The prospect of a little self-indulgence, dressing up in something other than mourning black and dancing with a handsome man, did battle with her image of herself as a matronly widow for whom such things should be mere memories. She began to wonder if she had been wrong to agree to go to the ball at all, never mind with Viscount Stacey Darton. After all, he had not suggested it, the Reverend Fuller had and, as she had said to the girls, being a gentleman he could not refuse when perhaps he would rather not have offered his escort.They had quarrelled only two days before and she had climbed on her high horse and berated him for forbidding her to go on to the beach, so why should he continue to bother himself with her? It was unkind and ungrateful of her to treat him as if he had been one of Cecil’s cronies. But was he? Had he seized the chance to remove her and the girls from Parson’s End while the contraband was run ashore? Did he intend to let it happen while he danced with her at the Assembly Rooms?
