from beneath a folded shawl. Blackthorn. Dark, dense, stubborn wood.
The point had been hardened by fire until it was almost black, though the shaft had been sanded smooth where Penelope’s palm had shaped it through use. It was not pretty. Genevieve would have called it hideous. Portia would have fainted at the sight of it. Cressida would have found some way to sneer at the lack of ornament.
Penelope loved it dearly.
She took it from Rae and closed her hand around it. The fit was perfect now.
At first, the stake had felt like a tool she was borrowing from a story that had no business including her. Then it had felt like a weapon. Then, after the third of her quarry to obligingly turn to dust, it had simply become hers.
Rae watched her tuck it into place. “Are you sure you should go out tonight?”
Penelope gave her a look. Rae sighed. “Yes, yes. Excess energy.”
“It is not only that.”
“No?”
Penelope picked up her cloak. “There was a Vahrall sign near the old churchyard two nights ago. If it was passing through, I should like to know. If it was nesting, I should like to know sooner.”
Rae’s mouth tightened. “You said Vahralls have claws.”
“Most things have claws. That is why I shall also be taking the sword today.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Rae gave her the sort of look that had, on more than one occasion, made Penelope feel far guiltier than anything her mother had ever managed.
Penelope softened. “I will be careful.”
“You always say that.”
“And I am often correct.”
“Often is a terrible word.”
Penelope smiled. Then she turned back to the mirror. The girl in emerald silk was gone.
The girl who had stood at the edge of ballrooms hoping not to be noticed was gone too, though sometimes Penelope still felt her like an old bruise beneath the skin. That girl had been afraid of Cressida Cowper. She had been afraid of Lord Fife’s laughter. She had been afraid of gentlemen in groups, of cruel smiles, of torn hems, of being made ridiculous in a room full of people who would rather watch than help.
Penelope did not blame her.
That girl had not yet seen faces change in the dark.
She had not yet felt a Fyarl’s fist glance off a wall where her head had been half a heartbeat before. She had not yet learned that Vahrall claws could score brick. She had not yet discovered that a Polgara skewers were best admired from a considerable distance, preferably after the rest of it had stopped moving.
She had not yet understood that some monsters came with fangs, some with horns, and some, the least of them, with excellent posture and a fan.
Penelope pulled up the hood of her cloak.
Rae went to the window and opened it.
Cool night air slid into the room, carrying the damp smell of London stone, horse, smoke, river, and secrets.
Penelope crossed to the sill.
Below, the garden lay in shadow. Beyond it, the city waited: alleys, rooftops, churchyards, printers, blood, dust, whispers.
Her hand touched the blackthorn stake once more.
After daily undead drinkers, Fyarl antlers, Vahrall claws, and deeply unpleasant Polgaras, debutantes and gentlemen simply were not as intimidating as they used to be.
Penelope Featherington stepped onto the windowsill.
Then she jumped.
She landed softly on her feet, light as a cat, cloak whispering around her ankles. The night opened before her ...damp stone, smoke, river fog, and somewhere beneath it all, the faint wrongness of something that should have stayed buried.
Penelope smiled.
After an evening among debutantes and gentlemen, it was almost a relief to loosen the leash on the predator that lurked beneath her skin.
Tonight, she was rather looking forward to a proper hunt and kill.