“Tell me, Jane,” Elizabeth said, cocking an eyebrow. “Were there any other unwelcome callers in the night?”

For once, Jane looked as if she would have preferred pursuing her mother’s line of conversation.

“Yes . . . in a way . . . but it wasn’t like that.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “The baron’s not as bad as you think, Lizzy.”

“Believe me, Jane: He’s not as good as you think,” Elizabeth replied. “No one is.”

Yet Jane looked unconvinced.

Soon after, Cuthbert Cannon and his Limbs came rolling/striding in, and it was quickly decided that the captain would see to Mrs. Bennet’s entertainment while Elizabeth helped Jane prepare for the ball. It was a somewhat surprising arrangement: Capt. Cannon surely had better things to do, and Mrs. Bennet was passing up the chance to do worse by insinuating herself into the baron’s household or playing Cupid for her daughters. Yet Elizabeth was too grateful to be free of her mother (and the constant danger of shame she posed) to ponder long on the oddness of it all.

She spent the next hours with her sister seeing to various lastminute details on Lord Lumpley’s behalf. Jane had been appointed the baron’s proxy, apparently, and it fell to her to make the final decisions on the placement of the orchestra, the arrangement of the card tables, the tartness of the punch, the ratio of grapes to apples in the fruit bowl, etcetera. In addition to being a great honor, this was a great responsibility. Everything in the ballroom and the drawing room and the long portrait-lined gallery connecting them had to be just so, and one servant after another came to Jane for direction, or simply glared at the upstart girl who dared to play mistress for the day.

Yet through it all Jane remained her usual agreeable, serene self. Elizabeth, however, found each new triviality rubbing her nerves more raw. What should she care about the desperate shortage of oysters or how to keep the Lumbards from mixing with their mortal enemies the Maydestones? Especially when she could look out any of the huge windows in that wing of the house and see soldiers drilling with muskets, hammering boards together into what looked like shields, marching up the road bound for who knew where or what?

“Oh, sod the Cotswold!” she finally snapped when Jane took a little too much time deliberating over the proper arrangement of the cheese plate. “And sod the ruddy Wensleydale, too!”

“Lizzy!”

Elizabeth clapped her hands over her mouth, hardly believing what had just popped from it.

“Oh, Jane. Forgive me, please,” she said when she could finally trust herself to speak again. “It’s just . . . I find myself feeling so . . . so . . .”

Whatever she was feeling, it didn’t come to her in anything so simple as a single word, and she had to get at her meaning another way.

“You’re supposed to be the baron’s bodyguard, not his master of ceremonies. For heaven’s sake, can’t we leave these trifles to Belgrave and the other servants?”

Jane reached out and gently took one of Elizabeth’s hands in her own.

“Don’t think I’m not frustrated, as well, Lizzy. Papa, Master Hawksworth, little Ensign Pratt, LieutenantTindall—they’re all out there in harm’s way so that we might stand here trying to keep the Stilton as far as possible from the Brie. It was our father’s wish that this be so, however, and we can only assume there is some intent behind it, for how often has he made decisions unwisely or without due consideration?”

“You mean other than when he married Mother?”

Jane gave her sister another reproachful look.

“Yes, I know. You’re right, of course,” Elizabeth sighed. “I just wish I knew what Father was up to and why he felt it necessary to be so secretive about it.”

“I suspect we’ll have answers to both those questions soon.” Jane gave Elizabeth’s hand a squeeze, then turned back to the cheese plate. “Now, I’m beginning to incline to your way of thinking on the Cotswold. It’s altogether too bold, isn’t it? Perhaps we could have someone check the larder for a block of Gloucester.”

Presently, Lord Lumpley returned with what proved to be impeccable timing: He came downstairs after all the necessary arrangements had been made and just before the arrival of the first guests. Elizabeth thought he actually looked rather good in his black coat and breeches and silvery silk vest, though he moved with a stiff-backed stiltedness that suggested his corset strings had been pulled especially tight for this night. Mrs. Bennet and Capt. Cannon reappeared then, as well, both of them looking cheery and flushed from their tour of the grounds.

This, then, was the de facto receiving line when Belgrave escorted the Goswicks into the ballroom. Mr. Goswick was actually able to bluff out an almost-convincing show of gratitude to the baron for “assuming patronage of the ball.” But Mrs. Goswick and her daughter Julia—who, like Elizabeth, was to have her coming out that night—looked as though they could barely resist pinching their noses.

“You’ve taken off your scimitars, I see,” Mrs. Goswick sniffed to Elizabeth and Jane. “Well . . . I suppose they would get in the way during the dancing, wouldn’t they?”

She led her daughter and husband off to the opposite side of the room, where they could keep company with the only truly respectable people present. Themselves.

More familiar faces soon followed, and the expressions upon them quickly grew quite familiar: strained graciousness for Lord Lumpley and Capt. Cannon, ill-concealed disdain for all the rest. Even Elizabeth’s own aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Philips, were less than warm, and the couple quickly scurried away to the refreshments table, where they pretended to admire the tasteful arrangement of the cheeses.

“So this is to be my coming out,” Elizabeth said to her sister. “It appears our neighbors would have preferred it had I stayed in.”

“Don’t worry, Lizzy. The mood will brighten once the music starts. Then you’ll need a card to keep track of all the gentlemen asking for a turn around the floor.”

Yet when the baron called for a Scotch Reel—which he proceeded to lead with Jane as his partner—no one came to Elizabeth to ask for a dance or offer an introduction to a willing partner. Even her mother, to her horror, was soon whirling this way and that with Capt. Cannon, his Limbs and wheelbarrow scattering the other dancers (when not crushing their toes).

“He’s a blackguard, you know,” someone said, and Elizabeth turned to find an eligible gentleman at her side at last—an eligible gentleman who was staring enviously at her sister and Lord Lumpley as they pranced, hand in hand, down the line.

“I do know it, LieutenantTindall,” Elizabeth said. “But my sister insists on seeing the best in everyone, including those who have none.”

“That is what makes her so special. Even the savagery your father has subjected her to could not snuff the light that shines within her lovely heart. She may parody a man when she straps on a sword, but without it she is everything any Englishwoman could hope to be.”

“How flattering,” Elizabeth said dryly. “For my sister.”

The lieutenant nodded without taking his eyes off Jane. He cut quite a figure in his red regimentals, and Elizabeth could see Mrs. Goswick and her daughter across the room watching him with nearly the same intensity he focused on her sister.

“She represents everything I fight for,” Lt. Tindall said. “I have vowed not to allow any harm to befall her.”

“Oh? I hope you won’t construe this as a criticism, but if that’s true, why are you here attending a ball instead of outside hunting dreadfuls?”

This was a criticism, of course, and it came out even more sharply than Elizabeth had intended. So sharp, in fact, that the lieutenant winced as if stung and finally faced her fully.

“Night has fallen, Miss Bennet. There is little my men can do but guard the roads and the manor house—and that they are doing already. I will rejoin them in time. For now, however, there is danger of a different sort to be dealt with right here.”