No wonder aristocrats were fond of saying that peasants should not try to reach past their station.
“Why, it’s Lady Roundtree!” cooed a passing lady. “And still in splints. Are you ever so bored?”
“Terribly. Although I did procure a temporary companion.” The baroness sent a kindly smile over her shoulder at Nora. “I imagine Miss Winfield cannot be bored. I rescued her from a sheep farm.”
“A farm!” The young ladies tittered at such an ignominious fate. “She must be so grateful to be free from such monotony.”
“And the stench of livestock,” added another.
Nora’s throat stung, and she swallowed the thick words she could not say. All the things she was proud of, all the things her family had built their lives around… all the sacrifices she had made to save the home of the people she loved was worthless to theton,and only made her look even more ridiculous to them.
Nausea twisted in her belly. If she claimed their open disregard didn’t hurt her, she was only lying to herself.
Before her stoic walls could begin to crack, Nora leapt to her feet. She faced the baroness. “May I fetch you a lemonade?”
“Ratafia.” Lady Roundtree pursed her lips. “And a sponge cake.”
Nora nodded and stiffly made her way toward the refreshment table.
It was flanked by a cluster of cackling dandies, the loudest of which was in the middle.
“Among pups like you, I am a stallion,” he concluded to boisterous laughter. “Everyone says so. A stallion among pups!”
Nora tried not to roll her eyes. She recognized this man as Phineas Mapleton, who thought more of himself than anyone around him. The last time she’d been forced to interact with him, he had gone out of his way to ensure Nora understood how little and insignificant she truly was.
When his group neither partook of refreshments nor moved out of the way, she cleared her throat as delicately as possible. “Might I slip in to fetch a refreshment?”
Mapleton’s sharp gaze was immediately upon her. “Not this one again! You still haven’t learned to speak to your betters only when spoken to?”
The others laughed.
Nora gritted her teeth and said nothing. This was not an argument she could win.
“Of course you have the manners of a sow,” he continued, to the delight of his peers. “She was raised on a pig farm!”
Nora did not dare correct the laughing dandies withsheepfarm. The distinction would only prove more fodder for ridicule.
“It’s not for me.” She kept her voice low, but composed. “Lady Roundtree is parched.”
“Parched?” Mapleton echoed with a braying laugh. “I’ll say. She’s more wrinkled than a raisin left to dry in the sun. Why, we should call her LadyRaisintree!”
Nora clenched her fingers. She might have to swallow her betters’ personal attacks toward her, but she was not going to allow some arrogant prig like this to be ghastly to Lady Roundtree.
“A true gentleman,” she enunciated clearly, “would have just as much respect for any female who outranks him as we peasants do.”
“Ooh, was that a set-down?” Mapleton snorted with laughter. “All I hear is the squealing of a little country pig. Go ahead and take a trough full of sweets back to your master, little sow. I am too fine a gentleman to waste time trying to reason with animals.”
“Mapleton isn’t just a stallion among pups,” chortled one of the dandies, “but a pig-tamer, too.”
“Go back to the country where you belong,” Mapleton laughed as he shooed his well-dressed cronies out of the way. “You will be wrinklier than your mistress in no time.”
The “stallion” pranced off without a care in the world, likely to recount the tale to anyone who would listen.
Fury raced through Nora’s veins. If he wished to mock her, so be it. But her family was off-limits.
And Lady Roundtree was family.
Chapter 17
