Indulgence 2: One Glimpse by Lydia Gastrell Page A

“The only people who enjoy themselves at balls are those who are already married and those who are too old for marriage to be a consideration.”
    “And the favorites,” Flor muttered, but Sam heard it. Flor’s gaze drifted out to the dancers engaged in the first set of the evening, but Sam was sure her real attention was on the other debutantes. The taller, slimmer, prettier debutantes who had been asked to dance.
    I’m sorry, Flor.
    Sam would always believe that his little sister was beautiful, but he knew that society did not agree. If it was not enough that she was short and shapeless, their older sister Kat had insisted on dolling her up in a chaos of bows, ruffles, and lace, and all of it white. Sam had called it gilding the lily, while Flor had called it gilding the weed.
    He knew he should do as other men in his situation did, which was to beg, bribe, and browbeat his friends into being dance partners. Sam had more than enough acquaintances to do it, but he could not bring himself to humiliate Flor like that. He knew she would see forced dance partners as even more embarrassing than no partners at all.
    If only their sister agreed.
    “Kat is going to make Sir Ewan dance with me again. I just know she is.” Flor clenched her shaky hand on the bottom of her fan.
    “She doesn’t make him.”
    “Oh, please, don’t do that brotherly nonsense. I can take it from Kat and Sissy and the rest, but not you. You know he wouldn’t choose to dance with me.”
    He wanted to disagree, to tell her that she had admirers and that she thought too little of herself, but he could not bring himself to form the lie.
    “Don’t look so worried, Brother,” she said, forcing a smile that held no humor. “Someone will choose me eventually. I may not be a diamond of the first water, but I am not such an antidote as to put every man off forty thousand pounds.”
    Sam sputtered over his champagne glass. “Flor!” He glanced around them. “I told you to keep quiet about that. I will not have my little sister chased by fortune hunters. And I don’t like the rest of it either. It hurts me to hear you talk about yourself in such a low way. If you see yourself as less, others will treat you as less.”
    Flor stared at him, and her smooth brow wrinkled with a kind of sadness.
    “What?” he said after a few seconds.
    “I do wish it were possible for you to hear yourself after you say things, Sam. It would do you good, I think.”
    Huh?
    “But anyway,” she said quickly, “you know my dowry is why I will marry. Please, let us both accept it and not fool ourselves.”
    Sam would have cursed in any other setting. Damn his father. Flor had been barely thirteen years old when their father had announced, in such a flippant way at the bloody breakfast table, that he planned to increase Flor’s dowry to the astronomical sum of forty thousand pounds. It was more than twice what Sam’s other sisters had been given, but they had all taken after their mother. Tall and willowy with strawberry-blonde hair. Even at that young age, Flor had understood what it meant to sweeten a deal. Apparently, their father had seen her as someone in desperate need of sweetening.
    Sam finished off his fourth glass of champagne and decided that the evening’s torture was a distraction from his other concerns at the very least. Like the possibility that Darnish would appear any second. He was not certain why he dreaded another encounter, since the issue had been resolved. Still, he could not imagine Darnish would be comfortable around him, which was a situation he preferred to avoid.
    “If only ladies were permitted to escape in drink,” Flor grumbled.
    Sam balked, ready to defend himself, then saw the glint in his sister’s eye. “Don’t tease me,” he said, pretending to pout. Flor was the only person in the world who could poke fun at him without getting his hackles up, and he had always encouraged her sense of humor, much to his mother’s