But another glimpse of Daniel made Violet’s heart pound. He was in the hall again, speaking to the hostess. Being gallant and charming, no doubt, excelling at it. He could charm paint off the walls.
Violet’s anger surged. She traced the lines on Lady Victoria’s palm with a light finger. “I can tell you only what I see.”
Lady Victoria leaned forward, eager, and in the background, Daniel laughed, the sound warm and smooth.
“You will not find love where you assume,” Violet said, trying to shut out the laughter. “It might take you a long while to find love at all, and you might have to go far. You might think it hard, but from this hardship will come strength.”
Lady Victoria’s blond brows slammed together, and she snatched her hand away. “I don’t like that fortune.”
Violet shrugged, trying to look indifferent. “That is your destiny.” She truly had seen that in the girl’s palm—the lines read exactly as the Romany woman had taught her. “What we like or do not like is not of interest to Fate.”
Lady Victoria got huffily to her feet. “It’s all nonsense anyway. Fortune-telling is lies. I’ll wager you’re not even a real Gypsy.”
Violet drew herself up with all the dignity of her Romany teacher. “I was born in a field in eastern Romania. My mother was Romany. My father . . . who knows? That is my lineage.”
Lady Victoria had a mean light in her eyes that her dark-haired English friend didn’t notice, but the comtesse’s daughter did. As Lady Victoria strode away, the comtesse’s daughter dropped two coins into Violet’s bowl and thanked her. Lady Victoria hadn’t bothered to leave a tip.
When they’d gone, Violet balled her fists in her lap and drew long breaths. She heard Daniel laugh again. She both wanted to push the sound away and grab it and wrap it around her.
No one approached the corner for a moment, so Violet took the opportunity to close her eyes and try to compose herself. There was no use being upset. The world wouldn’t change for Violet because she had one nice day out in a balloon.
The soft young ladies who were now clustered together like a clump of butterflies were the sort of ladies Daniel would marry, and that was the way of it. The titled classes intermarried, striving to keep money and property circulating amongst themselves. A business arrangement. The debutantes might believe this man or that in love with them, but what the gentleman usually saw was a deb’s dowry or title, or perhaps the influence of her family.
When a debutante followed her heart with a man not of her privileged world, scandal and ruin ensued. Likewise, when a highborn gentleman married below his class, that wife was never truly welcome in the family. She could be ridiculed and shunned. And a stern father could banish a son who didn’t marry to his pleasure.Violet had seen such things time and again while doing performances in the big houses. Theirs was a closed world. Transgressors were harshly dealt with.
But witnessing Daniel in this setting, especially when she saw the comtesse stop him and introduce the three girls to him, made Violet want to be sick.
If she could get through this night, she’d do her best to come to her senses, return to being Princess Ivanova until the end of the month, and then decide where she and her mother should go. Violet would have the memory of two lovely days to savor, and then they’d be gone, lost in the mists of might-have-been.
She opened her eyes as two eager young men approached her, and smiled at them, forcing herself into her role again.
“We’ve practically known each other forever, do you not think?” Lady Victoria Garfield said over the orchestra as Daniel whirled her in the waltz. “We have so many mutual acquaintances, people I’ve known and you’ve known for all our lives, even if this is the first time of us meeting.”
Daniel had hoped that spinning Lady Vic around fast enough would stop her talking, but it wasn’t to be. This young lady could chatter over a barrage of artillery fire.
He should feel sorry for her, really. The comtesse had told Ainsley that Lady Victoria hadn’t taken in her first two Seasons, so her mother had sent her to France to try her luck. Seeing the rather mad ruthlessness in Lady Vic’s eyes, Daniel couldn’t blame the English aristos for fleeing the other way. In a few years, Lady Vic would be a redoubtable matron, commanding her husband with the firm hand of a determined sergeant major.
A man needs to see a little warmth in a smile, Daniel wanted to advise her. Not an obvious calculation of what she hopes to gain for herself.
Contrasting Lady Vic’s predatory stalking to Violet’s open-eyed excitement was unfair to poor little Lady Vic, but Daniel couldn’t help himself.
How long could he stay before his departure wouldn’t be considered rude? He didn’t want to embarrass Ainsley, but he needed to go. He’d make his way back down to town, knock on the door of a boardinghouse, and take Violet out anywhere she wanted to go—a restaurant, a cabaret, a theatre. Hell, they could walk down to the strand and watch street performers; he wasn’t bothered.
“And the comtesse brought in the most marvelous fortune-teller,” Lady Vic was saying. She squeezed Daniel’s shoulder. “Do you want to guess what she said? About me? And maybe about you?”
Daniel’s scattered thoughts roared together. “Fortune-teller, you say?”
“Yes, a Gypsy lady. Very proud of herself, she is. But guess what she said about me.”
“That you’ll travel far and marry a handsome man?” Daniel said distractedly.