Belle of the ball by Donna Lea Simpson Page A

meanin'. Mornin' m'lady, an' all the best o' the day to ya."

    Arabella hastened into an alcove, but saw the character, a man in a drab and shabby coat, leaving through the hall toward the back door. She rushed into the withdrawing room to find her mother sitting with a frozen expression on a sofa. She dropped down beside her. "Oh, Mother, I heard! What did he want?"
    "Money," Lady Swinley said, dully. "Always money. Money I do not have."
    So it was as bad as her mother had intimated, and maybe even worse.
    "Will they wait? If we have nothing, what can they do?"
    "They can first force us to get rid of everything in Swinley Manor. It is all given in security. And then . . . oh, Arabella!" She clutched her daughter's hands and she was shaking. "I am afraid they will take Swinley Manor away from me. I will have no home."
    Arabella's day turned dark and somber from the bright mood of just minutes earlier, but realist that she was, she knew what she had to do, and without delay. Why had she been avoiding it? Better to have it done with and everything settled than to live on in this hopeful, idiotic dream, a dream of finding congenial companionship at the very least, in marriage.
    After all, what did her prospects look like? Bessemere was a nice fellow, but he was young and still under the thumb of his mother. It would take too long to be sure of him, even if she did have a hope of bringing him around. Count Verbrachan had danced with her once or twice, and she felt his interest in her, an interest that did not seem wholly healthy or normal. He had pinched her hard on her arm, leaving a bruise, when she had refused to walk out on the terrace with him at the Connolly ball. His demeanor terrified her. Better to be bored and repulsed than frightened and cowed, Arabella decided.

    And so, Lord Pelimore would be it.
    Over the next week Arabella tried her best to find Lord Pelimore alone, but she swiftly realized that he had been offended by her disappearing with West-haven, for he pointedly ignored her and paid court to another girl, one of the giggling seventeen-year-olds he had so disparaged. She was terrified that her one chance at marriage was slipping away; and to think she had deliberately put him off! Was she mad? Finally she managed a few moments alone with him, only to find that Westhaven was there, too, watching and listening. She had refused to walk with him—though in truth she longed to—and had fled each time he appeared ready to approach her. She felt a dull ache in her chest, for she had never enjoyed a half hour so well as when they had sat together talking.
    He was outside of her experience, an adventurer, bold and wild like the land he spoke of. And yet he had listened to her prosaic stories of a childhood spent mostly at school and in Cornwall with every appearance of enjoyment. He had laughed and gazed into her eyes with . . . well, it almost looked like affection, the emotion that warmed his gray eyes to the color of smoke. And always his nearness made her tingle. The merest caress of a ringlet left her breathless! But she could not afford to whistle a fortune down the wind for mere tingling. Her mother needed her, and she would not desert her in this, her hour of need.
    With renewed determination she set herself to the task at hand. She could not let Westhaven's nearness stop her from what she was there to do; did it matter what he thought of her, after all? So in the few seconds she had as they met in the crowded ballroom, stalled near the chaperone chairs by the thick crowd around them, she went to work. Smiling demurely at Lord Pelimore and fluttering her lashes, she said, "You will have me thinking that I offended you in some way, my lord, if you do not sit this next dance out with me. In truth, I am fatigued, and you would be doing me the greatest of favors."
    Westhaven was watching her, an incredulous look in his stormy eyes.
    Pelimore squinted at her and grimaced. *'Well, if you put it that way, I'll do