A Cit - in Regency slang was a derogatory term for a member of the merchant class.

A Bluestocking - an intellectual woman (maybe the first feminists?)

"How is it possible that Miss Winterly was able to procure our vouchers for tonight?" Emma turned the cardboard square over in her gloved hand, catching glimpses of the elegant writing as the carriage flooded with intervals of light each time the coach rattled past a gaslit lamp.

"Does it matter?" Her sister sat opposite her, staring out of the window eagerly.

"I suppose not," she conceded.

It was curious, however, because Almack's was notoriously exclusive and, though the vouchers would go on sale periodically at Bond Street, if one's name was not on The List, one would not be permitted admission. Only a very honored few, amongst the fashionable, titled, and highborn of the beau monde were vouchsafed entry into the hallowed rooms. Not even a Duchess could purchase a voucher for a friend if they were not approved by one of the formidable Almack's Patronesses.

Neither Milli nor she had ever met with any of the Lady Tyrants and could, therefore, not have been on the The List to begin with. Yet here they were: dressed like princesses on the way to a ball that not even one in one hundred ladies might ever gain admittance to; it was inconceivable. Emma was already resigning herself to the fact that they would be turned away at the door. Surely not even Victoria was omnipotent enough as to safeguard their entrée into Almack's.

Poor Milli will be terribly disappointed and mortified. She shook her head as she watched her sister's face illuminate briefly with yellow light as they passed another lamp at the edge of the thoroughfare.

"Oh, Lord!" said Milli, turning to study her sister's attire critically, now that they were nearing their destination, "you shan't wear that shawl, will you, Emma dear?"

Emma peered down at the silk shawl draped across her pale shoulders as it peeked out from beneath her mantle, a velvet creation of Sardinian blue that her sister had made for her. "Why ever not?" she asked. "It's deuced cold outside!" With admirable control, she forbore smiling, which occasioned Milli's uncertainty as to whether or not she was only teasing. How easy it was to rile her sister.

She was perfectly sensible to the fact that it was far better that a lady should freeze than wear a shawl out to a social gathering, and Emma had completely forgotten that she was still wearing hers when she'd put her cloak on over it.

In due course they arrived at their destination on King Street, St. James's. "Be quick and take it off!" Milli cried as the coach finally rolled to halt before an ordinary-looking, rectangular, brick building with mullioned windows and a set of painted double doors.

Leaving the Indian shawl in their uncle's coach, both girls alighted and, surprisingly, entered the building without difficulty, and though the man at the door had stared down his aquiline nose at them, he nonetheless allowed them to pass unmolested.

Once they had doffed their mantles, handing the items to a tall, supercilious footman with a ridiculous, white wig, the girls hurried towards the ballroom, Milli giggling excitedly as their satin slippers padded noiselessly along the hardwood floor. 

One would have thought I'd given him a hodden cloak instead of a velvet cape, Emma thought, rolling her eyes as she followed her sister.

The ballroom was large indeed — about one hundred feet long and forty feet wide — and decorated with Grecian pilasters, gilded white pillars, medallions, and beautiful, gaslit lusters. There were mirrors everywhere, no doubt as a means to make the room appear larger and more crowded, or perhaps to refract the light around the space a little better.

The heavy blue window dressings, the edgings tasseled in darker damask, had been drawn shut against the sunlight and a country-dance was currently in progress, a large number of dancers already enjoying the set. The orchestra, although a small one, was playing with superior skill in the balcony at one end of the ballroom.

As the girls passed the dais, having bowed on entering, where a group of formidable women were nodding imperiously from that raised perch, one of the ladies caught Emma's eye with a narrowed look as if she'd perceived a troglodyte in her midst. It was such a haughty expression of disdain that Emma immediately bethought her gown soiled somehow and, therewith, sought a mirror in which to inspect herself.

What she saw in one of the mirrors was an exact reflection of that which she'd seen earlier: she was dressed in an ivory slip and cerulean blue overdress in delicate crepe, the bodice embellished with silver tracery. 

Her hair was lifted up off her neck into a high chignon, pretty tendrils framing her face, with the braids interlaced with blue rosettes. She flattered herself that she was up to snuff, her slippers matched her pretty gown and her white gloves covered her elbows demurely.

She was perhaps not ostentatiously bedecked as some of the other ladies present were, but it was not in her nature to dress like an ostrich, which was exactly what the captious patroness on the dais was ostensibly imitating, her giant plumes fanning from her headdress like a peacock's.

