“Poor man,” Carolyn said, shaking her head. “Truly, Mr. Godfrey was not my idea of a perfect gentleman, but I have to admit this makes me feel a bit sorry for the man. What if he’s not really a fortune hunter?”
Beatrice put an icy hand to her chest. She might have been guilty of inadvertently calling the man out, but at least she was beyond certain that he was indeed a fortune hunter.
Perhaps this would be a good thing if she managed to save some poor girl from his clutches. “He is,” she said with authority, nodding her head for good measure. “Believe me. I have seen him in action enough to know the truth of it.”
“In action?” Jocelyn raised a pale brow. “What, does he go around with a ledger, tallying each lady’s worth?”
“Practically, yes. He does exactly what the author said he does: dancing only with those whose dowry heft is well known.”
“Hardly enough to convict a man.”
Beatrice scowled at Jocelyn. She already felt bad enough—she didn’t need her sister doubting her judgment. “Trust me, the man has eyes only for money. The author did the right thing by pointing out how a lady may recognize a fortune hunter like him. The better armed a lady is, the better able to protect herself.”
Carolyn tucked her feet beneath the voluminous white fabric of her night rail and shrugged. “If you say so. What do you think will happen to him? Do you think he’ll read it?”
Heavens, she hoped he never would. “I should think not,” Beatrice said, flipping the magazine closed and gesturing to the title. “It’s a ladies’ fashion magazine, after all. I sincerely hope that gentlemen are not reading this sort of thing.”
“Well, not normally, of course,” Jocelyn said. “But this is positively scandalous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole of the ton has read it by the end of the week.”
Butterflies took flight within Beatrice’s belly at this pronouncement. The thought of thousands of eyes reading her letter was daunting enough; to think of Mr. Godfrey recognizing himself . . .
“Don’t be silly. It’s not as though it was printed in the Times, for heaven’s sake. It likely won’t leave the bedchambers of any of the young ladies for which it was intended.”
Jocelyn leaned against the arm of the sofa, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Oh, I bet it will. I only wish I could go to the Westmoreland ball to witness the reaction for myself.”
A sudden rush of nerves whisked through Beatrice’s veins. By eight o’clock that night, she would know exactly what the ton thought about the letter—and by extension, her.
Chapter Ten
Beatrice was not, by nature, an anxious person. In fact, she was generally actively not anxious, remaining more or less calm in all sorts of situations. But standing at the doorway to the Westmorelands’ surprisingly crowded ball, she had only one thought: whether she could make it to the ladies’ retiring room before she cast up her accounts all over the eggshell-hued marble floors.
She took a deep breath, trying her best to ignore the cloying scent of a hundred perfumes mixed with beeswax and freshly polished wood. For heaven’s sake, she was made of sterner stuff than this. Just because she may or may not have baldly called a gentleman out for being a fortune hunter in a widely distributed magazine with a highly scandalous letter meant to help, not hurt anyone, did not mean that she could fall to pieces over it.
Besides—if she wished to slip through the crowd unnoticed in order to eavesdrop on gossip, she’d best keep her dinner where it was.
The good news was, a problem with the carriage had delayed their departure, so they were more than fashionably late, which meant that no one announced their arrival.
“Are you quite all right, my dear?” Mama’s voice was little more than a whisper in Beatrice’s ear. “You look rather pale.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured back, keeping a forced smile on her lips. “Although,” she said, inspiration striking, “I think I will visit the retiring room to freshen up after our ordeal with the carriage.”
“Shall I join you?”
Beatrice tried to relax, stretching her lips into a broader smile. “No, no, I’ll be only a moment. And look, Lady Wembley has already spotted you.” She waved at the lady in question, and Mama nodded and went to speak with her friend.
There—she felt slightly better already. Adopting a bland expression, she slipped into the crowd, doing her best to meld with her surroundings. She really was headed to the retiring room—often the best gossip could be had there—but more than anything, she wanted a chance to observe as nonchalantly as possible. It’d be easier if she could have worn a plainer gown, but her mother had insisted Beatrice don the new one that had been delivered the day before. Shimmery metallic threads did tend to make one feel conspicuous, but with any luck no one would—
Seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Godfrey stepped directly in her path. Drat, drat, drat.
“Lady Beatrice,” he purred, his light brown eyes pinning her with unsettling intensity. “I was beginning to despair of seeing you this evening.”
Her stomach clenched, and she would have taken a step back were the space available. Curse her blasted luck—of course he would be the very first person she ran into. She eyed him warily, guilt marching up her spine while she tried to divine if he knew anything of the letter.
If he did, he gave nothing away. His inflection was exactly the same, his posture ever straight and his gaze entirely too direct. Nothing about him spoke of affront or anger, merely his normal, all too arrogant self.
She swallowed past the lump of self-reproach that clogged her throat and offered him a weak smile. “Good evening, Mr. Godfrey. I’m afraid you have caught me on my way—”
“Yes, yes, I can see that you are quite on a mission. I don’t wish to keep you, my lady—I merely wished to add my name to your dance card before it fills up.”
No polite question this time—instead he held out his hand as if it were a foregone conclusion that a dance would be his tonight. Beatrice looked down to the small card attached to her wrist with a slender green ribbon and sighed. It was as good a penance as anything. And perhaps, if she were very lucky, he would be so busy with his usual tactic of dancing with the wealthiest women, he wouldn’t have time to hear any gossip.
Holding out the card and pencil, she smiled a bit too brightly. “But of course.”
He bent over the card and scribbled his name beside one of the two dozen dances listed out. When he was done, he looked up to her with a triumphant smile. “Thank you, Lady Beatrice. I look forward to our dance with much anticipation.”
That made one of them.
She dipped her head in acknowledgment before turning and escaping into the crowd. Sneaking a look at the card, she groaned. Of course he would claim one of the waltzes. Oh, well—tattlers couldn’t be choosers.
She had gone all of a dozen steps when a hand closed around her arm. Before she had the chance to get annoyed at being waylaid again, Miss Sophie Wembley hooked her arm around Beatrice’s elbow and grinned, her dark eyes positively glittering with excitement. “Finally—I’m so glad I found you. Did you see it? Tell me you saw it. Of course you did—you see everything.”
Beatrice grinned despite herself. Sophie was absolutely irrepressible. “The letter?”
Sophie nodded and started forward, dragging Beatrice in exactly the direction she was headed in the first place. Sophie’s normally riotous curls had been brought to heel tonight, pulled up into a tight bun at the top of her head, but a few black curls had managed to escape and were now floating like silk streamers behind her as she rushed forward.