“Rebecca Louise Lane,” her aunt’s voice hissed in her ear. “Why must you sit so tall? Your head is bobbing above the rest.”
Was her head bobbing? No, certainly her aunt had made that up.
“How do you expect to ever get a husband?”
She didn’t, of course, but to say so out loud would put the woman who had raised her in a foul mood, so she shrugged instead.
“Now, slouch down...and for heaven’s sake, smile. I just saw Randall Pile looking your way.”
“Yes, Aunt Eunice.” She slid her posterior forward on the chair so that her shoulders sunk to the level of the girl sitting beside her.
Sadly, this position jutted her knees out and made her look... Well, she wouldn’t think about that. She only hoped that no one tripped over them.
She peered through the throng of bobbing, whirling dancers, searching for Randall. Please, oh, please let her aunt have been mistaken about the fellow’s interest in her.
Randall, in his boots, was five feet tall.
A yellow skirt whipped out of her line of vision and there he was, staring at her. Not at Martha on her right...not at Lucy on her left, but smack, square at her.
He was with a group of young men. One of them elbowed him in the side. Another whispered in his ear. Randall laughed...well, smirked more like it.
This could only end in a way that would not please Aunt Eunice.
Martha’s shame was suddenly lifted when a young man asked her to dance.
A flash of lavender ruffle settled into the empty chair beside Rebecca.
“Becca, sit up straight.” Winded, her cousin Melinda frowned at her and yanked her elbow. “You are far too beautiful to be scrunched up like that.”
Melinda was a lively, pretty girl who rarely went without a dance partner. The one whom she had apparently abandoned in the middle of a quickstep stood alone in the revelry looking bewildered.
“I saw Mama talking to you. Don’t pay a whit of attention to whatever she had to say.”
Rebecca sat up and took a long, shuddering breath.
“If only I could. She’s set on matching me up with Randall again.”
“I can’t imagine what Mama is thinking. Randall Pile is—”
“Walking this way,” Rebecca groaned.
“If we hurry we can escape outside before he makes it across the room.”
For pity’s sake, the man was fast. She hadn’t taken three steps from her chair before he stood before her, chest puffed and looking arrogant to his boot toe.
“Would you care to dance, Miss Lane?”
By George she would not! Sadly, the interested gazes of several people in the room turned her way. She did not wish to make a scene.
Melinda’s abandoned dance partner appeared out of the crowd. “Miss Winston, may I have the pleasure...again?”
“Billy!” Melinda exclaimed. “How beastly of me to leave you the way I did. I’d be delighted to continue.”
Clearly Billy held no grudge. A grin split his face, as cheerful as the bright quarter moon visible through the window.
Randall grinned as well, but it was over his shoulder at his companions, not at any pleasure over dancing with her. No doubt he had made the offer on a dare...possibly money had changed hands.
One of the wallflowers giggled. And why would she not? She and Randall must look like a giraffe and a peacock engaged in some bizarre ritual.
She would give her aunt this one satisfaction, then beg some indisposition and go home.
A slow walk around Palmer’s cornfield with the brisk night air brushing her cheeks would cleanse away the humiliation as effectively as a classical melody would.
The fiddler played a twisted version of a polka. Did no one else hear the off-key screech that felt like pinpricks inside one’s bones?
She glanced about.
Apparently not. Everyone seemed to be having a fine high time.
Randall, more than most. He stomped on her skirt with every turn. His clutching, sweaty hand was bound to leave a stain on her dress.
Exasperated, she glared down at the top of his head, noticing that his hair was thinning. She had the urge to blow a fleck of dandruff from his scalp.
She might have made all sorts of inappropriate faces at him for all he would notice.
The one and only thing the man cared to look at was her bosom. And not because it was anything more than adequate but because unless he looked up or down, it’s where his gaze fell.
His nose began to twitch...and sniff. He licked his lips, then for the first time he looked into her eyes...arched one brow.
Why, the little maggot!
She shoved him away. That ought to have been the end of it but he said, “I thought you’d be grateful.”
So, when he turned to walk back to his snickering friends she raised her skirt to her knee, lifted her boot and kicked him hard in the rump.
Sadly for Aunt Eunice’s reputation, which her aunt valued above anything, Randall lost his balance and skidded belly-first across the floor.
Everyone noticed.
In the chaos that followed, Melinda grabbed her hand. Together, they fled out the front door, down the steps and into the night.
* * *
The moment of reckoning came at one minute past midnight, even though Aunt Eunice had arrived home an hour after the unfortunate event.
Summoned, Rebecca stood before her aunt with her head bowed and her hands folded in front of her. She had taken this position many times over the years. The only difference between now and then was that when she was four years old, she had to look up into her aunt’s scowl...now she looked down at it.
“Kindly explain why you would do such a thing...humiliate me and your poor cousins so horribly.”
Melinda, clearly, had not been humiliated, but Bethune and Prudence were no doubt sobbing their mortification into their pillows at this moment.
“I never meant to—”
“It’s Becca who was humiliated, Mama.” All of a sudden, her defender stood beside her. “That horrible little man—”
“Might have been willing to offer for her hand, given his own limitations.”
“Any man would be lucky to have our Becca!”
“Go to your room, Melinda,” her aunt declared drily.
Melinda was far too old to be told to go to her room, just as Rebecca was far too old to be taking this scolding. But by George, no one wanted to send Eunice into a temper that might go on for days.
So, Melinda went to her room while Rebecca slouched another two inches.
Aunt Eunice had been distressed over Rebecca’s height since the day she had been dropped on her doorstep. At four years old she had towered over Bethune who was five and a half.
“Do you want to be an old maid, Rebecca?” Aunt Eunice arched one eyebrow. “Or worse...have people wonder if you grew up to be like your mother...that I allowed you to?”
It would be difficult to know whether she committed the great sin of growing up like her mother or not. The memories of her life before coming to live with Aunt Eunice were vague.
She did recall the scent of rose water, and a fairy-like woman who laughed out loud but