Revealed

Everyone agreed that Mrs. Phillippa Benning was a beautiful young woman.  Stunning even, with her cornflower blue eyes, and cornsilk hair.  One poetic gentleman had likened her teeth in shape to perfect corn kernels, but that perhaps was taking the metaphor too far.

Mrs. Benning simply sparkled.  Her wit and humor and gay joie de vivre, gave her entrée into the most exciting crowds in the Ton, a place that lady enjoyed and intended to stay.  So, if she was occasionally seen as being too forward in her thoughts and too ambitious in her flirtations, it was easily forgiven as the capricious combination of youth and beauty.  For when Phillippa Benning smiled, a sultry pout known to cause married men to forget their wives’ names, no one could find fault in her.

Indeed, everyone thought well of Mrs. Phillippa Benning.  And certainly would have done so even if she were not so rich, and so conveniently widowed.

All the world knew Phillippa Benning’s short marriage had been the stuff of fairy tales, merely lacking the ‘ever after.’  And after mourning a full year her husband of five days, Phillippa had discovered it was exceedingly pleasant to no longer require that smothering protection unmarried ladies lived under and took to her life as a young woman of independent means with verve.

She liked all the same things other women liked – but made them so artlessly hers.  She read the latest gothic novels by M.R. Biggleys and Mrs. Rothschild, but whenever she commented that the hero of one was far too bland for her taste or the setting of another was spine-chilling, it was automatically taken as fact, and quoted by ladies and gentlemen alike as such.  She could affect sales of fabric as much as a drought or rainy season would affect a crop: if Phillippa Benning declared lilac watered silk to be déclassé, sales of such material would plummet – conversely, if she was seen strolling the park in mint green sprigged muslin and butter coloured walking boots, two dozen such costumes would be on order at the best modistes the next day. 

It was uncommon for someone so young to rule the Ton (she was just one and twenty) – but when it came to Mrs. Phillippa Benning, it was unquestionable.  Her favor could make or break a novel’s success, a modiste’s reputation, a hostess’s event, a young debutante’s popularity, or a young buck’s heart.

And she knew it.

            “I absolutely refuse to attend Mrs. Hurston’s card party.  She insists on wearing that feathered purple turban, and I have taken the trouble to twice tell her how it does not suit her,” Phillippa said as she looked through her opera glasses, scanning the crowd lined up along the parade route.

            Phillippa’s best friend, Nora, clucked her tongue and shook her head, supressing a delicate giggle beneath a tiny hand. 

            Nora was an adorable little creature Phillippa had picked up this year.  She was eighteen, in her first season, and could have turned out disasterous if not for Phillippa’s intervention.  Miss Nora De Regis was very rich, born and raised English, but suffered from a touch of dark colouring inherited from a Greek grandfather, and a mother who refused to allow the child to dress in anything other than eyelet cotton and stiff corsets.  Phillippa simply made certain the world saw Nora’s dark eyes and olive skin as exotic, and steered her mother to more expansive modistes.  Now mother and daughter alike would not be caught dead in anything but the latest fashions.  Nora, at the beginning of the season, also had a rather innocent and open nature, that Phillippa was teaching her to suppress.

Nora was proving a very apt pupil.

“No Phillippa Benning at Mrs. Hurston’s party?”  Nora replied archly.  “She’ll lose more face than if Prinny himself failed to appear.  Maybe that will shock the good Mrs. Hurston into taking your advice more seriously.”

            “Really,” Phillippa replied, lowering her opera glasses, “you would think they would know by now.”

            Normally, Phillippa was not one to partake in forced outdoor activities before noon.  But then again, there were very few social events whose express purpose was the ogling of men, and a parade of militia was one of them.  Patriotism was all the rage.  Her companion, Mrs. Tottendale could not be roused to attend, but Nora was always game for assessing young men’s attributes.  And besides, Phillippa’s other best friend, Bitsy, her Pomeranian, could use the fresh air.

            The red woolen coats slashed with gold epaulettes glinted brilliantly in the sun, but none of that distracted Phillippa from her view of a dashing gentleman in a dark green coat watching the processional from the other side of the thorough-fare.             

“Did you spot him?  The Marquis of Broughton?” Nora craned her neck, trying in vain to see over the throng gathered at the park.           

            “He’s just across the street, to the right,” Phillippa replied, never looking directly at him, always keeping him within her view.  After all, she did have all of these dazzling redcoats to look at.  Bitsy shook delicately in Phillippa’s arms, his emerald collar jangling with a dog’s nervous energy.

            Nora went up on tiptoes and leaned over far enough into the thoroughfare to nearly be knocked over by an outside fife player.  Finally, she spotted the object of Phillippa’s intensely purposeful non-attention.

