Read Online A Useful Woman by Darcie Wilde - Free Book Online

That is most kind. I’d be happy to accept.”
And perhaps I can get a few more answers from you.
Because Rosalind was certain of one thing. It was there in every word her friend spoke, and in the way her new plans shone so brightly in her tired eyes.
    Lady Blanchard was leaving London, and she did not intend to return.

CHAPTER 5
    At the Gates
    Kings Street, St. James, is, as all the world knows, the link between London’s most fashionable street and its most aristocratic square; it is within calling distance of Pall Mall, which had then a royal palace on each hand, and in the very center of club-land.
    â€”E. Beresford Chancellor, The Annals of Almack’s
    It could not be described as a madhouse. A madhouse had keepers, rules, doctors, and other such attendants to calm and confine the inmates. Kings Street on a Monday evening had no such civilizing influences. It was every man, woman, and horse for themselves.
    Carriages jammed the cobbles and were forced up onto the walks in front of the plain building described as “the seventh heaven of the fashionable world.” Those pedestrians unfortunate enough to be caught in the crush squeezed themselves through narrow windows of space afforded by such breakwaters as thresholds and lampposts.
    â€œConfounded nuisance!” exclaimed one portly gentleman to his companion as they attempted to force themselves past Rosalind’s borrowed carriage. “What’s it all for?”
    This was an excellent question. Rosalind smiled to herself.She suspected a number of the people crammed into the street were asking themselves the same thing. At the same time, it seemed no one quite knew how to stop.
    It was Monday. The lady patronesses were meeting to decide who would be allowed to the first of the Almack’s assemblies. Considering that hopes and dreams, not to mention marriages and fortunes, could hang on their decisions, it was not perhaps surprising that the world treated this meeting as a moment of vital importance. Therefore, everyone in the general vicinity had to linger to witness the emergence of the grand imperial ladies of the board, whether they wanted to or not.
    Not that Rosalind could claim to be entirely immune to Almack’s allure. When she’d first been allowed up to London as a girl, she’d spent the better part of three solid weeks pacing the drawing room while waiting to hear how Mother’s application for an Almack’s voucher would be answered. Every waking moment was spent contemplating the sublime possibility that she might not just attend the exclusive assemblies, but make her debut there. If only she could have this one night, she prayed over and over, she’d never ask for anything else. She’d never need anything else. It wouldn’t matter how Honoria and the others treated her. Even Charlotte’s spite wouldn’t matter anymore. One night at Almack’s, and the whole world would open wide for her.
    And for a little while, it had.
    Rosalind shook her head. She never knew whether she should be angry at her world for turning out to be so small, or at her own naiveté for believing one night of dancing could force that small world to deliver up its keys.
    And yet, look at me, still standing at the crossroads of that world and hoping to find some way home.
    â€œHello again, Miss Thorne.”
    Rosalind was so deep in her own past that it took her a moment to realize the voice was not just another memory. Devon Winterbourne, real and present, spoke to her from the cold, crowded street. She could not possibly mistake the tone and timber of his voice for another, even through the closed windows of her borrowed carriage.
    Rosalind thought, a little frantically, about not turning her head. She thought about drawing the curtains and sitting alone in the chilly dark until he went away. But it took a great deal of hardened nerve to behave like a coward, and Rosalind found she did not have so much in