The Only Honest Man in Mayfair

"Enough," you say.

It comes out steadier than you feel. Your hands are shaking, so you put them behind your back, broken fan and all.

Captain Kettlewell makes a sound like a kettle coming to the boil. "Miss Sowerby. I, we, that is, my friend was speaking in jest..."

"No, he wasn't," you say.

"No," Rowland Ingleby agrees. "I wasn't."

The captain looks at him in despair. Rowland doesn't look away from you.

"Bede," he says, "go and dance with someone."

"I don't think I should leave you..."

"Go and dance with someone very plain and very rich and tell her she's beautiful. You'll make her evening. I've clearly ruined Miss Sowerby's."

The captain goes, redder than ever, with a hunted bow in your direction. His boots squeak on the wet tiles all the way to the door.

Then it's only the two of you and the rain.

You've imagined this a hundred times. Not this man, not these words, but this moment: the one where a suitor's mask slips and you see the ledger behind his eyes. You always imagined you'd cry. Or slap someone. Or say something so cutting it would be repeated at every breakfast table in London.

What you actually feel, standing among Lady Bellingrove's orange trees with a broken fan behind your back, is curiosity.

"Well?" you say. "Aren't you going to apologize?"

"For which part?"

"Most men would start with 'two heads'."

"That was badly put." He considers. "You have one head. It's a very good one. I noticed it from across the room."

"Don't."

"I'm not flattering you. I'm correcting the record." He picks up his glass from the edge of a planter, looks at it, and puts it down again without drinking. "You want me to say I didn't mean it. I can't. I need money, Miss Sowerby. A great deal of it, very quickly. You have more of it than anyone in England. I came here tonight to meet you because of that, and I'd be insulting you twice if I pretended otherwise."

Nine proposals. Nine men on their knees in your father's drawing room, talking about your eyes. Not one of them ever said the word money out loud.

"Why?" you ask.

"Why what?"

"Why do you need it? Cards? Horses? A mistress with expensive taste?"

Something moves across his face, very fast, and is gone. "I won't tell you that."

"So you're honest only up to a point."

"I'm honest all the way to the point. I just don't have to walk you past it." He tilts his head. The lantern above him puts gold in his hair and shadows under his cheekbones that ought to be illegal. "You're not crying."

"Did you expect me to?"

"I expected something. Tears. Your aunt. A footman with a horsewhip. Instead you're looking at me as if I were a column of figures that doesn't add up."

"You don't."

"No," he says, and for the first time he smiles, and it's not the lazy, practiced smile you saw across the ballroom. It's smaller and tireder and much more dangerous. "I never have."

The orchestra starts a waltz. The sound drifts in through the open door, muffled by glass and rain.

"Let me make it up to you," he says. "One dance. You can step on my feet as hard as you like."

"No."

"I see." He bows. "Then I'll leave you to the orange trees."

"I didn't say no to the dance," you say. "I said no to here. If you want to dance with me, Lord Hollinsby, you can ask me in the ballroom. In front of everyone. Including the woman in bronze silk who just told me every gentleman at White's has held something of mine in his hand."

He goes still. "Letitia said that?"

"Lady Pargeter. Yes."

A muscle moves in his jaw. Then he offers you his arm.

"Miss Sowerby," he says, "it would be my honor to be publicly humiliated by you."

He doesn't take you in on his arm. That's the clever part. He walks you to the door of the conservatory, bows, and leaves you there, and you walk back to Aunt Tabitha alone with your broken fan.

Then, in front of two hundred people, Rowland Ingleby crosses Lady Bellingrove's ballroom.

The whole room watches him do it. The man who hasn't danced with anyone all night, who hasn't danced with an unmarried girl all Season, threads through the crowd, past the girl in pink and the lady in lilac and three mothers who actually step into his path, and stops in front of you.

He bows. Deep. Correct.

"Miss Sowerby. Will you do me the honor of this waltz?"

You let it go on. You count three, very slowly, while two hundred people hold their breath.

"Ask me again," you say.

Someone gasps. Aunt Tabitha, beside you, makes a sound that might be a snore.

His eyes flash green. Then, God help you, he laughs, a real laugh, low and startled, and goes down on one knee on Lady Bellingrove's polished floor.

"Miss Sowerby," he says, loud enough for the whole room. "I beg you."

You put your hand in his. "Since you beg."

He's a beautiful dancer. Of course he is. His hand is warm through your glove, his other hand light at your waist, and he moves you through the turns as though the floor were tilting just for you. Everyone is watching. You can feel their stares like candle heat.

Across the room Letitia Pargeter stands perfectly still, and her face looks like a mirror someone has dropped.

"You know her," you say.

"Everyone knows her."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting during a waltz." His mouth curves. "You're very good at this."

"Dancing?"

"Making a man feel exactly as small as he ought to." He turns you, and his voice drops. "I'm sorry about the two heads, Ava. Truly."

You haven't given him leave to use your name. You don't tell him so.

Your father is waiting up in the Russell Square library, still in his evening clothes, his big Birmingham hands wrapped around a glass of brandy he hasn't touched.

"Hollinsby," he says, before you've taken off your gloves. "Hollinsby! On his knees! It'll be in every paper by noon. That man hasn't a feather to fly with. He's mortgaged to the eyebrows. His father was a drunk and a gamester, and if he thinks he's getting one penny of mine..."

"He told me."

Your father stops. "Told you what, Ava?"

"That he needs money. That he came to marry mine. He said it straight out, Papa. He didn't pretend."

Gilbert Sowerby stares at you as if you'd started speaking Portuguese. "And that's to his credit, is it?"

"I don't know yet," you say honestly, and go up to bed.

You don't sleep. You lie in the dark listening to the rain and doing sums, the way other girls count sheep. A mortgaged estate. A debt he won't name. A deadline: Michaelmas, five months away. A man who knelt on a ballroom floor because you told him to, and laughed while he did it.

You know what every other suitor was worth. You knew it the moment they opened their mouths.

You have no idea what this one is worth. That's the problem. That's the whole, sleepless, fascinating problem.

At nine the next morning there's a knock at your sitting-room door. It's Hebden, the butler, looking pained.

"Miss Sowerby. Lord Hollinsby is in the hall. He has his hat in his hand, miss, and he says he'll wait all day if necessary. Your father is threatening to set the dogs on him."

You put down your coffee. You find you're smiling.

"Tell my father not to bother with the dogs," you say. "Send Lord Hollinsby to the study. I have terms."