My Dear Lady Misericordia
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm sure, however, that it will find you much as my last letter did, given that you are likely to be reading one directly after the other, if, indeed, you read them at all. I am writing in the small hours of the morning and I can hear the music still playing downstairs where you are, no doubt, still dancing and still laughing. About me, probably.
 
As you will know by now - and as you probably knew before - although I may now be the kind of man who might ask you to dance, I am not yet the kind of man you would dance with, partly because you had already agreed to dance with all the eligible young men in the room and your dance card was full but mostly, I suspect, because you didn't want to.
 
Unfortunately for me, and, it turned out, for her, the Duchess of Plaid is the kind of woman who takes pity on a young man without a dance partner. And that is how I found myself launched onto the dancefloor, with her enormous skirts billowing around me and getting under my feet. No wonder the Prime Minister refers to her as 'The Battleship of State Banquets'.
 
As you yourself were quite keen to point out to me, my Lady, I am not someone who goes to balls regularly. Neither am I someone who dances often, or, in fact, at all. Ever.
 
However, as I have often tried to impress upon you, my Lady, there is nothing that can't be solved with a little intelligence and planning. And with a little intelligence and planning, my Lady, I have constructed a device that I am sure could one day make my fortune. Once I have ironed out some of the problems.
 
But then, you have seen some of the problems for yourself and know all too well just how ironed out they have to be.
 
It seemed to me that dancing is largely simply a matter of fitting the right movement of the feet to the rhythm of the music. I could learn all the steps: the key was to know which step went where. All I needed, then, was something to remind me what to do when. But any kind of notebook or reminder would be too obvious, and it would be too easy to lost my place in the music. It had to be something that could keep time, keep me in my place and, above all, keep hidden.
And so I invented my amazing clockwork dancing shoes.

It was simple idea: a clockwork mechanism hidden in the heel of each shoe that would keep time with the music and tap out the dance steps on the sole of my foot. I even included a device whereby I could even adjust it for different dances using little brass disks, marked out for waltzes, foxtrots and polkas. It certainly worked perfectly in the privacy of my attic room when I tried it out late at night.
 
It did not work so well in the ballroom, with Lady Plaid bearing down upon me in full sail.
 
At first all seemed well - under the guise of tying my shoelaces, I was able to wind up the mechanism before the music began and set off, nipping round the dancefloor with my shoes ticking and pinching beneath me, keeping my feet moving in more or less the right direction.
 
But in making the mechanism small enough to fit in my shoe, I had had to reduce the size of the spring, which meant that the music was barely a third through before the clockwork began to wind down. It began to tick slower and slower, gradually getting out of time to the music, and Lady Plaid and I began to lurch back and forth in ever decreasing circles until we ground to a halt in the middle of the floor, everyone else still whirling around us in a heady waltz. Lady Plaid stared at me, aghast, as I muttered something about my shoelace again and bent to surreptitiously wind my feet back up.
 
But, in my panic, I wound them up too tight and, with a sharp squeeze, they sprang to life again, this time stabbing and poking me much harder and faster than before, sending the Duchess and I careening off at a high canter, scattering dancing couples before us like Oxshott's startled antelope.
 
Then, with a loud and sudden ping, the overloaded spring sprang and shot out of my heel, followed by a shower of cogs, pins and the brass disks of foxtrot and waltz, scattering behind us as we wheeled headlong towards the supper room. I'm sure I remember your pink and grinning face flashing past me in our disastrous journey, but I think even you, my Lady, must applaud my presence of mind as I managed to fling Lady Plaid into a passing chair as I stumbled onward, uncontrollable, through the doors and into a table of custards.
 
I didn't see your reaction to my giddy end, my Lady, but I did hear Baronet Oxshott's laugh rattling out like a line of guns as I ran from the room, dripping pudding in a trail up the stairs.
 
I am back in my room, now, my Lady, and have removed my rattling shoes and custardy clothes. I will not be going back downstairs, I think, even though I can hear that your father, Lord Daunt, has started his speech about his expedition - the expedition that this party has been brought together to celebrate.
 
I helped him write the speech and I would dearly love to hear it. But I dare not show my face again, I think. However, sitting up here in my shame, I have made a decision.
 
I may not be able to waltz, I may not be able to shoot dumb animals or mount an expedition, but I shall find a way to prove to you, my Lady, to prove to everyone down there in that ballroom, all listening to Lord Daunt's, my, words about the Arctic wastes he is about to venture into, that Mr Hope can amount to something in this world, can be brave and resourceful and adventurous, can be the kind of man that a young lady might, one day, consider marrying.
 
Yours, desserted but determined
 
Timothy Hope, Esq,
 
Tutor