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“It is rather difficult to speak to anyone in this situation,” admitted her closest friend, Megan Phillips.

If it weren’t for Megan, she’d know no one in this sea of glistening, gleaming faces. Her handkerchief was already limp from patting it against her forehead and neck. “All this trouble to dress one’s finest just to be ignored. I don’t know how long I shall be able to stand it.”

Megan turned worried eyes toward her. “Oh no, don’t say that. You know it’s such an opportunity we’ve been given by your godmother. I’m sure things will soon improve.” Megan craned her neck above the crowd. “Where did she go? I haven’t seen her since we arrived.”

“In the card room, I would say,” Jessamine said sourly. The picture Lady Bess had painted Jessamine’s father of a London season was far from the reality. Jessamine shook her head. If her father could see her now, he’d whisk her back home in a thrice, lamenting the cost of her gowns and all the other falderals deemed necessary for a young lady’s coming out in London. She flicked her fan open, eyeing the ivory brisé sticks with distaste, and stirred some of the warm air against her face.

“Look at that gentleman there.” She snapped the fan closed and pointed it toward a young man whose florid jaws bulged over his neck cloth. “He looks close to asphyxiating any moment from his own cravat. How can men be so ridiculous?”

Megan swallowed a giggle behind her own fan. “Careful, he’ll hear you.”

“How anyone can hear anyone in this babble is beyond me, yet they all go on as if anyone cares what they say.” She studied the ladies and gentlemen making a slow progression past her. As far as she could make out, a rout was merely a place to see and be seen. No one seemed to be listening to anyone, yet their mouths kept moving, their smiles pasted on their faces like painted dolls.

She shuddered at the amount of rouge she’d observed on women’s faces, both young and old. What went on in London! And the gentlemen were worse, dressed like popinjays with more jewelry than the women.

“Perhaps if we smile at some of the young ladies our age, we’ll be able to meet them.”

“My lips hurt from all the smiling I’ve had to do since arriving in London,” Jessamine muttered. “I refuse to do so any longer, since it hasn’t done us a bit of good.” To illustrate her point, she scowled at a lady sporting a purple turban with three curled ostrich plumes of the same shade, which thrust themselves against her male companion’s upswept curls, so full of pomade they reflected the light from the chandeliers hanging above them.

“I know you’re not in the best frame of mind, but things will get better, I’m sure. Things just . . . just take time.”

Jess’s lips tightened in displeasure at Megan’s reminder. How she wished at times that Megan weren’t her best friend. It would have made things easier. To be constantly reminded—but no, she would not think about
him
!
He
was as good as dead to her.

She felt like one of those families that had exorcised a wayward son from their midst, the father banning the mere mention of the loved one’s name in his hearing.

It would be humorous if it still didn’t hurt so much—and weren’t nigh on impossible to avoid hearing her beloved’s name since he was Megan’s brother. Thank goodness he was no longer in England.

It should have been the happiest time of her life, yet she was
miserable. A year ago she would scarce have imagined herself among the fashionable world in a London drawing room, enjoying a season.

Her mouth turned downward, and the tears that were never far threatened to cloud the vision of the glittering array of ladies and gentlemen parading before her.

A year ago, she’d have envisioned herself betrothed by now, perhaps even married, to the finest, handsomest—no! The streak of rebellion and bitterness, a streak new and foreign to her which had invaded her nature almost a year ago and poisoned everything around her, reasserted itself.

The man in question—Rees Phillips—was not the finest, handsomest, noblest gentleman. He was the lowest, most despicable, shabbiest cad she’d ever known! He had no right to be happy when he had made her so miserable!

“Your frown could crack marble.”

Jessamine jumped at the lazy drawl. Turning, she glared to see if the gentleman standing beside her had indeed been rude enough to address her.

Glaring in this case entailed craning her neck upward if she didn’t want to waste the effort on a bleached white shirt front and pristine cravat.

“Are you addressing me, sir?”

Amused brown eyes stared down into hers. They might have been attractive if the pale forehead hadn’t been topped by a mop of red hair. The gentleman’s lips quirked upward. “You recognized the description?”

Jessamine drew herself up to her full height. How dare he mock her suffering!

“Excuse me, sir, we have not been introduced.” With that setdown, she turned away, her chin in the air, and took Megan by the arm.

Before she could move, he stepped before her and bowed. “I beg your pardon.” Then he turned and wandered off.

She fumed, watching him move with ease across the crowded drawing room.

Ruth Axtell
has loved the Regency period of England ever since discovering Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer in high school. She knew she wanted to be a writer even earlier. The two loves were joined with the publication of her first book,
Winter Is Past
, a Regency, in 2003.

Since then she has published several Regencies, as well as Victorian England and late nineteenth-century coastal Maine settings.

With
Moonlight Masquerade
, her fourteenth novel, Ruth returns to Regency England.

Besides writing, Ruth always yearned to live in other countries. From three childhood summers spent in Venezuela, a junior year in Paris, an au pair stint in the Canary Islands, and a few years in the Netherlands, Ruth has now happily settled on the downeast coast of Maine with her college-and high school–age children and two cats.

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