‘Lilly?’ Ella’s voice was quiet.
‘Hmm?’ I answered, trying to peer over the heads of the crowd to spot whether Sir Philip was closing in.
‘Why did you ask Ed- I mean Mr Conway to accompany us?’
I stopped trying to peer, and started trying to think of an answer very, very quickly.
‘Well… I knew you weren’t that fond of Sir Philip’s attentions. So I thought if I’d ask somebody else along, somebody Sir Philip didn’t know yet, maybe he would keep him busy for the night, and you wouldn’t be bothered.’ I shrugged. ‘Sorry it didn’t work.’
‘Oh. That’s all?’
‘Yes. Why?’
Ella seemed to relax. ‘Nothing. I was just curious.’
Nothing my foot!
‘Well,’ I added teasingly, ‘I had hoped this Mr Conway might be fond of flowers. In that case, he’d certainly have distracted Sir Philip for the entire night.’
That actually brought a little smile to Ella’s face. ‘No, he doesn't like flowers, they give him hay fev-’
She clamped her hand over her mouth.
‘What did you say?’ I asked, pretending not to have heard her slip.
‘N-nothing. Nothing, really.’
She looked away from me, to the left. I followed her gaze and saw Edmund standing with his back towards us, staring out of one of the enormous windows, into the black night. The yearning in Ella’s eyes was so immense, it hurt to watch. Quickly, I looked away.
What would it be like, the thought shot through my head, to care about another person so completely that you couldn’t live without them? To care about a man?
The image of a face appeared in my mind - cold, hard, forbidding and so completely unreachable. I shoved the image away with all my might.
To hell with it! To hell with him! What would it be like to care about a man? I didn’t ever intend to find out! If this tragedy of Ella’s had taught me anything, it was that men brought nothing but trouble. Trouble, and too many bouquets of flowers.
‘Ah! Miss Ella! There you are.’
Blast!
My head whipped around. There he was - Sir Philip Wilkins, the evil one. Why had I let my guard down? Why had I let my thoughts wander? Now he had discovered us.
I started forward, to place myself before my sister. But then, something else started, quicker than I was: the music.
With a few steps, Wilkins was in front of my sister, and bowed.
‘My dear Miss Ella. May I ask for the honour of your hand for the first dance?’
Was it only I who thought there had been a slight pause before the words ‘for the first dance?’
Ella shivered like an aspen.
‘Y-yes, Sir Philip. Of course.’
There was a thump and a muttered curse from the left. If I was not very mistaken, Edmund had just tried to punch through the wall.
Wilkins, oblivious to both him and me, took Ella’s shivering hand and led her off onto the dance floor, as the first notes of a quadrille floated through the ballroom. Ella threw a look over her shoulder, a last, long, desperate look, in answer to which I could do nothing but look back, helplessly.
Then Wilkins spoke to her, and she looked away from me.
Rage thundering within me, I stared after the fiend as he led my poor little sister off to her doom. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I could protect her while we just standing around, put myself as a barrier between him and her - but as soon as the dancing started, that was over. I couldn’t interfere on the dance floor, not without making a scandal that would ruin my little sister’s reputation.
Was he going to propose now? Could you propose while dancing with a lady? You had to kneel down to propose, didn’t you? I had to admit, I had little experience in the matter. Any man who had ever dared to fancy me had been chased away long before he got that far. Could you kneel down while dancing, or would the other dancers trip over you?
Such questions and a million more assaulted me as I tried to burn a hole into blasted Wilkins’ back with the sheer force of my gaze. This man was going to ruin the life of my beloved sister! Oh, if only this weren’t a ballroom. If only I were alone with him, and had a parasol with a nicely sharpened tip in my hands, I would…!
‘Excuse me?’ I heard a man’s voice from behind me. ‘Are you intending to murder him in a dark alley later on? If so, I’m afraid I will have to stop you.’
A Waist of Tigers
I whirled around, my heart pounding.
‘What? Who said that?’
Behind me, or rather in front of me now that I was facing him, stood a tall young man with long, curly dark brown hair. He wore an easy smile on his face and a triangular patch of beard on his chin that wasn’t really a beard, just a statement: look, I can grow hair here, if I want to.
‘W-what did you mean? Who… who do you think I was looking at?’
‘Old Flip over there.’ He nodded towards where Sir Philip and Ella were dancing. Did he mean Sir Philip? But I could have sworn that wasn’t what he said.
‘Who?’
‘Flip. Well, Sir Philip to you, probably. Are you planning to assassinate him? You looked like you were. So I thought I’d ask. I’m his friend, you see, and friends usually try to prevent that sort of thing - their friends getting assassinated, that is. Always such a messy business, and funeral costs are steep these days.’
I shook my head, having no clue what to say to that - particularly considering I wasn’t even supposed to talk to this man. You weren’t supposed to talk to anybody unless you knew them, and had been introduced to them. That’s how society worked.
‘Who… who are you?’ I finally managed.
‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ His smile widened and he gave a snappy bow that made his mahogany locks fly. ‘My name is Carter, Captain James Carter to be precise. I apologize for accosting you thus without being formerly introduced, but when there is something important at stake, like the impending violent slaughter of a close friend, I tend to forget social niceties.’
I looked back and forth between Wilkins on the dance floor and this fine specimen of military manhood in front of me.
‘You are a friend of Sir Philip's?’
‘I believed I already mentioned that, yes.’
My eyes, which had been fixed on his face before, wandered down to take in the rest of him. He didn’t look like the average man, exactly. For starters, he wasn’t wearing a uniform - very strange for military men, who generally used their shiny red coats to attract silly girls like flies. Instead, he was wearing a dark blue tailcoat and beneath it a waistcoat decorated with…