The Viscount Who Loved Me

The two start out on the wrong foot—literally. Kate is notorious for accidentally stepping on men’s feet during dances, and she crushes Anthony’s foot so hard he wonders if any of her missteps are true accidents. Kate still regards Anthony as a rake, so she denies his suit for Edwina. Anthony is every bit the rogue she expects him to be, even going so far as to use seductive techniques on her (pulling her close, whispering in her ear, etc.). His behavior further convinces her that her original judgment was correct. Kate recognizes that Anthony could have pulled out all the stops to charm and convince her, and despite his genuine compliment, Kate still considers him dishonest because he said she is as beautiful as Edwina. He attempts to be kind and polite, but he says the exact wrong thing. Even though she is the older sister, Kate has always felt like she is in Edwina’s shadow. Edwina is more conventionally beautiful, socially agreeable, and generally falls in line with the ton’s attitudes. Kate sees through Anthony’s forced niceties, but instead of interpreting it as adherence to social decorum, she takes it as further proof of his rakishness. Kate’s repeated stomping on his feet is the first instance of many which Kate blurs the line between accident and intention.

The day after the ball, all the flowers Edwina’s suitors sent her end up going to Kate. The irony is that the men know so little about Edwina that they send her flowers she is allergic to, while Kate comes to possess a myriad of gifts that were not meant for her. The messages attached to every bouquet remind Kate that she is nobody’s first choice, but she still manages to find joy in the flowers as she arranges them in her rooms. Kate’s ability to separate the beauty of the flowers from the intention they represented to someone else is a sign that she can see the nuances of many things in the world—despite this capability, she still sees Anthony in black-and-white terms. As Kate works with the flowers, she talks to them as if they are people instead of inanimate objects, which illustrates how lonely she feels: She is her own conversation partner.

Anthony’s gift of flowers for Edwina as well as Kate and Mary are a sweet gesture, but one he did not devise on his own: He admits he copied the gesture after seeing Simon do the same while courting Daphne the year before. His open admission of this fact creates space to question his intentions: He may have done this just to be kind to Edwina’s family, or he could have chosen a kind thing to do to win them over. His visit to Kate’s house is markedly different from their first meeting at the ball. In public, they were combative; in private, they are civil, and manage to find common ground between them. Kate’s quick thinking lets her hide her true feelings, such as when Anthony catches her blushing, not realizing she fantasized about him, and she quickly excuses herself as being worried they will be caught unchaperoned. Kate has had practice covering her true feelings, since she often must play the happy, supportive sister while being frequently ignored. However, Kate’s fear of being caught is not a flimsy excuse. In this time, single men and women had to have an adult or married person present, and they could not be alone together. If they were caught in this way, gossip would assume the worst, and the ensuing scandal could ruin their reputations. Those same assumptions and scandals often forced the unwed couple into a hasty marriage to save face—the very thought of being “trapped” in marriage to Kate Sheffield terrifies Anthony, but that consequence only occurred to him then, rather than when Kate told him they were alone earlier in their conversation.

Newton’s mad dash through the park injects a moment of levity into the otherwise tense relations between Anthony and Kate, even though the incident ends in tempers flaring. Kate does her best to adhere to proper etiquette even while chasing her dog across Rotten Row; it is only when she realizes she is losing ground that she lifts her skirt to help her mobility. Even then, Kate is cautious to not raise her skirt too high. Her caution indicates that for all her pretending otherwise, she does care what people think of her. Lifting her skirt, even a little bit, also demonstrates Kate’s willingness to bend the rules to accomplish her goal: She will sacrifice decorum if it means catching Newton. The scene by the lake is the first real look at Anthony’s temper, and how quickly his anger can become rage. His instinct is to assume Kate sabotaged him, despite the actual circumstance clearly being an accident. This scene also serves to highlight Edwina’s naivete: She does not understand why Kate and Anthony are so angry with one another, even when the two are screaming at one another the precise reason why they are angry. Edwina understands their words, but it is the intense emotion behind those words that she has trouble comprehending. Edwina’s confusion stands in stark contrast to later scenes in the novel, when she understands Kate and Anthony’s emotions better than they do themselves.