Gladys ignored the stares and returned to searching for Mr. Medford. She couldn’t find him. Not from this picnic blanket, anyway.
“Mother, Father, I’ll be back soon.” She scrambled to her feet.
Mother looked up from the open basket. “Where are you going?”
“I… see someone.” Many someones. Thousands of them. Just not the man she was looking for. Gladys hurried off before her mother could ask more questions.
She looked for Mr. Medford in every corner. Behind every bush and tree. In every group. On every blanket.
“On the hunt, are you?” cackled an older woman, lifting a flask in salute.
Gladys frowned and hurried on. She caught sight of one of the fellow wallflowers she’d spoken with two nights earlier at the ball.
“My apologies for the interruption,” she said in a rush. “I’d wondered if you’d seen… the, er, gentleman we discussed the other night.”
The wallflower snorted. “Not lately, but we all know why.”
“I haven’t a clue,” Gladys said in bewilderment. “Do be so kind as to tell me.”
“Haven’t you heard?”
Her heart stopped. “Is he hurt? Sick? Attending to familial duty?”
“In the best condition of his life, from the sound of it. He’s always been an absolutely shameless rake—”
“He has?” Gladys managed faintly. But Mother had sworn all gentlemen present were on the hunt for a bride!
“—and for the last two days, he’s had a different woman on his arm every time he’s been spotted.”
“Spotted where? I’ve not been able to find him.”
“And you won’t. Not if you’re looking here. He’s been seen emerging from the private hotel rooms of half a dozen notoriously fast women in the past twenty-four hours alone. By now, he’s up to number seven or eight. Who knows when that rakehell finds time to sleep!”
Eight women in a single day. No wonder Mr. Medford hadn’t found her. He wasn’t looking for her. Nor would he be. He was a conscienceless libertine, driven by lust alone. He didn’t care about her. The closest warm body would suffice. Gladys was simply one more handkerchief to use and discard, from a bottomless trough of waiting linen.
Last night, after their kiss, whilst she was vibrating nervously against the wainscoting, waiting for him to come and ask her to dance… he was already off with someone else.
And then someone else, and someone else, and someone else.
He was entertaining himself with an endless parade of women, none of which were Gladys. It would never be Gladys. He’d already moved on to brighter flowers.
But he hadn’t just kissed her. He’d helped himself to her breasts. Compromised the absolute potatoes out of her. And had no intent to do the gentlemanly thing and save her reputation. He’d treated her as though she was a whore. As if she was disposable. As if she didn’t matter.
Because Gladys didn’t matter. Not to Mr. Medford. Not to anyone.
That wasn’t passion she’d experienced in his arms. It wasn’t even pity. It was boredom. Convenience. Something to do to pass the time, and then immediately forget all about.
“Thank you for letting me know,” Gladys managed.
She trudged back to her parents’ picnic blanket and took a seat next to her sister. No sooner had Gladys settled into place, than a pinch-faced woman approached their family with her index finger outstretched.
“I cannot believe you would dare to show your face in public!”
Gladys gaped up at her. The woman was definitely pointing her finger at Gladys, and not Kitty. The manicured nail was mere inches from Gladys’s nose.
“Me?” she asked anyway.
The woman swung her finger toward Kitty, and her gaze toward Gladys’s parents. “I’m surprised an upstanding family like yours would allow the youngest daughter, so full of potential, anywhere near your trollop of an elder daughter.”
