The Princess Plan. Julia London

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      Eliza realized with a jolt that the woman must be one of the ballroom hostesses Caroline had warned them about. Her function was to ensure that all dance sets were filled, and all unattached ladies had a partner. “If you don’t want to find yourself dancing with old, leering bachelors, you best avoid them,” Caroline had advised.

      The woman snorted her displeasure at Eliza and commanded her to hold out her wrist, tied her dance card to it, then pointed to a group of young women. “Wait there,” she said, and turned away, presumably to find her an old, leering bachelor.

      Eliza looked at the small group of women huddled in a corner. Well, that was a motley lot of wallflowers. One of them was picking at her sleeve, unravelling a thread. Another’s mask was so large that she had to tilt her chin up to keep it on. Eliza might be an old spinster, but she was not joining that group.

      She glanced slyly at the ballroom hostess, who was occupied with berating another young woman unfortunate enough to have been caught without a dance partner. She’d thought it curious how a gown and a proper mask could transform a person so utterly in the space of a moment, but Eliza was indeed transformed. Once upon a time, she’d been terribly obedient and quick to please. She’d thought that was the way good young women who would make good young wives were supposed to behave. A review of her life might suggest she was too quick to please, for when Mr. Asher Daughton-Cress had asked her to be patient with him and the offer he would definitely make for her hand, she had not questioned him, because she was naive. She had trusted him because he told her to. And besides, he’d assured her he loved her desperately. But she’d discovered, far too late, long after the situation could be repaired, well after everyone else knew what she did not, that he’d been courting another woman.

      A woman with twenty thousand pounds a year, thank you.

      To whom he was now married and with whom he shared three lovely children.

      That incident, which was the talk of London for what seemed weeks, had taught Eliza valuable lessons. One, she would never ever suffer the pains of a broken heart again, because there was nothing quite like it—she had wanted to die, unable to grasp even the idea that one person could lie to another person so completely and without remorse. And two, never again would she please others for the sake of pleasing, and tonight, of all nights, she would not abide it. She would never again have an opportunity to attend a royal ball and she refused to be shackled to a group of undesirable wallflowers whom men were forced by etiquette to dance with, or worse, around whom leering old gents lingered.

      So she quickly glanced around and spotted a footman slipping through a door that was disguised as part of the wall. She brashly followed him on a hop and a skip, escaping the eagle-eyed gaze of the hostess and sliding in through the door behind the footman before anyone could stop her.

      She found herself in a passageway of maybe five feet in length and perhaps only three feet in width. At the other end was a similarly disguised door. The walls in the passageway were panelled, and a single wall sconce provided light.

      In other words, within ten minutes of entering the rarefied halls of Kensington Palace, Eliza had put herself in a servants’ passageway. No wonder Caroline had insisted she stay close so that she wouldn’t do anything inappropriate.

      She didn’t mean to stay for more than a moment. She’d just wanted to avoid the hostess until she’d gone off to terrorize someone else. While Eliza pondered how long that would take, the door at the opposite end of the passageway suddenly swung open. A servant entered, carrying a tray of drinks on his shoulder. He looked at her as he moved toward the door she’d just entered through. “You’re not to be here, madam.”

      “My apologies. But the room is so crowded, is it not? I need only a moment.” She made a show of fanning her face. “I won’t move from here, I swear it.”

      The servant shrugged and took one of the glasses from his tray. “Might as well have one of these, then.”

      “What is it?”

      “Punch.”

      He swung open the door into the ballroom, and a great cacophony of voices and music blasted the small space before the door swung closed behind him, silencing it all to a din.

      Eliza sniffed at the punch. Then sipped it. Then imprudently downed it, draining the glass, because the punch was delicious. How tingly it made her feel!

      Moments later, the footman suddenly appeared again and extended his nearly empty tray for her glass. “Thank you,” Eliza said sheepishly. “That was very good.” She took one of the last glasses on his tray.

      “Aye, madam. It’s been amply mixed with rum.” He proceeded on, through the other door, behind which Eliza could hear the deep hum of masculine voices. And then it was quiet again.

      Who knew that rum could be so delicious? Certainly not her. She liked the soft, blurry warmth that spread through her. The sort of warmth she liked to feel at night when she was drifting off to sleep, or in a hot, sudsy bath. And yet, not like that at all.

      When the footman returned a moment later with a full tray again, Eliza was happy to take another one. She rolled her eyes when he arched a judgmental brow before going out again.

      She sipped the drink and closed her eyes as the warmth spread through her arms and legs, and then announced to herself with delight, “This is very good.”

      She supposed that the fizzy warmth of the rum was what kept her nerves from defeating her completely when the door at the other end of the passageway came open a few inches, as if someone coming through had paused. She listened curiously to the male voices all speaking the Alucian language, and then the door suddenly opened all the way, to reveal an Alucian gentleman stepping into the passageway.

      The door swung shut behind him.

      Eliza and the masked man were alone.

      He tilted his head just slightly to the left, as if he was uncertain what he’d just found. She returned his gaze with a curious one of her own. His presence was so large and the passageway so small that she felt a bit as if she was pressed up against the wall. But thanks to the rum, she was feeling rather sparkly and untroubled and, with the help of the wall, managed to curtsy with a slight lean to the right and said, “How do you do?”

      The Alucian didn’t answer.

      She supposed it was possible he didn’t speak English. Or perhaps he was shy. If he was painfully shy, he deserved her compassion. She’d had a friend who had suffered terrible stomach pains for days when she was forced to be in society. She was married now, with six children. Apparently, she wasn’t shy away from society.

      Eliza held up her glass, making it tick-tock like a clock pendulum. “Have you tried the punch?”

      He glanced at her glass.

      “It’s delicious,” she proclaimed, and drank more of it. Perhaps as much as half of it. And then chuckled at her indelicacy. She’d forgotten most of what she knew about polite society, but she was fairly certain guzzling was frowned upon. “I hadn’t realized I was quite so parched.”

      He stood mutely.

      “It must be the language,” she murmured to herself. “Do you,” she said, enunciating very clearly and gesturing to her mouth, “speak English?”

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