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you might have known if you paid any such attention to the news that matters, the eldest son of the Marchioness Northampton.”
    It took every iota of control I had not to cringe.
    “She is, much to London’s delight, throwing a ball in honor of her son’s successful return,” Fanny continued. “The Honorable Helmsley has requested your company.” Every word dropped between us like the most delicate of hammers; finely made and damnably hard.
    I set my jaw. “I don’t want to.”
    “We are going,” Fanny pronounced firmly, with the finality of a sealed bargain.
    “When is this ball?” I demanded.
    “Tonight.”
    My stomach twisted. “Fanny, I don’t—”
    “We are going,” she repeated, no louder but much slower, “tonight.”
    I would have slumped, but my corset refused the allowance. As the toast I’d managed to eat surged back into my throat, I swallowed hard and managed, “As you wish.”
    Fanny waited until I’d picked up my tea, unaware that I was trying to drown the knot of hysteria gathering in my chest, before returning her own attention to her meal. “Now,” she continued lightly, “we must think carefully on your gown. It will take all day to prepare.”
    I wanted to groan. Instead, shifting in my seat, I glared at my food and attacked it with as much restrained savagery as I could get away with. I had to find a way to sneak away from this rotted ball. I had no interest in this pompous Earl Compton, and even less interest in his mother, who had decided early in my social appearances that I was something to be pitied, watched like a squirming bug, and as she put it, kept from my own ambition .
    The Marchioness’s little salon was known in Society columns as the Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior. The gossips referred to their vicious circle as L.A.M.B.
    I entertained fantasies of taking the slaughter knife to the whole lot of them.
    No matter how well-intentioned Teddy’s request, I knew no such invite could have gone through without the Marchioness’s approval. The very lateness of its arrival suggested her hand in it. For some unknown reason, she wanted Mad St. Croix’s daughter at her ball.
    And Fanny, bless her ambitious heart, was going to serve me on a silver platter.
    As the woman droned on about colors, fabrics and style, my fingers tightened on the delicate handle of my teacup. I wanted to be anywhere but that ballroom.
    Specifically, I wanted to be below the drift and collecting my bounty, talking to the street doves—bloody bells, I would have settled for Micajah Hawke’s smug scrutiny.
    “And, Cherry.”
    I blinked, mouth smiling automatically. “Yes, Fanny?”
    Her blue eyes met mine, as direct as an admiral at his own helm. “If you make one misstep, I’ll see that your books are locked away for a fortnight.”
    My throat ached from holding back my temper. It lanced into a sharp pain behind my right eye, and my free hand fisted into my skirt. “Yes, of course,” I murmured.
    It wasn’t her fault. I’d always been a difficult child.
    But for this brief moment in time, I seriously considered setting fire to her skirts.
    W ith no more warning than Fanny’s imperious directive, I found myself upstairs after breakfast, stripped down, scrubbed from head to toe and draped in a robe as Betsy and Mrs. Booth collaborated on the design of my hair.
    Esther Booth was the reason the house didn’t fall to disrepair. She ran it with an iron disposition disrupted only by the subtle indulgences of her husband, and although they were lacking in children, she’d done all right by me.
    Even if I was forced to sit still for hours as Betsy and Mrs. Booth argued, debated, experimented and improvised on my waist-length tresses.
    “You could cut it all off,” I offered, angelic innocence.
    My housekeeper gasped. “Saints preserve us,” she muttered under her breath, even as Betsy shot me a quelling frown.
    I shrugged.
    Finally, my hair was pinned and fresh flowers acquired for the