The Most Impious Ball

The breakfast table at Priestley Manor was invariably occupied by just two people. As a rule, those two were Benjamin, the head of the household, and Wilhelmina, who rose at an hour peculiarly early for a lady of the nobility.

"This is simply outrageous."

Benjamin grumbled as he always did, scanning the newspaper the butler had brought him.

"Why? What's happened?"

"Our Prime Minister has issued a staggering new statement. Would you like to see it?"

Wilhelmina took the crisply ironed newspaper from Benjamin's hands.

Wilhelmina hummed, then handed the paper back to her brother.

"He's speaking of His late Majesty's passing, I take it?"

"What else would it be?"

Benjamin clicked his tongue with a cynicism quite unlike him.

"Though I suppose it's possible he's been privately mourning that hunting dog of his that died not long ago."

"A declaration that mourning is more or less over is the sort of thing only Her Majesty the Queen ought to be making."

"That's precisely my point. Her Majesty requires a Regent only for the time being — she is not a child incapable of speaking a single word for herself."

With Parliament's fierce infighting over the Regency Act turning Winster's political landscape into a quagmire day after day, the intent behind the statement was perfectly clear.

Spreading orange marmalade over a slice of crisply toasted bread, Wilhelmina said,

"In other words, a blatant declaration that the Cabinet and Parliament intend to shut out a fifteen-year-old queen entirely and run the country as they please."

"Ahem."

Benjamin cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable — the particular reaction he reserved for those occasions when his younger siblings' remarks were impertinent, yet uncomfortably sound in both reason and principle.

Wilhelmina asked, probing lightly,

"And what do you intend to do about it?"

"What am I supposed to do? It isn't as though we need to negotiate with Fleurance or Esparonya. If our Prime Minister had spouted this nonsense to a foreign ambassador, I might have had grounds to intervene."

After this cynical grumbling, Benjamin shook his head.

"Good heavens. At this rate, they'll be proposing we hold a ball next."

"And why wouldn't they?"

She said it as though it were nothing at all, then took a generous bite of her marmalade-spread toast. The crunch was thoroughly, cheerfully crisp.

"Surely not."

But Benjamin stared down at the newspaper, his appetite quite gone.

"Even if they are blinded by power, they wouldn't go that far... would they?"

Toward a brother who had not yet relinquished his last thread of faith in humanity, Wilhelmina snorted and declared,

A few days later, a splendid carriage glided through the dense night fog of Winster.

Inside, Benjamin sat with a look of profound dissatisfaction, tapping the toe of his shoe against the floor in an irritable rhythm.

"I may not have been His late Majesty's most loyal subject, but I never imagined a ball would actually be held at a time like this."

"That's why I told you to bet your entire fortune."

From the opposite seat, Wilhelmina half-hid a thoroughly insufferable smile behind her fan. Benjamin, rather than answering, pressed a hand to his forehead and groaned.

"There's nothing to be done about it."

Wilhelmina shrugged.

"If I were the only one to miss a ball that all of Winster is attending, what do you suppose people would say? It would only confirm that the rumors are true and that I'm in seclusion."

"As if I don't know that."

Watching Benjamin grumble, Wilhelmina shook her head.

"If you find it so distasteful, Brother, you needn't have come at all."

"Please don't even say something so dreadful."

Benjamin all but ground his teeth.

"If I sent you and Angeline alone into that pack of jackals, Francesca's shotgun tomorrow morning would be aimed not at the man who started your scandal, but at my own head."

"Don't worry, darling. There'll be no need for a shotgun."

Duchess Angeline, who had been sitting quietly at Benjamin's side gazing out the window, interposed with a gentle smile. She stroked her husband's arm and said, quite affectionately,

"I'll have kicked you out of the carriage long before then."

"...How very kind of you, Angie."

Benjamin answered with a look of resignation, and Angeline offered him a sweetly crinkled smile.

"Not at all."

That elegant tone, and that charming smile that made her cream-pale cheeks plump ever so slightly. With her golden hair like an angel's radiance, Angeline was, even to Wilhelmina's eyes — a fellow woman — exceedingly lovely.

If one were to sculpt a porcelain doll and name it Lady of Quality, it would surely look exactly like that.

Having thought this, Wilhelmina turned her head and quietly studied her own reflection in the dark, rattling window of the carriage. The figure looking back could not, by any stretch, be called the picture of a proper lady.

Not that she was unbeautiful. Her deep chestnut hair, shot through with red, fell in captivating waves, and her eyes — a pale almond brown ringed with green like newly unfurled leaves — shone with an enigmatic light. But in that gaze there was not the slightest trace of the typical feminine virtues, neither tenderness nor gentleness. Those clear, sharply luminous eyes only made her look like a clever bird of prey.

At that moment, as though she had read her thoughts, Angeline spoke.

"Perhaps that's why the scandal spread so quickly."

Wilhelmina grinned.

"Who would want to hear a scandal about an unattractive woman?"

"If only I'd had enough time to teach you how to speak all over again."

Benjamin checked his pocket watch and sighed. Unfortunately, they would arrive in mere moments at the site of what was, tonight, the most impious ball in the world.

As for Earl Wilbright, who had invited them — he was, in every respect, an exceedingly moderate man of Winster's high society.

The two ladies alighted from the carriage in turn, each taking Benjamin's arm. As they climbed the steps into the ballroom, Angeline, linked arm in arm with Wilhelmina, whispered behind her feathered fan.

"A moderately distinguished family of moderately long standing, a moderate income collected from the estate each year. A moderately useful assortment of relations to put to work, and two daughters who are... well, moderately beautiful."

"Quite so."

Wilhelmina replied, meeting the stares of the crowd with an artlessly composed face.

"I don't believe the virtues of the Brighton Kingdom have ever been so faithfully embodied anywhere else."

"The trouble is that those moderately beautiful daughters have yet to receive a single proposal, and have already wasted two social seasons. One does wonder what unfortunate reason there might be."

"I'm not particularly curious about the reason, but I think I can guess well enough why the Earl was in such a hurry to host a ball this indecorous."

For parents with no son to inherit the title and fortune in full, two unmarried daughters were as heavy a burden as any. Angeline nodded lightly in agreement.

"Earl Wilbright is likely determined to marry those two daughters off this season, even if it means staking the family's very survival on it."

"But that can't be the whole reason he rushed to throw a ball this grand before the effects of national mourning had even begun to fade."

In truth, Wilhelmina suspected that the haste with which this banquet had been forced through had a great deal to do with the fact that, in the Upper House, the Earl belonged to the royalist faction alongside Duke Kingsley Edward, and served as little more than Edward's right hand.

Just then, Angeline leaned toward Wilhelmina once more. And, having confirmed with a glance that her husband's attention had been absorbed by the surrounding crowd, she asked,

"My dear Wilhelmina, what amusing thought are you entertaining right now?"

"Who can say?"

Wilhelmina shrugged with perfect innocence, but Angeline did not drop that knowing, meaningful smile.