Ophelia was standing across the ballroom with three of her closest friends, well, two friends and one girl who secretly despised her, but was loath to leave the circle of her popularity. Each of the three was pretty in her own way, though not nearly as beautiful as Ophelia. Nor did any of the three outrank Ophelia in title. She was the only lady among them, her father being an earl, their fathers having less prestigious titles. But then Ophelia couldn’t stand for any female in her circle to outrank or outshine her.

Ophelia was unaware of Mavis Newbolt’s dislike. She might not care for some of Mavis’s snide or catty remarks, but she would never attribute them to dislike. How could anyone dislike her, after all, as eminently popular as she was?

And she had known she would be. There had never been any doubt that she would reign supreme this Season and have her pick of every single eligible bachelor in town. She did have that pick. They all adored her. But to what purpose, when her parents had let the Marquis of Birmingdale woo them with his blasted title?

She hated old Neville Thackeray for thinking of her. Why did he have to pick her for his grandson, just because her mother had once lived near him and thus he felt he knew her personally? Why couldn’t he have picked the dowdy Sabrina instead, who still lived near him? Of course, she knew why Sabrina hadn’t been considered for the Birmingdale heir.

She knew the Lamberts’ family history from her mother’s account of it. Everyone from Yorkshire had likely heard the story at one time or another, though it was an old scandal and probably forgotten by most.

They were fools, her parents. Ophelia could have landed a dukedom. Beauty like hers didn’t come along often. But they had settled for a mere marquis. She wouldn’t, though. She was going to get out of marrying the Birmingdale heir. Good God, he wasn’t even an Englishman—well, not a pure one anyway. But it was no wonder the marquis felt he had to do the bride-picking himself, in an age when arranged marriages were nearly unheard-of. The grandson had been raised by barbarians!

She shuddered at the thought. And if shaming him didn’t work, and showing him that he’d never have anything from her except her utter contempt, then she would just have to think of some other way to be rid of him. But she’d have a new fiancé by the end of the Season, and one of her choosing. She didn’t doubt that for a moment.

However, at that particular moment Ophelia was staring at her mother’s young houseguest, and was briefly disconcerted seeing the gentlemen hovering near Sabrina, who should have been dancing attendance on her instead. But because there weren’t any men within hearing distance just then, she was able to speak her mind without worrying about how it would reflect on her, and she was surprised enough by what she was seeing across the room to do so.

“Would you look at that,” Ophelia said, directing the other girls’ attention to Sabrina and the three men speaking with her. “What can she possibly be saying to them, to keep them so enthralled?”

“She’s your houseguest, Ophelia,” Edith Ward offered soothingly, recognizing the signs of jealousy in her friend, and adept at defusing it. All three girls, at one time or another, had been burned by Ophelia’s unwarranted jealousy. “They no doubt just want to talk to her about you.”

Ophelia began to look appeased until Mavis said in supposed innocence, “It looks to me like she’s garnered a few admirers, but then I’m not surprised. She does have remarkably beautiful eyes.”

“Those peculiar eyes of hers are hardly a saving grace, Mavis, when she’s utterly drab otherwise,” Ophelia replied tersely. But she immediately regretted her harsh tone, which might make her sound jealous, which she wasn’t, of course.

So she added, with what she thought was a sincere sigh but came out sounding more like a huff, “I do pity her, though, poor girl.”

“Why? Because she isn’t pretty?”

“Not just that, but she comes from bad blood, you know. Oh, dear, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. You are not to let that go any further. My mother would have a fit. Lady Hilary Lambert is her dear friend, after all.”

Since they all knew that Ophelia was quite displeased with her mother at the moment, that last bit was redundant. Ophelia wouldn’t mind at all if her mother had a fit. But then the admonishment not to repeat what they were hearing was just as redundant, since both the other two girls thrived on gossip, just as their mothers did, and they were sure to tell their mothers every single word they’d heard. Mavis deplored gossip herself, but in the ton you really did have to keep up with it.

“Bad?” Jane Sanderson asked avidly. “You don’t mean the wrong side of the blanket?”

Ophelia appeared to give that some thought, but must have decided against that particular scandal because she said, “No, worse than that, actually.”

“What can be worse—?”

“No, really, I’ve said too much already,” Ophelia protested lightly.

“Ophelia!” Edith, the oldest of the four girls, exclaimed. “You can’t leave us in suspense like that.”

“Oh, all right,” Ophelia complained, as if they were dragging the information out of her, when nothing would have stopped her at that point from telling all. “But this is only between us, and only because you are my best friends and I trust you not to repeat it.”

She continued in a whisper. The two friends who were actually her friends had wide eyes by the time she finished the tale. Mavis, knowing Ophelia as she did, didn’t know whether to believe her. But then she knew that Ophelia felt no qualms at all about lying, if she thought it might get her what she wanted. And apparently what she wanted at the moment was to completely ruin Sabrina Lambert’s chance of finding a husband in London.

Two reputations blackened this evening, and both by the same woman. Mavis felt truly sorry for both people, their only fault that Ophelia didn’t like them. The Birmingdale heir would undoubtedly weather the storm. He was merely being made a laughingstock by Ophelia’s ridicule of him, so that her parents would be mortified enough to break off the engagement they had arranged. But with a title like his and the huge estate that came with it, he’d still easily find another bride.

Not so the Lambert girl. Bad blood was bad blood that might be passed along to heirs, and what gentleman would want to take that chance by marrying her? Which was really too bad. Mavis had genuinely liked the girl. She was nice, a simple, innocent quality hard to encounter in London, and amusing besides, once she’d opened up. And Mavis felt partly responsible for turning Ophelia against her, by mentioning her remarkably pretty eyes.

Mavis shook her head mentally in disgust. She really was going to have to find a new group of companions. Being friends with Ophelia Reid was simply too detrimental to one’s well-being. Spiteful, vain bitch. Mavis hoped, she really did, that Ophelia would have to marry the Birmingdale heir after all. Serve her right to have a husband whom she’d managed to get all of London to scorn.