Colin preceded them into the dining room even though he had worked up just the opposite of an appetite. “By God,” he said, “the man is a coward. He must outweigh me two to one, and he would have had the choice of weapons.”
“Ah,” the Duke of Netherby said softly, “but he is not a violent man, Hodges.”
•••
The Westcott family, or at least that part of it that was in London, did what it did best. It gathered about its own in a time of crisis. It gathered to comfort and commiserate. And it gathered to consider the problem and offer a practical solution. It descended in a body upon the house on South Audley Street on the afternoon following the betrothal ball.
She might have expected it, Elizabeth thought when it was too late to escape to her room and lock herself in. Would she have done so if shehadthought about it, though? It would have been very ungracious. And ungrateful. She knew very well that if it had been another member of the family who was in trouble, she would have been among the first to rally.
She was sitting in an armchair to one side of the fire in the drawing room when they arrived. And yes, the fire had been lit because the day beyond the windows looked appropriately gray and cold. It was only surprising it was not actually raining. She had been sitting there for some time, refusing the drinks and food both her mother and Wren had been trying to press upon her and assuring them that she was quite all right, thank you, that there was really nothing to fuss about, that she was actually looking forward to returning to Riddings Park tomorrow. For that was what she had decided to do. She had always been happy there. She would be happy again. No one needworryabout her.
Inside she felt dead. Or at least too weary either to feel or to think. She did not want to be fussed over. She did not want sympathy. She did not want the concerned looks with which her family was regarding her. She just wanted to be left alone. If only she had the energy, she would screech just that message at them. If she had the energy, she would have gone up to her room and shut the door long before the rest of the family arrived.
But she had not found the energy and so she was trapped. It was her own fault. It served her right. She ought not to have thought of marrying again. Her life had been perfectly decent as it was. Now everything was ruined. Again. She ought not to have accepted the offer of a man she not only did not love but did not even like particularly well. It was shameful to admit that truth now. She had always found Sir Geoffrey Codaire a bit of a bore. She ought not to have waltzed with Colin. She ought to have ended that foolish arrangement as soon as she was betrothed. She ought not to have laughed with him and allowed him to twirl her about the ballroom with such lack of restraint. She ought not to have got involved in that wretched conversation. Shestillcould not recall what it had been about. Something about…forgiveness? She ought not…
She ought not, she ought not, she ought not.
Was there nothing sheoughtto have done? Or ought to do? Just because she wanted to, perhaps? She wanted to scream and have a massive tantrum, but she did not have the energy. Perhaps that was fortunate for everyone who would have been at the receiving end of it.
It was not only the Westcotts who came. The Radleys arrived too—Uncle Richard, her mother’s brother, and Aunt Lilian; Susan and Sidney, her cousins; and Alvin Cole, Susan’s husband.
Only last week they had all gathered here upon the announcement of her betrothal. They had discussed how it and her wedding were to be celebrated. She had been amused at the time and content to let them talk and have their way. She had not wanted a betrothal ball but had allowed one to be arranged—with disastrous consequences. She had not wanted a grand wedding at St. George’s, but she had acquiesced in the plan. She had felt the warmth of family, the joy of it then. Now her betrothal had ended, there was to be no wedding, and they had come to discuss how they were to prevent her from being destroyed by scandal. They had come because they cared.
It was burdensome to be cared about.
If only she cared too.
Butwhywas there a scandal?
She had done nothing wrong. Neither had Colin.
That made no difference to anything, of course. She had been an adult member of thetonlong enough to understand that a person could be destroyed by gossip even when there was little or no truth to any of it. Was there truth to any of this? Had she somehow dishonored Geoffrey with her behavior? Had his outburst been in any way justified? But even if it had been…
Oh, she was too weary either to assume any of the blame or to repudiate it.
She just wanted to go home—as she had wanted to go home after that last beating by Desmond and her accidental fall down the stairs and the dreadful aftermath of it all. Had nothing changed in her life? Had she made no progress?
“We need to discuss what is to be done,” Cousin Eugenia, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, announced after she had settled herself in the armchair on the opposite side of the hearth from Elizabeth’s and everyone else was variously disposed about the room. “Elizabeth is clearly incapable of deciding anything for herself. She looks quite dazed and pale, poor dear. And Althea and Alexander and Wren are too distressed for her sake to have been able to offer much practical advice, I daresay. So the rest of us will have to do it for them.”
“Quite right, Mama,” Cousin Louise, the Dowager Duchess of Netherby, said. “I daresay Elizabeth is wanting to withdraw to Riddings Park and is planning to do it without delay. Am I right, Althea? It would, of course, be exactly the wrong thing to do.”
“Then what is…”
Elizabeth stopped listening. She gazed into the fire while her mother perched on the arm of her chair and patted her back as if by so doing she could make everything better.
•••
By the time Colin arrived at the Earl of Riverdale’s house on South Audley Street, it was the middle of the afternoon and the weather was threatening to turn nastier than it already was. Gray clouds hung low and billowed across the sky at the mercy of a wind that was unseasonably chilly and was using the street as a funnel. It was almost but not quite raining.
There were no fewer than three carriages drawn up before the house, a sure sign that the Westcotts were rallying around one of their own. He did not hesitate anyway. If he did not call now, he never would, and he would forever have to live with a guilt he knew he had no need to be feeling. Unfortunately, one could not always control guilt. It took up house at the very center of one’s being and simply refused to budge even when one informed it that it had chosen to occupy the wrong host.
They were all there in the drawing room—all the ones who were currently in town, anyway. The Dowager Countess of Riverdale sat to one side of the fire that had been lit against the chill of the day with Lady Matilda Westcott predictably hovering over her, a bottle of something in her hand—probably smelling salts held at the ready should her mother do something as uncharacteristic as succumb to a fit of the vapors. Lord and Lady Molenor sat side by side on a love seat. The Dowager Duchess of Netherby occupied a sofa, Lady Jessica Archer on one side of her, Wren on the other. The Duchess of Netherby was seated on a chair beside them, the duke on a chair in the far corner of the room. Alexander stood with his back to the fire, his feet slightly apart, his hands at his back. Elizabeth was sitting on the chair across the hearth from the dowager countess with her mother perched on the arm, one of her hands patting her daughter’s back. And some of Mrs. Westcott’s family were there too—her brother and sister-in-law, their son, and their daughter with her husband.
Colin could not have felt more like an outsider if he had tried after he had been announced and had stepped into the room. And he was not at all sure anyone was glad to see him, except perhaps Wren, who got immediately to her feet and came toward him, both hands outstretched.
“Colin,” she said, taking his hands and kissing his cheek. “It is so good of you to have come. The weather is turning wretched, is it not?”
“It is probably going to start raining at any moment,” he said, squeezing her hands before releasing them. Elizabeth, after one brief incurious glance, was not looking at him or at anyone else for that matter. She was sitting with straight spine, not quite touching the back of her chair, her hands clasped in her lap. She was dressed simply and neatly. So was her hair. She was pale, her face expressionless.
