that, then I will take you home with me and keep you as my little girl until the next Season begins.”
It felt good to be so loved but Elise didn’t want to be her father’s little girl anymore. She was eighteen, for heaven’s sake. Poised to make her come-out with all her friends. She’d had an entire wardrobe made up for the Season. Taken dancing lessons. Polished her singing and piano playing. She was on the cusp of a new life.
If Mama could choose a dress and make her way downstairs, that is.
“I will go fetch her,” she said with determination.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Papa told her. “Besides, here she comes now.” Looking up at his countess descending the stairs, he called out, “My darling, you are a sight to behold.”
Mama laughed girlishly, the way she always did when Papa complimented her. “Oh, Shelby, you make me feel young again with that frisky look in your eyes.”
Elise grunted. This was not the time for her parents to ogle one another. They were old and married, not two people flirting at a ball, trying to be noticed by the other.
Her father kissed her mother’s cheek and, taking her arm, he looked over his shoulder. “Coming, Elise?”
She sniffed and followed them out to the waiting carriage. She sat opposite them, hoping they wouldn’t be too late. Even if the receiving line had already begun, they could join it at the end and pretend they’d been there at the same time the others had arrived.
Mama frowned. “Elise, my dear, we haven’t talked about this but I want you to refrain from your bluestocking ways tonight. You are not to talk about anything intellectual. No politics or literature. No conversation involving the government or science. Keep to safe topics. Such as the weather,” her mother instructed.
She didn’t want to change who she was. Elise did want to wed, though. She wanted to find a worthy man and bear him children. She just needed to attract a man who didn’t mind that she read voraciously and was interested in the world about her. She found geography and politics endlessly fascinating. Economics. Literature. The sciences.
“Wouldn’t it be wise to find a gentleman who shares my interests, Mama?”
“Oh, no. That won’t do at all. Men don’t want a woman who is smarter than they are.” She shook her head. “You are more intelligent than most men in Parliament, Elise, but you can’t show it. Men of the ton will be put off by that, especially those perusing the Marriage Mart.”
Before she could reply, her mother continued. “Try to dance with as many highly titled gentlemen as you can.”
Elise blurted out, “Surely, not the Bad Dukes?”
Lady Shelby’s nose scrunched up in distaste. “What do you know of that pair?”
Quite a lot, actually. She had Soames, her favorite footman, save the newspapers for her each day and devoured them. Besides all the interesting articles, she couldn’t help but devote a little time to reading the gossip columns. Why, just this week, an unnamed viscount had been caught in bed with his sister-in-law. A certain earl was rumored to have murdered his wife. And the two outrageously behaved Bad Dukes, the Duke of Charm and the Duke of Disrepute, had been involved in three separate antics, causing Polite Society to wag their tongues at the pair.
“I heard a few of my friends mention them,” she said meekly, not wanting a lecture from her mother while she protected Soames at the same time. If Lady Shelby knew Elise had been reading the gossip columns, Mama would ban her from reading any part of the newspapers. They were full of information that she gobbled up and she couldn’t risk that occurring.
“Oh, I forgot,” her mother said. “Take off your spectacles.”
“Why?”
“You are tolerably pretty without them. If you wear them, however, no man will ask you to dance.”
“You know everything is a blur at a distance when I don’t wear them, Mama.”
“That’s quite all right. You can see up close perfectly fine and distinguish the various men who ask you to partner with them when they stand close to you. Now, put them away.”
Begrudgingly, Elise slipped off the small, gold spectacles and slid them into her reticule.
By now, the carriage began to slow and her heartbeat sped up. The driver stopped and let them out and they had to walk two blocks to their destination because the streets were snarled with carriages. She hoped the dust wouldn’t cling to her new