The other patronesses beside her had by now also noticed the newcomers, and their eyes were hardly less severe. They truly were the queens of the ton, their bejeweled tiaras brilliant as they caught the light of the chandeliers. Emma would not have been surprised in the least had one of them pointed a silk fan in the sisters' direction and shouted, "Off with their heads!"

She could see Milli's face blooming with color at being so contemptuously regarded and her ire rose swiftly to the fore. "Never mind them, Milli, they may stare down their long noses at us all night, but you and I can at least say that we were at Almack's." She shot her sister a bolstering grin. "How many women of your acquaintance, even the very wealthy ones, can say as much?"

She was hardly in the practice of supporting such superficial objectives, but she knew that it might appease her sister, and it did. "You're right, Emma," said she, "I should not care a fig what they think of me." It was an obvious lie that neither girl addressed the while Milli searched the ballroom nervously, seemingly ill at ease with seeing no allies in the room. "But where is Victoria?"

"Here I am!" The lady in question appeared as though she'd veritably glided down from the ornate ceiling like a spider from its web. "My dears, you look absolutely lovely!"

With a deliberate glower, Victoria shifted her gaze to the dais to where the tyrants sate and, with a hard look, beheld each one meaningfully, so that they all instantly averted their own glares and fanned their pinkened faces. "There now," she said, her mouth compressed into a satisfied grin, "Pay no mind to Countess Lieven, she is never happier than when she is finding faults in others."

Emma took her to mean the Lady with the ostrich feathers that had first given her the cut direct. Taking Milli's arm in hers, Victoria steered her sister towards a group of elegantly dressed strangers, so that Emma was left to follow in their wake.

How pretty Milli looked this evening, her jonquil gown overlaid with white spider-gauge, her yellow, silk fan dangling from her delicate wrist. But neither of them could, in all fairness, hold a candle to Victoria. That woman might wear a hodden cloak and nothing else and still be the loveliest creature in the room.

Still and all, Milli and Emma were by far the most plainly dressed ladies in the room, she quite obviously the bluestocking and her sister nothing more than a cit; or so the assembled ton were no doubt thinking. It was no wonder the cabal of patronesses had turned their noses at the girls for daring to sully their precious club with their humble, merchant stench.

They think us a pair of vulgar mushrooms! Lord, but Emma despised such gatherings for just this reason — to be treated as a leper simply because she was neither rich nor titled was insupportable. 

She knew, when it had been decided that they would attend tonight, that she would be made to feel inferior! Her sister at least had a winsome countenance to recommend her, but Emma was plain ... and was dressed just as plainly in comparison to the beautiful women flitting about like fairies with gossamer wings.

The church bells had tolled the hour of six when the carriage had deposited them in front of Almack's grand doors, so the night promised to be a long one.

"I do hope Beau Brummell will be here tonight!" Milli was once again in high ropes, finally at ease now that her own patroness had whisked her away under her large, protective wings like an arch angel, for that was exactly how she looked at Victoria — as though she was one.

"It is too early yet for the likes of Beau Brummell," said her angel.

"Victoria," Emma interjected quietly, "who are those women on the dais?"

Victoria pinned each lofty lady with cool appraisal. "Lady Castlereagh is the dour-looking dame, and Lady Cowper is the one in the burgundy gown, perhaps the most amiable of the lot. Lady Jersey is the one whose tongue never ceases to wag, Countess Lieven is the lady with the ridiculous feathers and the pinched countenance, and Princess Esterhazy is the last, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador. I have no opinion of any of them," she sneered.

So these were the legendary lady patronesses of Almack's.

Victoria had already begun to introduce the girls to the little group she'd been conversing with when they'd appeared. "Lady Middleton, I believe you've already met my dear friends, Miss Emma Lucas and her sister Millicent Lucas."

"Have I?" said the old dame, lifting her lorgnettes quizzically, her eyes lingering a little longer on the eldest Miss Lucas.

"Yes, ma'am, at Vauxhall last night."

"So I have." She did not seem in the least impressed by the fact, but her husband appeared a little more friendly as he greeted them, his monocle quivering at his eye as he blinked curiously at them, his mustache twitching comically every time he opened his mouth to speak. It was all Emma could do not to laugh at the pair.

