Was it selfish, heartless, to want to live again?
Her mother-in-law wanted her to go. So did her sisters-in-law. And Sir Humphrey - Hedley's /father/ - had even told her she must dance.
Would anyone offer to partner her, though?
Surely /someone /would.
She would dance if someone asked her.
Perhaps the viscount…
She chuckled aloud at the absurd thought as she turned onto the footpath that was a shortcut to the house.
Perhaps the viscount was ninety years old and bald and toothless. /And /married.
3
"I WISH," Louisa Rotherhyde said as she stood with Vanessa in the assembly rooms watching all the late arrivals and nodding and smiling in greeting at any acquaintance - at /everyone, /in other words - who passed close to them, "Viscount Lyngate would turn out to be tall, blond, and handsome and no more than twenty-five years old and charming and amiable and not at all high in the instep. And I wish he would turn out to like dumpy, mousy-haired females of very modest fortunes - well, no fortune at all, in fact - and marginally agreeable manners and years to match his own. I suppose I need not wish that he were rich. Doubtless he is." Vanessa fanned her face and laughed. "You are not dumpy," she assured her friend. "And your hair is a pretty shade of light brown. Your manners are very agreeable indeed, and your character is your fortune. And you have a lovely smile. Hedley used to say so." "Bless his heart," Louisa said. "But the viscount has a friend with him.
Perhaps /he /will see fit to become passionately attached to me - if he should happen to be personable, that is. And it would help if he were in possession of a sizable fortune too. It is all very well, Nessie, to have dances and assemblies and dinners and parties and picnics galore, but one always sees exactly the same faces at every entertainment.