Her slipper caught.
She stumbled forward with a sharp gasp, her fan slipping from her fingers and landing on the path.
Laughter erupted, louder now.
One man stifled it behind a gloved hand, but the smile he wore was worse than any cackle—smug and seared with mockery. She’d see his face again in her sleep, she was sure of it.
“Nervous, are you not, my lady?” he drawled, voice thick with scorn.
“I’d recommend more rehearsals,” another offered, red-faced from amusement. “Has your governess failed you entirely?”
Their words stung like nettles across her skin. And yet somehow, Elizabeth managed to smile. Barely. It was a tight, trembling sort of smile.
She bent to retrieve her fan with careful grace, willing herself to carry on bravely.
Then—shove.
Someone’s hand struck her back, hard enough to send her forward again.
She landed in a patch of slick earth hidden beneath the neat green lawn. Her hands sank into the mud, her gloves ruined. Worse, when she pushed herself up, her skirt came with her, streaked with brown and grass-stained like a servant’s apron.
More laughter.
Gasps.
And then, a whisper, loud enough to carry: “Poor Lady Elizabeth.”
She looked up. A young lady stood a few feet away, half hidden behind a group of simpering debutantes, her expression bright with delight. Elizabeth met her eyes and knew.
Shehad done it. She had shoved her.
Elizabeth rose, slowly and without help, though her knees trembled. Her pale blue silk clung in muddy folds around her ankles, and she could feel every eye trained on her like darts.
She was humiliated. That much was true.
But worse still was the fear of what Lady Grisham would say.
Her heart pounded as the snickers grew louder, hissing like snakes. All she wanted was to disappear, to tear through the garden hedges and not stop running until the city vanished behind her.
But she stood instead. Still trembling. Still quiet.
Still there.
Lady Grisham found her with swift, predatory precision. Her eyes swept over Elizabeth’s mud-streaked gown, the torn lace, the ruined gloves. The disgust in her expression was immediate—and unrestrained.
“Clumsy little fool,” she hissed, her voice so low Elizabeth could barely hear her, but still venomous. “You are an embarrassment, Elizabeth. A walking calamity. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve made a spectacle of yourself.Again. You’ve wasted a perfectly good dress, and for what? Because you couldn’t even manage tostand?”
Elizabeth looked down at the mud on her skirt, shame creeping like frost through her limbs.
“I tried,” she whispered, though it barely left her lips.
“Move, now.” Lady Grisham pulled her close, donning a false, caring smile, playing the role of the doting stepmother, but hergrip on Elizabeth’s arm was so tight that Elizabeth felt like she’d squeeze through her skin and find bone.
“Who shoved her?” Wilhelmina stomped into the scene as Elizabeth straightened herself and Lady Grisham released her.
Her half-sister’s jaw was tight, her hands balled at her sides.
“I saw you,” Wilhelmina turned her glare toward a flushed debutante, who now shrank behind a parasol. “How very brave, to push a woman who couldn’t see you coming.”