Sitting at the edge of a crowded ballroom, Olivia Grace knew this better than most and kept her attention on the room like a gazelle sidling up to a watering hole. Olivia couldn’t help smiling. Watering holes. She’d been reading too many naturalists’ journals. Not that there weren’t predators here, of course. It would have been impossible to miss them, with their bright plumage, sharp claws, and aggressive posturing. And those were just the mamas. Olivia was safely tucked away from their notice, though. Camouflaged in serviceable gray bombazine, she occupied a chair along the trellis-papered wall, just another anonymous paid chaperone watching on as her charges danced. The ballroom, a converted carriage house at the side of the Duke of Richmond’s rented home, was full to bursting. Scarlet-clad soldiers whirled by with laughing girls in white. Sharp-eyed dowagers in puce and aubergine committed wholesale slaughter of each others’ reputations. Civilian gentlemen in evening black clustered at the edge of the dance floor to argue about the coming battle.
