Page 14 of My Fair Lord

“Yes, they are good,” Blake said. “Dark eyelashes are the envy of every redhead, I assume?”

She acknowledged the truth with a small dip of her head. There was a lull in the other room as the music came to an end. Florence gave a start and glanced down at her card.

“Oh lord, I have to go,” she said, handing Blake the empty glass. “I’m supposed to be dancing next. I’ll go do your mission for you if I can. If I find anything out, I’ll try to speak to you again before the end of the evening.”

She hurried through the refreshment room, smiling at the people she passed. She couldn’t say whether it was the two glasses of champagne she had drunk in quick succession or the snatched and illicit conversation with Mr Blake that had done it, but her mood had lifted and she was looking forward to dancing. As she crossed the entrance hall, she saw her father talking in an animated fashion. The victim was a younger man in an immaculately cut evening dress that fitted his tall, broad frame perfectly. She waved at her father and passed by. She heard him murmur something to the other man, then he called her name.

“Florence, a word quickly.”

She turned to face him, smoothing her skirts down and beaming. His face was surprisingly severe as he walked towards her, and she felt a slight shimmer of unease.

“Daddy, are you having a nice evening still?”

The young man smiled and bowed. Florence curtseyed back, thinking how much nicer he was than the self-important baronet. “Excuse me, Mr Wakechild. I’ll leave you to speak with your charming daughter.”

“I see you’ve found someone else to talk to. I’m about to go dance with a viscount,” Florence said.

Mr Wakechild continued to look solemn. “Cordelia told me she left you in the refreshment room alone. I looked in to find you and unless my eyesight is starting to fail me, I thought I saw you in conversation with a servant at the back of the room!”

Florence swallowed. Of course she would have been spotted. How stupid of them both to lose sight of where they were.

“We weren’t really conversing,” she said quickly. “I asked about the provenance of the champagne and he was kind enough to tell me. Do you think we could visit France before we return home? I’d love to see where the grapes grow. Apparently, it can only be called champagne if…”

“Florence, stop gabbling,” Mr Wakechild said sternly, holding up a hand to cut her off. “This is not the time or place for a discourse on grapes. You can’t keep Viscount Sheernall waiting, and I interrupted a conversation to speak to you. That interesting young man has made a fortune through his business of brass engravings.”

“And I bet he did it without a title,” Florence muttered.

Clayton glared at her. “We’ll talk about your conduct tomorrow, but once you have finished each dance, I expect you to return either to my company or your sister’s.”

His tone left no room for protest.

“Yes, Daddy,” she answered meekly, determining that she would look for Cordelia not him. She walked towards the ballroom in search of her partner.

No, not in search of him, she corrected. She was required to make herself visible and wait for him to approach her. How stupid all the rules were. Her jaw tightened. She took five deep breaths as Miss Vavasour, her last governess, had taught her.

It didn’t help. Rather than looking forward to the rest of the evening, the thought of an interview with her father was a dark cloud blotting out the rest of the evening’s sparkle.

ChapterFive

The conversation took place the following morning in the sitting room of the Wakechild’s suite at the hotel. It was luxurious surroundings for a scolding but that didn’t make it any easier. Florence could count on one hand the number of occasions Clayton Wakechild had raised his voice at his children, so as always, the lecture was delivered in a calm and quiet tone that resonated with disappointment rather than fury. That only made it worse to hear, of course, as the disappointment burrowed deep into Florence and nested where it would be able to wake and remind her at any moment.

“Last night you were almost noticed for the wrong reasons. Conversing with lower classes, and a male at that! Do you want to be ruined and stand no chance of marriage?”

“Daddy, we’ve spoken about this already time and time again,” Florence said. “I don’t want to be used to further your business like a piece of machinery, and your obsession with the aristocracy is silly. The nicest person there was the brass engraver.”

Her father sighed. “It isn’t the business; it’s our family. We’re new money and I’m tired of doors being closed to me. To my children. Ashley needs a wife and he’s been rejected twice.”

Florence felt a twinge of guilt. Not having an aristocracy in place didn’t mean there weren’t vigilantly regulated levels of pre-eminence in American society. The older the wealth, the higher up the tiers of the de-facto aristocracy a family was. The Wakechild’s fortune came from manufacturing and trade, which in itself was bad enough for the members of society who had made their money in earlier generations. Florence’s grandfather had started Wakefield Dye Manufacturers, though it had been Clayton’s ambition and business acumen that had seen profits soar and the premises expand. One generation was too short a time to see if the wealth would last. Doors were indeed closed, so it was little wonder Clayton wanted to use his children to advance all their causes. It rankled that she should be used to help her brother’s marriage prospects, however, and there was no guarantee it would work in any case.

Lavinia Bishop, Florence’s mother, had been the daughter of a baronet, and her family had rejected her for that very reason. It had done no good to the family for Clayton to parade his own aristocratic wife.

“I’ll be frank with you, as you are usually blunt with me,” Clayton said. “You are getting older. By your age, your mother had one child and was pregnant with another.”

“And what good did that do her given that she’s been dead for the past fifteen years!” Florence exclaimed.

Her father drew a sharp breath and turned away, suddenly engrossed in the painting of a pastoral scene on the wall.

Florence clapped her hands over her mouth. “Daddy, I’m sorry!”