When Rose looked into the duke’s face again, the amusement in his eyes was still there but now darker and somewhat rueful. She knew what their audience meant and he must know it too. This scene would doubtless be all over the ton within weeks, if not days…
Shy wallflower Lady Rose Williams had been caught in a scandal with the devilish Duke of Ravenhill!
Chapter Four
“How on earth could this happen?” demanded Eugenia Williams, Duchess of Westvale in a low but frustrated voice, her brow creased with anxiety. “These things do not happen in our family. We have never had any kind of scandal.”
The duchess sat stiffly on a sofa in the Westvale Park drawing room clutching a large lace-trimmed handkerchief while her two sons paced restlessly, Magnus by the window and Edwin by the fireplace. The fire in the grate had gone out while they were all distracted, the room growing colder now by the minute.
“I cannot believe this is happening,” Eugenia added. “With everything else we already have to bear, now this too!”
Rose sat mute and guilty in a corner of the sofa as though wishing to hide there. There could be no hiding at all today, however. Nor running away. Nor even daydreaming. All this had been made abundantly clear by Edwin last night when he marched Rose in from the garden at Ashbourne Castle andordered her to her room. She was in trouble of the most serious kind.
Edwin had made his views clear again during the coach journey back early this morning, and throughout the family conference in which they had all been closeted since arriving home. Rose was worn out with it all but helpless in the face of the threat she had unintentionally brought to their door.
“I didn’t know the Duke of Ravenhill was out in the garden,” Rose said woefully to her mother, although she felt she had already now told her story a hundred times to family members who either didn’t believe her or weren’t even listening to what she said. “He mistook me for someone else.”
It did sound rather absurd even to Rose’s ears in the cold light of day, especially after so many people had seen her standing there with Dorian Voss in a distinctly compromising position. No wonder the duke’s attempts to explain matters to her brothers and other bystanders had fallen on deaf ears last night.
“You should not have been out in the garden alone at all at night!” put in Edwin, yet another line that had already been used too many times in his scoldings, both yesterday and today.
“I wish I hadn’t been alone,” replied Rose miserably, thinking of Madeline and Josephine once promising to beat off with their fans any man who tried to embrace her. “Then the duke could not have mistaken my identity.”
Magnus made an angry and incredulous noise and Rose felt as though they were all caught in a cursed cycle of anger, disbelief and recrimination, repeating the same questions and answers over and over again without reaching any conclusion or resolution.
“Can you really be so very naive as to believe what Ravenhill told you, Rose? He was looking you full in the face and touching your shoulder. I saw that with my own eyes.”
“That was afterwards,” Rose tried to explainyet again. “When he first saw me, I had my shawl wrapped around my head and shoulders.”
“Afterwards? After what?” asked her mother sharply, picking up on this detail with some alarm.
“After I slapped him,” Rose mumbled, lowering her eyes and hoping not to be asked why she had done so. “That was when my dress and shawl became disarranged. I know the duke was wrong to do so, but he was only fixing them.”
As she spoke, her hand instinctively rose to the scarf still wrapped about her throat, thankfully unquestioned by anyone in the present cold weather.
“Disarranged!” exclaimed Edwin, as though this word goaded him beyond bearing. “So, the Duke of Ravenhill approaches you in the gardens, you slap him and he claims to have mistaken you for some other lady. Then he takes liberties with your clothing, which would be highly improper, whatever the circumstancesbut especially alone at night in the grounds. Good Lord! Magnus is right. You are beyond naive, Rose.”
“Edwin!” said his mother in a stern whisper as his voice rose, pointing a finger upwards as a reminder that the Duke of Westvale lay gravely ill in his rooms on the first floor and must not be troubled, even by such a crisis as this. “There can be no shouting, no matter how great the provocation.”
“It is a great provocation indeed,” Edwin continued with a long and frustrated sigh, dropping his tone and resuming his pacing. “How dare that man lay hands on the daughter of the Duke of Westvale! Ravenhill’s adventures in Chelsea studios and his friendships with wealthy widows are his own business as long as appropriate discretion is maintained, but this goes too far. It is intolerable!”
“Even if we cannot expect proper behavior from the Duke of Westvale, I am very disappointed in Rose,” remarked the duchess, shaking her head at all three of her children. “Nor should you have let her out of your sight at Ashbourne Castle. Rose was in your charge, Edwin. Magnus too bears some responsibility.”
“Rose is one-and-twenty,” Magnus protested, turning from the window. “Edwin and I cannot be expected to act as nursemaids. She ought to know how to conduct herself by now.”
Rose shrank as far as she could into her corner of the sofa, unable to think of a single thing to say in her own defense. Not even Magnus was on her side any more.
“Well, clearly she doesn’t,” Edwin snapped. “Mother is right, Magnus. We should not have let Rose go about unchaperoned, even now. She’s still as foolish as a schoolgirl. You’ve heard how easily she believes everything that comes out of the mouth of a libertine like Ravenhill. There is no point in arguing over this. The question is what to do now.”
“Yes,” the Duchess of Westvale agreed with her eldest son. “What can be done for the best, given that there were so many witnesses and overblown tales are likely halfway around London already this morning?”
“Could we bribe the scandal sheets to keep Rose’s name out of their stories?” suggested Magnus. “We cannot prevent general gossip, of course, but we can limit the damage to the family if Rose’s name isn’t published.”
Their mother looked thoughtful and examined the lace on the edge of her handkerchief as she considered this proposition.
“Perhaps,” she said. “If we pay off the scandal sheets, Rose could go to Bath for next season, and in another year, the matter will be faded in the ton’s memory, if not forgotten. Luckily, beauty, rank and fortune mean that someone will still marry her, regardless of damaged reputation.”
Rose felt quite ill to be discussed in this manner. Damaged reputation – it was a phrase to strike fear into the heart of any young lady of the ton. Due to her adventure in the gardens with the Duke of Ravenhill, Rose’s future expectations were badlyinjured. She supposed she ought to be grateful not to be entirely ruined, as any girl from a lesser family would be.
