“What about Lady Gwyneth?” asked Bran.
Mother smiled in her cool, affected way. “To begin with,” she began, “she is the daughter of an earl, and that counts for something.”
“And the sister of an earl,” Stoke said around a spoonful of the blancmange that had just been served.
The smile froze on Mother’s face. “Yes, well.” That relation evidently counted for less.
Stoke didn’t appear the least bothered as he signaled a footman for a top-up of his wine.
“But all one need do is look at her,” said Mother.
All eyes swung toward Lady Gwyneth, who blushed furiously. Less from pleasure, Artemis suspected, than from supreme discomfort.
“With her blonde hair and fresh, light complexion, she is a diamond of the first water. It matters little that her eyes are common brown.”
“Her eyes are golden, Mother,” said Artemis. “There is nothing common about her eyes. They are very like her brother’s.”
Mother exhaled a delicate, but long-suffering sigh. “Be that as it may, the vital point is this. Some ladies have birth, and others have looks. Those with looks must make the most of them.”
Mother was being exceptionallyMothertonight.
“Celia,” continued Mother. She was now addressing the Duchess of Acaster. “You’re a woman of the world. You know exactly of what I’m speaking.”
The Duchess of Acaster set down her tiny dessert spoon and turned toward Mother. The duchess’s first husband had been the notorious Sixth Duke of Acaster, a man fifty-six years her senior. The duchess’s renowned beauty was one of the factors her father had used to secure his daughter’s marriage—along with a mountain of money, of course. Money the old reprobate duke had disposed of in every gaming hell and vice den in London.
“How fortuitous,” said Celia, the smile on her face unquestionably a façade, “that Lady Gwyneth possesses both high birth and exquisite beauty.”
The left corner of Mother’s mouth twitched.
No one other than Artemis would have noticed.
“Simply, we cannot let Lady Gwyneth become a Lady Artemis.”
Artemis’s lungs refused to keep breathing. Though she’d heard as much through the years, the words stabbed her to the quick, like a sudden and unexpected blow. Unseeing eyes fell to the wiggly blancmange on her plate, mortification streaking hot through her.
“Mother …” came Rake’s voice from the opposite end of the table.
The warning did nothing to dispel Artemis’s humiliation.
“Why is that, Your Grace?” came a low masculine voice.
Bran.
Artemis lifted her eyes to find his intense golden gaze fixed firmly on Mother, who was returning it with her signature cool distance. “Isn’t it clear that my daughter missed her chance?”
“Chance at what?” he returned, his voice hard—simmering. Before Mother could answer, he continued, “An interesting term for defining a lady.”
“What term is that, Lord Branwell?”
Bran and Mother had become locked in a battle of wills.Here, at the supper table, before every person in the world who mattered most to Artemis.
“Diamond of the first water.” No mistaking the mockery in his voice. “The thing about a diamond is it has two selves. There’s the perfection we perceive with our eyes, and there’s the perfection within. It’s no insignificant paradox that inner perfection produces the perfection we see on its surface. But what creates that perfection?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Purity.” A beat. “So, we must ask ourselves what makes a diamond? Pressure, heat, and adversity. Diamonds experience the elements in the fiercest way, and they come through changed. They are made strong and beautiful. So, when the termdiamond of the first wateris used to describe a young debutante, it does beg a question.”
Now he waited.
The hushed expectancy of the room leaving her no choice, Mother asked, “And what question is that, Lord Branwell?”
“Can a lady truly be a diamond based solely on youthful beauty and inexperience? The answer to any person of logic must beno. For how can a lady become a diamond if she isn’t tested?”
