“Prudence, you are surely having a marvelous time.” Her mother beamed as if she couldn’t be prouder.
“It’s been quite enjoyable.” Yet she couldn’t escape the feeling she was the object of a joke, especially when she saw the three men with whom she’d danced visiting among themselves and laughing.
A hot rush of shame filled her, though she couldn’t say why. They couldn’t possibly be talking about her.
“Whatever is happening?” Millie asked with a frown when she rejoined Prue. “It is as if all the rogues in London not only attended this evening but are dancing.”
Prue was both relieved and concerned that her cousin felt it, too. “I thought it was just me. It is odd, isn’t it?”
The sight of Viscount Winstead across the room caused her breath to catch. She hadn’t imagined how handsome he was. But her heart sank as he joined the group of rogues. It shouldn’t come as a surprise but why did he have to be one of them? And what would it mean if he asked her to dance?
Chapter Three
Silas had never been more uncomfortable in his life. He held back the urge to tug at his cravat as Ulstead bragged about already having three dances to his name for the evening.
“You dolt.” Randolph elbowed his friend. “It’s supposed to be a dance with twelve different wallflowers at twelve different balls.”
Ulstead frowned. “Are you certain?”
Silas ignored them both, wondering again if there was any way to excuse himself from the wager. This was the first Season he’d attended balls on a regular basis, and he couldn’t say he cared for them. The crowd was too thick, the room too warm, and it felt as if the ladies watched his every move.
“Maynard already has five.” Randolph scowled. “Seems he’s determined to keep his money rather than hand it over to one of us.”
“Given how many balls are scheduled in the coming weeks, I have no doubt you can catch him if you wish,” Silas said drily, unable to believe he thought of the two men as friends. Could they not see how wrong the wager was?
“How many do you have?” Ulstead asked Silas.
“Three.” The dances had made Silas feel terrible, and he didn’t think he could go through with more. They were using the unsuspecting ladies for their own personal gain. Surely, he wasn’t the only one who felt dreadful about that.
“The one I asked looked so grateful I thought she might faint.” Randolph chortled.
“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Silas muttered. “You can’t possibly be enjoying this.”
“Stop being such a curmudgeon.” Randolph frowned. “We have made the entire Season for some ladies by asking for a dance.”
That was what made it so wrong. They were giving them false hope. Silas knew how cruel it felt to be served that, something he’d experienced years ago when he presented his windmill idea to a professor who’d encouraged him to sketch out his plans and investigate the idea’s merits.
The feeling of potential success, as if he were poised on the edge of something great, had been a heady one. Later, Ridley, a more experienced professor, dismissed it with barely a glance at all of Silas’s hard work.
He doubted any of his friends had experienced that same upset.
Looking at the wishful faces of the ‘wallflowers’ with whom they were supposed to dance made him almost ill. Dancing with them once only to ignore them for the rest of Season seemed like poor sport, if not cruel.
Silas couldn’t let it go. “What happens when you come upon them again? Do you intend to simply snub them?”
“Yes.” Randolph didn’t hesitate. He stared at Silas with an incredulous look as if he were the one who wasn’t thinking. “What is wrong with you this evening, Winstead? You are talking like a madman.”
“You had best find a lady and ask her to dance or you’ll be too far behind the rest of us to catch up.” Ulstead nudged him with his elbow and tipped his head toward the rear of the ballroom. “There’s one ripe for the picking.”
Silas followed the direction of his gaze and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Lady Prudence looked lovely in a green gown that brought to mind the moss of the forest floor, her pale hair arranged in almost a halo above her head. The sight reminded him that he’d thought her an angel for a brief moment after he fell from the tree.
She was visiting with two older ladies, one of whom had to be her mother based on a faint resemblance.
“Think of the money.” Randolph nodded when Silas glanced at him. “You could use it more than any of us I would think.”
Five hundred pounds. He couldn’t deny the lure of it. To have enough funds to build and test his design was something he’d thought impossible. It could be his if he just danced a few times.