“It isn’t what you think,” Hannah gasped.
“Did something happen with Lord Ranford?” Amy asked, her voice soft and maternal.
“No,” Jillian replied, her focus going first to Lord Brightstone, then to Hannah in that overly perceptive way she had. “I don’t think it was with Lord Ranford.”
Hannah set her hands on her hips in exasperation. “How could you possibly know that?” Then she huffed out a sigh. “Very well, it was Lord Brightstone, who has been a neighbor of mine for the entirety of my life, as you well know. And something did happen, but it was too mortifying even to share.”
“Did you trip in front of him?” Elizabeth asked sympathetically.
“Did you accidentally walk in on him with one of the servants in the stables?” Lucy’s hazel eyes danced with wicked excitement.
“Lucy,” Amy admonished.
But Lucy only laughed at the rebuke and splashed a bit of something amber-colored into her lemonade from a flask at her side. Her tight curls had already begun to relax, her glossy dark hair too silky and straight to ever remain curled. No doubt it bothered her maid more than Lucy, who never paid fashion much mind.
“In a manner of speaking, Elizabeth is correct,” Hannah said quickly and regaled them with the miserable story. She left out the part about Lord Brightstone seeking her counsel on dress, however. That was not her secret to share.
“Oh, Hannah, that must have been dreadfully embarrassing.” Amy put a hand on her arm in a motherly fashion, her warm brown gaze soft in a frame of light blonde ringlets.
“It was.” Hannah snapped open her fan, revealing a painting of pink and buttercup yellow roses within, and waved it toward her burning face. “I’m grateful he was so kind about it and had his own man repair the fence, so I didn’t have to tell my father.”
“That was indeed very kind of him,” Amy agreed, a little smile lifted her cherub lips.
Jillian’s eyes flashed, and Hannah knew she had an idea. Which was not always a good thing. “You should ask him to dance,” Jillian insisted.
“Ladies don’t ask men to dance,” Elizabeth said, aghast.
Lucy tossed a limp curl over her shoulder. “They should.”
“Then you do it.” Jillian folded her arms over the bodice of her cranberry velvet gown at the dare, a telltale smile hovering at her lips that suggested she knew very well that Lucy was all bluster with such a threat.
Lucy cast a cursory glance about the room. “Alas, there isn’t a man worth the effort here.” Her brow lifted as she returned her stare pointedly to Jillian. “Not even the Duke of Dudley.”
“The Duke of Dudley?” Elizabeth looked between them. “Why is she staring at you like that, Jillian?”
Jillian’s jaw flexed forward with a stubborn resentment they all recognized by now.
“You’re about to be betrothed again,” Hannah gasped.
“Not if I can help it.” Jillian plucked the lemonade from Lucy’s hand and took a long sip.
“Hey.” Lucy reached for the glass, but Jillian pulled it back from her grasp.
“Do you even have a choice?” Amy’s lips clamped down on a frown.
“Am I supposed to?” The bitterness in Jillian’s tone suggested she felt otherwise.
Lucy swiped for the lemonade once more. This time, Elizabeth intervened and plucked it from Jillian’s gloved hand.
“Lady Elizabeth,” a man’s voice said from beside Hannah.
Elizabeth spun around in surprise, sloshing liquid from the glass and onto the waistcoat and breeches of Lord Darington, the most eligible bachelor of the season for the last three seasons.
“Oh.” Elizabeth tugged a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed first at his waistcoat, then trailed the spilled liquid down to his breeches. After a series of quick wipes at his crotch, she realized what she was doing and froze in horror.
“Elizabeth,” Amy hissed, grabbing her arm back.
Darington grinned, then sniffed the air. “Is that brandy I smell?”
Poor Elizabeth’s eyes went wide as dinner plates.
“I have to go to the retiring room.” Amy tugged Elizabeth with her. “Will you join me, Lady Elizabeth?”
“Y…yes,” Elizabeth stammered as she was tugged away.
Lord Darington regarded Lucy, then Jillian, then Hannah as the awkwardness of the scene sank in like lead. “I suppose I had best go clean up.”
Hannah nodded, rendered mute by the cascade of horrid events.
Lucy’s raised brows indicated her shock after his departure. “Did she just touch his...”
“Yes.” Jillian cringed, her worried expression following Amy and Elizabeth through the crowd. For as aloof as Jillian could sometimes be, she was very much affected by an inflamed sense of guilt, especially when it came to her friends. “We should check on them.”
Suddenly, Lord Ranford was there, standing in front of Hannah. He watched the departing Lord Darington and frowned. “Will you dance with me, Miss Bexley?”
Hannah blinked up at him. Had he seen the exchange? And was now asking her for a dance?
It was on the tip of her tongue to decline when she noted her mother’s gaze on her from across the room, bright with rapt eagerness. There would be no escaping from this dance.
Hannah cast an apologetic look to Jillian and Lucy and nodded at Lord Ranford, giving her best attempt to appear delighted with the ill-timed request. “That would be wonderful.”
“Lord Darington didn’t say anything to upset you, did he?” Lord Ranford asked as he led her toward the dance floor.
Startled, she glanced up at him. His face was a touch too long, yet somehow it paired well with his lean, lanky frame. “Did you mean to protect me from him?” she asked.
Before, she might have been hopeful he would say yes—that he intended to be a hero to rescue her like a knight in one of the romantic books Elizabeth loved to read. Perhaps it was that Lord Ranford had smashed Hannah’s heart to pieces previously, but now the thought of him rescuing her was more amusing than appealing.
A blush colored Lord Ranford’s face, and he self-consciously smoothed his brown hair back. “You’ve done so much for my family by helping Julia last season. I would hate for you to be repaid by an errant friend being obnoxious.”
“That is most considerate of you, but unnecessary, as he was in no way impolite,” Hannah truthfully replied as they took their places across from one another on the dance floor.
Over Lord Ranford’s shoulder, Hannah could make out her mother on the other side of the ballroom. Her eyes lit with the over-eager gleam of a mother with a possible future son-in-law locked in her sites.
Hannah suppressed a sigh. “Did Lady Julia enjoy the season last year?” she asked politely.
“So much so, I fear she may force me to endure several seasons before finally selecting a husband.” Lord Ranford grinned at Hannah in a way that should have made her heart stutter. She truly had given up hope on him.
Which was for the best.
Their conversation skimmed the surface of polite chatter as it pertained to his sister and the uncommonly frigid temperatures in London before moving on to plans for the following week with who was dining where and when. Even Hannah’s mother had stopped craning her neck to spy on them as the song droned on.