Queen Bee(3)
Author: Amalie Howard
I nodded, casting my eyes down demurely. These patronesses loved flattery. My tone held just the right amount of protracted awe—it wasn’t hard to do. London was in a class of its own. To many of the ton, it was the center of the universe, and Almack’s was its glowing jewel. “Cumbria is certainly not anything like this!”
“Yes, well, we try.” She smiled as she canvassed the room, her mood brightening. “Follow me. I’ve just had the most marvelous idea of introducing your charming ward to my nephew,” Lady Jersey said to Lady Birdie, her calculating stare returning to me. “You’re around the same age, and his set will take you under their wing, I’m sure of it. You seem like the right sort of girl.”
And by “the right sort,” she meant that I had an excellent dowry, which was already a topic of fervent gossip, according to Lady Birdie. Money had a way of opening the tightest, most elite circles. Fortune, connections, beauty, and virtue—the recipe for female accomplishment in the ton. One didn’t even need to be beautiful if one had coin.
To Lady Jersey, I was a fortune with legs.
She cut briskly through the crowd, and we followed. One did not insult a patroness with a refusal, after all. We came to an abrupt stop, and I barely had time to take in my surroundings near the refreshments table before Lady Jersey tugged on my arm. “Here we are,” she said. “Ridley dearest, may I present to you Miss Lyra Whitley. She is Lady Birdie’s ward and new to town. Miss Whitley, this is my nephew, Lord Keston Osborn, the Marquess of Ridley and heir to the Duke of Harbridge.”
Time slowed, my pulse rushed in my ears as conversation stopped, and I felt a handful of curious stares flock to my person. Good gracious, I wasn’t ready to meet him face to face so soon. Still…I looked. I couldn’t help it.
My word, he was tall! I’d grown, too, but I had to be at least half a foot shorter than his strapping six-foot frame. Up close, I saw tawny hints of bronze and russet chasing through the dark brown curls that had been seared into my memory. My gaze traveled over the fitted black coat and pristine white shirt to his cravat, arranged just so, topped by a square jaw that my fingers itched to trace. A pair of brown eyes flecked with topaz and gold, and filled with amusement, met mine.
Could lungs fail? Simply cease working?
Because, sweet baby bunnies in a basket…air was in scarce supply.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Whitley,” his deep voice said, drizzling over my senses like warm honey on a hot scone.
Dear God, why was I thinking about honey and scones? Because now my mouth was watering like a leaky pipe. Pull yourself together, for God’s sake!
“And you, Lord Ridley.” At least I had the wherewithal to curtsy and address him formally…not by his given name which sat on the tip of my tongue. Calling him Keston aloud would be the ghastliest faux pas.
I was barely paying attention as he introduced the three other boys around him—Lord Ansel Chen, Lord Blake Castleton, and Mr. Rafi Nasser—when Lady Jersey and Lady Birdie turned to greet a couple who had stopped to speak to them. At the moment, I was trying to act like my insides weren’t dissolving into lava and setting everything on fire.
The marquess’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he studied me, a slight frown marring the perfection of his face, as if something had troubled him for an instant. Coldness gripped my stomach in a fist. Would he recognize me? Was my plan doomed before it started? But then he only smirked as one of the boys behind him said, “Welcome to London, new girl.”
Irritated with my fears, I reached for the sangfroid I’d practiced for hours. I was Lyra Whitley…and Lyra Whitley meant to dance on the bones of her enemies. Lyra Whitley was a force of nature…a soldier armed to the teeth for battle and a phoenix rising from the ashes of her past. Lyra Whitley was everything Ela Dalvi needed to be in this moment.
An opposing queen about to take control of the board.
I turned to the one who had spoken. Rafi, he was called. Rakishly handsome with a pair of dark gray eyes that twinkled with interest in his golden-brown face, he oozed entitlement. I had to emulate that. Embody it.
Batting my eyelashes, I grinned and put the slightest bit of flirtation into my voice. “So, what’s a girl got to do to get some lemonade around here?”
CHAPTER TWO
Ela
Burghfield, Berkshire, January 1814
A new family was moving into the neighboring estate, and I couldn’t keep my excitement from bubbling to the surface. Nothing new had happened in our quaint, sleepy parish in ages. After breakfast, I could barely keep from running to the windows at the front of the house to survey the road leading toward the property.
“Do you see anyone yet?” Poppy squealed beside me.
Shaking my head, I glanced at my best friend of forever, whose eager expression matched mine. We were both dying to meet the neighbors. Poppy lived much closer to the village center but spent the night so often at my house, she was practically family. She was the daughter of my father’s solicitor, and we’d been attached at the hip since her father had started working for mine.
The newly minted Duke and Duchess of Harbridge, from what I’d overheard when the servants spoke of them in hushed tones, had two children, a boy and a girl a year apart in age. Considering Poppy was my only friend, I was hoping that the girl might be nice. Suitable companions my age were in short supply, especially as the only child of a reclusive earl.
“What do you suppose he’s like?” Poppy whispered. “Lord Keston?”
“His courtesy title as the duke’s heir is the Marquess of Ridley, so he would be called Lord Ridley or just Ridley by his peers,” I blurted without thinking.
She flushed. “Don’t sound so condescending, Ela.”
“I didn’t mean to! That’s how you would make the proper address. I’m sorry.” Cringing at her hurt look, I shrugged, my nose pressed to the cold window.
“Do you think he will be handsome?” Poppy asked.
“He’s probably dreadful,” I said. “And pompous and arrogant. Sons of dukes always are.”
“My mama says that His Grace is a very handsome man. Surely if his papa is handsome, Lord Ridley will be as well?”
Banishing the thought of the maybe-handsome, most-definitely-pompous Lord Ridley from my mind, I didn’t answer, peering through the panes as though my concentration would make coaches suddenly appear. The servants—who usually knew everything—had let slip at breakfast that the family would be arriving today, and ever since, my stomach had been queasy with anticipation. It couldn’t be because of a boy, but maybe it was.