“Was thatyou?” he asked her, just as if he expected that she had been following his train of thought.
Her chin jutted and her lips thinned, but she still spoke softly.
“It was,” she said.
Good God! But why was she so angry? She very obviouslywas.
“By my recollection we were not personally introduced,” he said, “though I believe I was generally presented to the whole gathering. It was a large barn and the lighting was dim and flickering. I left with James Rutledge before the dancing even began. I was afraid of being coaxed into participating and making an idiot of myself before strangers. I do beg your pardon if you were offended that I did not stay and dance with you or any of your friends. I am sure I did not intend any insult. And it was a long time ago. I was twenty-one or -two, I would guess. You must have been a mere girl.”
“I was eighteen,” she said. “Do you really believe, Lord Roath, that you left early that evening only because you did not wish to be persuaded into dancing? Would not a simplenohave sufficed if that had been the case?”
He was sitting closer to her than he had been earlier, he realized suddenly. He had not moved his chair back after Jenny passed behind him. And he was leaning forward, his forearms across his knees. Their faces were uncomfortably close despite the low table between them. But he resisted the impulse to move back now despite the fact that he felt a certain dread of what she might be about to say. Some of the details of that particular memory, doubtless theworst ones, had not yet surfaced in his mind. She was about to help that process along, speaking in her quiet, distinct voice.
“You left, Lord Roath,” she said, “because youdid not choose to dance with soiled goods.” She even put particular emphasis upon the final words, as though she were directly quoting him. And good God, he believed she really might be.
It felt as though the blood were draining from his head. “Did I say that?” he asked her. But even if he had—and he knew he must have—how could she possibly have heard? The girls and women had been some distance away in a chattering, giggling group. Had one of the men told her afterward? But that seemed highly unlikely. Good God!
“You did,” she told him, and she was half smiling, though it was obvious she did not feel anything resembling amusement. “You said it as soon as you were told who my father was. It was because of your reaction and your words that I knew his disgrace was not after all a purely local matter, but that the whole of thetonhad been scandalized and disgusted—to such a degree, in fact, that no member of his family would ever again be welcome in polite society. I ought to thank you for alerting me to that reality. You saved me from a ghastly fate. I was about to go to London with my parents for my come-out Season, you see. Needless to say, I did not go.”
His disgrace?Her father’s? What the devil was she talking about?
He stretched out a hand toward her, though he did not actually touch her. He saw her arm tense, and she flinched back an inch or two in her chair.
“Four years later,” she said, “I have defied thetonto do its worst, and here I am.” She smiled again that smile that was not really a smile.
Do its worst?About what?
Four years.She must be twenty-two now. She had hidden awayin the country all this time when she might have taken her place in society here in London as other young ladies of her birth and standing did as soon as they quit the schoolroom? When she might have been courted and married and be living happily with a husband and perhaps a child or two by now? And all because of wordshehad spoken? Words that made no real sense to him now even if they had at the time. Why should she be soiled goods merely because she was Stratton’s daughter? He had obviously not been thinking straight when he spoke.
“Lady Philippa,” he said. “You misunderstood. Yet the misunderstanding was entirely my fault. There was no disgrace or public scandal that I knew of. Had something terrible happened, news of which you feared had spread to London and thetonat large? Something concerning your father? I am sorry for your sake that whatever it was happened, but I do assure you I knew—and know—nothing of it. I have never spent a great deal of time in London. Almost none, in fact. I probably do not know many more members of polite society than you do. I hear almost no gossip either. I read the London papers for events about which I feel I ought to be informed. I avoid the society pages. I find them distasteful and actually uninteresting. I prefer to concern myself with local matters from my own neighborhood in the country.”
He paused, but she was tight-lipped and not about to agree that yes, she must have misunderstood. He plowed onward.
“But I do know that gossip here in London, even outright scandal, rarely lasts for long,” he said. “Gossips always crave what is new and quickly grow bored with what is more than a few days old. Theton,I have also heard, is rather tolerant of its members, provided they act with discretion when they stray from strict propriety. You misunderstood what you overheard.”
He realized even as he was speaking that he was probably justmaking matters even worse. What if she were to ask what hehadmeant, then?
“Then in what way was—oram—I soiled goods, Lord Roath?” she asked him even as he was thinking it.
He gazed at her, not knowing what on earth he was going to say. Good God, this was his first day in London in a number of years, yet he found himself in company with surely the only person who could make a nightmare of his coming. It was her first Season in Londonever.Yet right at the very beginning of it she had had the misfortune to meethim,the very man who had blighted the last four years and perhaps ruined her life. That might not even be an exaggeration. What the devil could he say?
He was rescued—at least temporarily—from having to say anything at all, however. His aunt appeared beside him again and set a hand on his shoulder.
“Do you not think, Luc, that you have monopolized Pippa’s company for long enough?” she asked, smiling from one to the other of them. “Whatwillshe think of your manners and of my skill as a hostess?” She did not wait for him to reply. They had been rhetorical questions anyway. “Do come along with me, Pippa. There are a number of my guests who have not been introduced to you yet but very much wish to be. I have been delighted to observe you enjoying the company of my son and my niece and nephew, but it would be very selfish of me to try keeping you just for my own family. And, Luc, I have been hearing from a staggeringly large number of my guests that they have never yet made your acquaintance. Yet how oldareyou? Do get up and begin to mingle, my dear boy, though I know your reserved nature makes it painful for you.”
She had linked an arm through Lady Philippa’s while she spoke and bore her off now across the room without waiting for him to answer.
He would like nothing better than to slink off to his own room and stay there until he was quite sure every guest had left the house. It could not be done, however. He had made the decision when he arrived earlier to attend his aunt’s party, to begin to mingle with his peers among thetonand establish himself in their midst, as he ought to have done years ago and could no longer avoid doing. Now he must remain at the party until the bitter end. Time enough to lick his wounds later.
He could feel the beginning of a headache pricking at his temples as he rose from his chair and turned to offer his hand to a man who was approaching him purposefully at the head of a small group of smiling guests.
“Lucas Arden,” he said, returning the smiles. “I was fortunate enough to arrive in London in time to discover that my aunt was entertaining here.”
Chapter Six
Philippa went downstairs to the library after divesting herself of her bonnet and gloves in her dressing room and washing her hands and doing a few minor repairs to her hair without bothering to call her maid. She hoped she would have the library to herself for a while so that she could consider what had happened this afternoon and compose herself before having to be sociable again. It was not to be, however. Her mother was seated at the escritoire, an open letter in one hand. She was seated sideways on her chair, listening to Stephanie, who had apparently just returned from an excursion to Hampton Court Palace with Cousin Angeline Ware and Ninian Fortescue, her betrothed. The educational tour of Westminster Abbey with Miss Field had been postponed to another day.
“You had a good time, then, Steph?” Philippa asked her.
