Cinderella in the Regency Ballroom: Her Cinderella Season / Tall, Dark and Disreputable

She watched him closely, and then smiled. ‘How do I feel?’ she mused. She took a moment to consider the question, her brow furrowed becomingly. ‘Well, I am enjoying myself, of course. No one spending any amount of time with your mother could do otherwise. But …’ she sighed ‘… I admit to a little anxiety as well. To be honest, I hadn’t expected everything to feel so alien.’

‘Alien?’ he repeated, surprised. ‘How so?’

‘I was born to this world …’ she gestured about them ‘… just as surely as you were, Mr Alden. My father was a wealthy gentleman landowner. My mother’s family has multiple connections to the nobility.’ She shrugged. ‘But the last years of my life have been so drastically different from all of this, and I find that those years have altered the way that I view certain things.’

She fascinated him more every second. ‘Would you share some specifics?’ he asked.

‘Well, all this, for example. Chester House.’ She glanced back towards the house and at the guests they could glimpse wandering through the vast and varied gardens. ‘It’s fascinating and beautiful and educational. I’m very grateful that Lord Bradington invited us to experience it all, but I can’t help but think of all the people who will never view anything like this. I walk through here and I imagine the pleasure these things would bring, the awe they might inspire, if it were all open to the public—in a museum or a pleasure garden, perhaps.’

‘Would not most Evangelicals disagree?’ he asked. ‘I thought they wish to educate the masses only so far as it will help them do their duty and accept their lot in life?’

‘I suppose you are right about that,’ Lily admitted. ‘But to stimulate the mind, to expose it to the greatness that might be achieved by man and perhaps invite it to travel along the same paths—that can never be a mistake, in my opinion.’

Her words set off a burning deep in his chest. She was lovely and generous. And you are a fool, whispered some dark and no doubt perfectly correct part of his soul. He shushed it and struggled to speak in a normal tone. ‘You interest me more by the second, Miss Beecham,’ he said. ‘You also remind me a great deal of a friend of mine.’

‘Really?’ she asked with a half-smile.

‘Truly,’ he affirmed. ‘Though you could not be more opposite on the outside,’ he said with amusement. ‘Chione is half-Egyptian. She is newly betrothed to a gentleman who spends his time searching out antiquities. He has always in the past sold them to collectors. Dragons, Chione calls them.’

Her blue eyes lit up in delight. ‘That is it exactly! Dragons, sitting atop their hordes, jealously guarding it from all but the most distinguished visitors.’

‘I shan’t tell Lord Bradington you said that.’ Jack laughed. ‘Trey, Chione’s betrothed, says that dragons pay best, though.’

‘And his fiancée says …?’

‘Oh, she’s convinced him to commit to the British Museum instead. Now everyone will be able to see the treasures he finds in his travels.’

‘I think I should quite like your friends,’ she said decisively.

Like a bolt from out of the sky, Jack suffered a moment of blinding insight. He recalled the turmoil and frustration he’d endured all day and he knew that he’d felt something similar before. It had crept up on him as Trey and Chione had grown naturally closer. Their intensifying fascination with each other and the mission they were to set out on had left him feeling shut out. Extraneous.

Was that when all this unwanted emotion had begun leaking past the barriers of his internal dams? No, he thought with a twist of gut-wrenching honesty—perhaps it might have begun even earlier, when Charles and Sophie had become so wrapped up in each other and their new family. But no matter when it had begun, there was no doubt that his every encounter with Lily Beecham intensified the problem and left a bigger breach in his internal bulwarks.

Well, he would just have to do some shoring up—and fast. He had a job to do here. He must force himself to forget such nonsense and focus on his objective.

‘I am very glad that you are not a dragon, Mr Alden.’

Her words startled him. ‘What?’

‘You have a vast deal of knowledge. You have obviously spent a great deal of time in research. Yet you don’t hide away in a study somewhere, hoarding your knowledge and expertise like artefacts or jewels. You share it. As you did today. As you do with your journal articles and speeches.’

She looked at him with something he hadn’t seen in her eyes before: respect. Esteem. Jack’s gut clenched in a visceral reaction. He’d seen a beggar child once, standing outside a bake shop, his face a picture of longing and need. God, but he felt just the same way right now. He’d been starving for that look of respect his whole life.

‘It is just as I spoke about earlier,’ she continued. ‘Your passion infects others with the urge to learn, the wish to expand their own horizons. It is a very great gift that you give to the world, and I, for one, am thankful.’

Her words were a surprise and a pleasure. And perhaps a torment. It had been as nothing to take that hungry child inside and gift him with the largest, meatiest pastry the baker had on display. Jack had even left coins in an account so the boy could return. He feared it would be a much more difficult thing to accomplish his aim and still bask in the warm glow of her regard.

A sudden image flashed in his mind’s eye—an ugly picture of his father raging, sweeping a day’s work from his desk, parchment and paper and ink scattering like dust motes through the air.

He blinked. And he hardened his heart and clenched his fist in resolve.

‘We promised honesty, Miss Beecham, did we not?’

‘We did.’

‘Then I wish to be honest with you. Chione is actually part of the reason I wanted to walk with you. I hoped to tell you a little more about her.’

Her brow furrowed in question, but she gave an encouraging nod.

‘When we spoke of my injury, I told you that my friends and I had foiled a robbery.’

‘Yes, I recall.’

‘Well, there was more to it. We were lucky to have stopped a kidnapping plot as well.’

Her eyes widened, but she did not speak.

‘Chione’s grandfather was kidnapped and held for months. The night I was shot, Trey and I and a few others only just prevented the scoundrels from taking her as well.’

She gasped. ‘Thank goodness you were there, then, and able to stop them.’

‘In fact, we were not able to stop them all. One of the villains got away. A very evil man, I’m afraid. A slaver.’

Her expression grew serious. ‘That is unfortunate. I know something of the terrible things such men do to their fellow humans. Mother and I have worked hard to educate our corner of Dorset against the evils of slavery.’

‘It is a shame that a woman like you must be familiar with the depths to which these men will sink. But I think you will understand when I tell you how worried I am. This man is obsessed with vengeance. Chione and her family may still be in grave danger from him.’

‘How horrible,’ she breathed.

They had reached the stone gate. Neither of them paid it a bit of attention. Jack steeled himself and spoke again.

‘I believe that you might be in a position to help.’

Shock widened her eyes and hitched her breath. ‘Me?’

‘Yes. You—and your cousin, Matthew Beecham.’

‘Matthew? What can he have to do with any of this? He is in America!’

‘Actually, he has gone missing.’

Now suspicion darkened her eyes and clouded her features. ‘How could you possibly know such a thing?’

‘Miss Beecham—Lily,’ Jack said, half-pleading. ‘You appear to be well aware that slavery remains a reality in America, just as it does in the British colonies. It is the trade in slaves that has been made illegal in our country and the import of new slaves that has been outlawed in theirs. But apparently Captain Batiste, the slaver we spoke of, misses the days of putting his ship into port and selling poor souls like cattle right off his deck.’

‘But what has any of that to do with Matthew?’

‘I’m nearly there. From what I can gather, your cousin got into some kind of trouble with Batiste. A debt of some sort. Batiste demanded repayment—in the form of some adjustments made to a few of his ships. False compartments, secret holds, that sort of thing. All to enable him to resume his illegal trafficking in people, with those slaveholders unscrupulous enough to deal with him.’