A quarter of an hour later, Emma was standing beside the old lady like the proverbial wallflower that she was, painfully aware of how pitifully lonely she must look, as her sister enjoyed a country-dance with a Mr. Croft, a young dandy of large fortune. Victoria was also currently engaged with an unknown gentleman that looked absolutely smitten with her.

"A governess you say?! No, I cannot believe it." The matron snorted, appalled by the aspirations Emma had only just admitted to.

Under the pressure of incessant inquiries as to her family's position and her father's wealth, or lack thereof, Emma had finally relented and explained that she had no thought for remaining a dependent of her father's household. "Your ladyship does me no credit by doubting my sincerity," Emma replied, amused by the lady's treating the idea as scandalous. "I am in earnest. I have long thought of utilizing my eduction and plying my trade in a manner that is both moral and beneficial to me and my family."

"But that is social suicide, my dear!" she scolded. "And do you please refrain from using the word trade!" She cut herself off momentarily to shudder as though it were an obscenity. "It is not to be borne. If you were my daughter, I should never allow you to do so." She shook her head sadly.

Emma bit her tongue, forced to swallow her spleen, for she was unwilling to insult Victoria's friend or, in so doing, taint Milli's special night. Her ladyship had clearly been suckled at a gilded teat at birth and knew not what it was to live on anything as drear as four hundred pounds per annum. Emma's family lived comfortably on that sum, but she knew that if Lady Middleton were aware of their meagre fortune, she'd have choked on her ratafia right then and there.

"I must warn you," she went on, "that you will never be received again into polite society if you you did insist on securing for yourself a ... métier." Here again she stumbled over the awful word, deciding instead on a French substitute in the hopes that it would somehow lessen the offense upon her lips. "Although, it would likely pain me to do so, you being such a sensible creature, and a good friend of Miss Winterly besides, I myself could never receive you."

The old dame's censorious gaze was no longer fixed to Emma, her flaccid neck was craned to the side so that she could watch the dancers at the far end of the room. And fortunately too, for she did not notice Emma's hardening features, nor the high color that evinced her growing vexation.

Bracket-faced, old rattle! She knew she was being unkind, but the woman knew her not at all and her 'maternal advice' was both unwanted and callous.

"I daresay," came a very distinctive, deep voice at her back, "Miss Lucas could well endure the deprivation of your munificent condescension, Lady Meddlesome."

"Halloo, Winterly!" Lord Middleton greeted his compeer amiably.

Emma had by now whirled around, blinking in astonishment, to see Lord Winterly had indeed come up behind her, and the old dame's small eyes had instantly swung around at his unexpectedly joining their conversation.

He was striking in his white waistcoat and navy long-tailed coat that his valet had paired with black, satin breeches and white, silk stockings. From his black pumps, polished to a high gleam, and his intricately tied neckcloth, he was complete to a shade. Even his hair took to falling just right, like a beautiful Grecian warrior.

With his chapeau-bras held leisurely under his arm, his eyes flickered between Emma and Lady Middleton. There seemed to be a dark cloud brooding over his brow despite his relaxed stance as he greeted Emma silently before transferring that steely, black gaze once more towards the old troll.

"Good of you to join us, Lord Winterly; but come now, you cannot be serious?" said the she-troll, wholly ignorant of his blatant ridicule and purposeful mispronunciation of her name.

'Lady Meddlesome,' he'd called her, Emma was sure of it, but had said it in such a way as to sound ambiguous.

Perhaps she had no notion of anyone being audacious enough to insult a highbred matron such as herself, and so assumed him to be perfectly earnest.

"I assure you, ma'am, I am quite sincere." His jaw clenched as he answered her ladyship's orotund query.

"Even so, I simply must insist that you persuade this young lady to avoid the degradation that would ultimately result in her ... employment." That she was still articulating those foul words with obvious disgust was becoming ludicrous now.

"I am sure there is nothing I could do to sway Miss Lucas from her resolutions, ma'am; had I the inclination to pry." It was a very subtle admonition directed to the dame seated like a queen beside them, but Winterly was no longer watching Lady Meddlesome. His eyes were for Emma alone.

The glint within those obsidian deaths were focused intently on Emma and, upon realizing that she was staring, she immediately diverted her hot face, for she had been trying to differentiate between his pupils and his irises, but found that she could not. It was an almost unholy glare that the man possessed, so it was better that she looked elsewhere and, thereby, preserve her soul 

What nonsense, Emma! Preserve her soul indeed! He was only a man... But a compelling one at that.

👆🏼The Ballroom at Almack's👆🏼