            “Oh!  He’s simply delicious!” 

            “I know,” Philliippa purred, letting a small smile play about her mouth, soothing Bitsy with long gentle strokes.  “Where has he been keeping himself?  The past few seasons would have been so much more interesting if he had been around.” 

            “The past few seasons have not been dull for you, Phillippa, admit it.”  Nora replied, wide eyed, and mocking.

            It was true.  Phillippa had thoroughly enjoyed her first season as a widow.  Oh, she had enjoyed her original season, too, but it had ended rather abruptly with Alistair’s death, and as such, Phililppa had been determined to regard her emergence from mourning as a fresh start.  She knew she would marry again – the hazy vision of a quiet country life with rugrats loomed over her like a cloud threatening rain – but her first season as a widow had been such an overwhelming success, she refused to settle down before giving herself another.  She was accountable to no one.  Her funds were her own, having inherited her trust upon her marriage. There was something unbelievably luxurious about being untethered.  She could flirt, with no dreadful repercussions.  She could dance until dawn.

            Oh, her parents, the Earl and Countess of Care, were hopeful that she make a match, of course, and provide them with a few grandchildren to dote upon and make heirs.  But Phillippa informed them she required the perfect specimen of man for her to even consider marriage – rich, titled, a leader of the Ton.  And until that man arrived, her parents could do nothing more than throw up their hands and go back to their own lives.  Her father to the estates and playing the market, her mother to Bath or Brighton, where the waters were as invigorating as the men, she’d say.

But her parents would be very pleased when they learned of the Marquis of Broughton’s arrival on the scene, and how very perfect Phillippa had found him thus far.

            “Rumor has it Broughton’s been locked up at his estate, poor thing,” Phillippa pouted saucily.

            “Which one?”  Nora asked.  “They say he has a dozen.”

            “Does it matter?  It only matters that he wasn’t here before, and now he is.”  A small, satisfied smile lifted the perfect bow of her mouth.

            “Well,” Nora conceded, “if he’s as delicious up close as he seems to be from a distance…  have you been introduced?”

            “Not yet,” Phillippa said, as the last of the militia trooped past leading cheering revelers in their wake (luckily, the parade had been horse-less, else the revelers suffer a misstep and smelly fate).  “But he’ll introduce himself shortly.”
            Nora’s brows shot up in surprise.  “How can you know that?”

            “Watch.”

            As the last of the revelers passed, Phillippa let go of her coyness, and turned, catching hold of the Marquis of Broughton’s hawklike gaze and holding.
            One…  two…

            She arched a brow, slightly, allowed the faintest upturn to the corner of her mouth.
            Three… four…

            Never did his eyes lift from hers.  Never did she allow the heat of his gaze to cause more than the faintest of blushes to paint her cheek.
            …Five.

            With one last fractional brow raise, Phillippa pointedly turned away and addressed Nora.

            “He’ll introduce himself shortly,” she repeated.  She didn’t even attempt to hide the smugness she considered well-deserved.  “In the meantime, shall we get some ices?  Its unbearably hot amongst all these” she flitted her hand, “…people.”

            Phillippa handed a squirming and eager Bitsy to his liveried attendant for walking, and taking Nora’s arm, gently steered her towards the shops that lined the park.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Marquis of Broughton approach them.  He was still a good twenty feet away, but moving like a hunter stalking his prey.  Surreptitiously, Phillippa reached over and grabbed one of Nora’s gloves out of her hand (well, she certainly wasn’t going to let her own glove get muddy) and dropped it, all without Nora noticing.  The marquis was behind her now, out of her line of sight.

            She slowed, and then counted…
            Five…  four…
            He would be a few feet from the glove by now…
            Three… two….
            Bending down, he’d have picked it up…
            One.

            “Excuse me, Madam?” an unfamiliar, deeply masculine voice addressed them, a warm drawl coloring his expression.

            Phillippa turned, sly smile and coy looks at the ready to lay claim to…

            …Someone who was not the Marquis.

            “You seem to have dropped this,” the incredibly tall man with the deep voice said, holding up Nora’s small, now soiled glove.

            “Thank you,” Nora said, accepting the glove with a polite smile.  “I hadn’t realized I dropped it, Mr. --”

            “Mr. Worth,” he replied, before tipping his hat.

            “Mr. Worth,” Nora repeated, doing the conversation duties Phillippa had abdicated.

Abdicated, because her gaze had narrowed and locked on to the Marquis of Broughton, who, like them, had attracted his own barnacle of sorts, as she watched him hand a reticule back to a vaguely pretty female who lightly touched his arm at discreet intervals.

It seemed he had ‘accidentally’ been bumped into by none other than the treacherous harlot herself, Lady Jane Cummings.