Chapter 3
“Dear Christ!”exclaimed Ezzie in one of her natural outbursts as she fell back against Ada’s sitting room door and giggled.“Was that not awkward?And intriguing?To think!China and Japan!I should like to go, wouldn’t you?”
Never.“I read about them.Or hear tales.That’s enough.”
“Oh, you’d go if he went with you.”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t be coy, Ade.Is Lord Victor Cole not the most fiendishly handsome man you’ve met in months?”
No.Years.“I don’t like him.”
“Oh, the devil in a nightshirt!Ada!Those eyes.”She rolled her eyes at her.“Those arms.”She made a boxer’s fist.“His shoulders.”She sighed.“I could just get lost in him.I’d go with him to China!Japan!Hell, even!”
“Stop!”Ada chuckled and strolled into her sitting room.
“And his girls would be fun.”
They would.“He wouldn’t.”
“You can’t know.”
“I do.”He hasn’t laughed in years.“The way he looks at us.”
“How do you mean?”
Ada pulled the bell for her maid.“He thinks we’re more foreign than his Chinese friends.”
“Ba!You don’t know that.”Ezzie wrapped her arms around her torso.“I could marry Victor Cole.He’s so much more intriguing than Richard, don’t you think?”
Better looking.But too somber.Ada hated to spread gossip, but there was no other way to object than to reveal some of what Liv had shared with her.“My step-mother told me he has skeletons in his closet that are uglier than Richard’s.”
“Oh, delicious.I bet he was a rogue in his youth.”
On the contrary.“He was a paragon.”
“What?Well, where’s the rub?”
Ada gave in to share more.“Liv says he married badly.”
“His poor dead wife?”Ezzie plunked in the chair opposite her and stared wide-eyed at her.“Tell me everything.”
Ada licked her lips.She should have kept quiet.“They married young.His wife was newly debuted at court and set the world on fire with her beauty.”
“And?”Ezzie prodded.“So?Come on.”
“She had affairs, Ezzie.Lots of them.”
“No!Really?”She slapped a hand to her chest.“She slept with others when she hadhim in her bed?”
He was a spectacular piece of manhood, but if he was as cold to his wife as he’d been to them today, Ada couldn’t blame the woman for seeking comfort where she might.
“She must’ve been mad.”Ezzie mused.“Utterly crazy to be so brazen.But—but the girls…oh my.They aren’t, you know…are they?They look like him and his mother.Oh, Ada.Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Rumors are not polite to spread.My step-mother and Camille were hurt by so many.Lily and Julian, too, might have topped the scale.Most especially my father has suffered for misconceptions of his character.Even you and I had our time at the trough.”
“Oh, piffle!That little tidbit in Cherbourg years ago?”
