There was after all no one to trust.
Not even herself and her own judgment.
Loneliness lunged at her and took what felt like a death grip on both her throat and her stomach. Each breath was difficult to draw and even harder to release.
Twelve
The evening was interminable.
Colin stayed and smiled without ceasing. He answered questions. Lady Overfield had a headache and had gone home with her mother He did not know where Sir Geoffrey Codaire was; perhaps he had accompanied the ladies. He danced. Not with Miss Madson—when he returned to claim a second dance with her, her elder sister, a formidable chaperon, informed him that her card was full for the rest of the evening. Her tone implied that it would be full for the rest of the Season too. He danced with Miss Eglington after exchanging a measured glance with Ross Parmiter. She was gravely quiet through the set, though she did look up at him during one almost private moment and told him quite earnestly that she did not believe a word of any of it. He thanked her, though he could only imagine whatany of itwas. And he waltzed with Miss Dunmore. Her mother nodded graciously to him when he went to claim his partner, more than half expecting to be snubbed.
“It was most obliging of you, Lord Hodges,” she said, “to waltz with Lady Riverdale’s widowed sister-in-law on the occasion of her betrothal. I hope she was suitably gratified. It is really too provoking that you were drawn into that vulgar scene by Sir Geoffrey Codaire, who would surely have been beneath your notice and that of the Earl of Riverdale and the Duke of Netherby if Lady Overfield had not been desperate enough for a husband to accept an offer from him. If anyone should try to hint in my hearing that you behaved with anything less than the strictest propriety, I shall set that person right in no uncertain terms, you may be sure. Now off you go with Lydia or you will miss the start of the waltz.”
Lydia Dunmore herself seemed only too pleased to be waltzing. She was flushed and smiling as they danced and made no reference to the last waltz he had performed. She was slender and light on her feet and followed his lead without any missteps. She seemed to have grown even prettier since her come-out ball a few weeks ago. Her complexion had gained color. Her eyes sparkled as she conversed with him. But he could not find the energy to feel any great admiration for her, let alone fall in love with her. His heart was heavy with other matters.
Her engagement was off—Elizabeth’s, that was. He could not feel as sorry about that as perhaps he ought, for he had not liked Codaire even before that bizarre episode earlier. But what was going to happen to her now? There was certainly going to be gossip. There already was. She was thirty-five years old. All she had wanted was contentment in a marriage with a worthy gentleman. It had not been a lofty dream. Now it was shattered.
…if Lady Overfield had not been desperate enough for a husband to accept an offer from him.
Could he really bear to have Lady Dunmore as a mother-in-law?
He walked home later that night with a growing sense of guilt even though he had been assuring himself for the last few hours that he was guiltless, and others had borne him out. He had known Codaire did not like him and disapproved of Elizabeth’s dancing with him. So what had he done? He had waltzed with her anyway, and with the same sort of exuberance with which they had danced at the Boxing Day party. He had laughed and enjoyed himself with her. And then they had plunged unexpectedly into a conversation so intense that they had remained on the dance floor after everyone else had left it. What the devil had they been talking about? He could not even remember.
He wondered how she was feeling now. He doubted she was sleeping. And it was all so monstrously unfair. She had been looking radiant and happy. It had beenhernight. And she had done nothing wrong.
He felt no doubt whatsoever that gossip was going to erupt into outright scandal tomorrow. And gossip was always at best an exaggeration of the truth, at worst a total distortion of it.
He would have liked to remain at home the following morning. To hide. But if he hid now, it would be progressively difficult to show himself later. And word of what was being said out there would inevitably reach him—through his valet, through his friends, through the gossip columns of the papers. There was no hiding, in other words.
He went to White’s Club, which was just a stone’s throw away from his rooms, and met, purely by chance, both the Duke of Netherby and Lord Molenor on the threshold. At least, he thought as they stepped inside and relinquished their hats and gloves to a waiting servant, he had some moral support.
A group of men gathered in the reading room, as they regularly were in the mornings to read the papers and exchange news and views, were busy talking, their voices carrying beyond the open doors of the room.
“…a fortunate escape,” someone was saying.
“You have my deepest sympathies,” someone else said.
“They were actually embracing on the dance floor after everyone else had left it?” a third man said in the form of a question. “Surely nothing quite as vulgar, Codaire.”
Colin pricked up his ears, and his companions fell still beside him.
“It is as true as I am sitting here,” Sir Geoffrey Codaire said. “Overfield used to say she was a slut and I never believed him. I ought to have. I should have slapped a glove in that young puppy’s face last night, but he actually did me a favor. In three weeks’ time I would have been married to the woman. It scarcely bears thinking of.”
“You would not have put up with…” someone was saying when Colin stopped listening.
The Duke of Netherby, armed with his quizzing glass and his most haughty manner, had stepped into the doorway. Colin clamped a hand on his arm and stepped past him. Codaire saw him come and cocked an eyebrow.
“And speaking of the devil,” he said without much originality.
The group of men, some of them elderly, all of them surely older than Codaire, gawked.
“I will hear an apology, Codaire,” Colin said, keeping his voice down in deference to the purpose of the room, though he doubted anyone in it was trying to read. “For the lie about what the lady and I were doing after the set of waltzes was at en end. And for the insult to the lady.”
“You are suddenly her father or her brother, are you, Hodges?” Codaire asked him.
“I am the brother of her sister-in-law,” he said. “More important, I am a gentleman.”
There was a collective sound from all the other men somewhere between a gasp and a sigh.
