“Apparently, kidnapping the sister of your friend’s wife from a ball renders you exceedingly erudite, Anglesey,” Wycombe quipped. “Who knew?”
“Damn it, I have already explained myself to each of you,” he snapped, losing his patience for the first time since he had been summoned. “I did not kidnap Lady Isolde. I rescued her from a scandalous situation. I will be candid here. She lost her balance and fell atop me.”
“Of course you would make such a claim,” the Duchess of Wycombe interjected. “Such an explanation would certainly suit you.”
Objectively, when he heard the words as if they had been spoken by another, they did indeed seem quite impossible. But he was not some soulless rakehell, at least not to the extent that he would seduce his friend’s wife’s sister at a goddamned ball.
He rather resented the fact that he was being questioned instead of Lady Isolde. Her antics alone had landed them in scandal. Whether or not he had taken her to Barlowe House, the damage had been done the moment Letitia had drawn the attention of half the ballroom, and everyone had crowded around to witness Lady Isolde atop him, stockings on display.
“It hardly suits me,” he snapped, losing his patience at last. “Do you truly believe I have any interest in marrying a lady whose kissing abilities, or lack thereof, rivals her abysmal taste in gowns?”
The moment the angry words had left him, Zachary wished he could recall them. The swift inhalation from Lady Isolde only served to heighten his guilt.
He turned back to her in time to watch as she rose unsteadily to her feet. “If that is how you see me, my lord, then I absolve you of any attempts at honor. I would never dream of saddling you with a lady who can neither kiss nor dress.”
He did not think he imagined the tears glistening in her emerald eyes before she fled the room, head held high. A sob emerged as she increased the pace of her flight, her foot catching in her hems as she nearly tripped.
Thetournureof her gown was nothing short of a monstrosity, tied up in a travesty, covered with a disaster.
Christ, who had persuaded her this kind of nonsense was becoming? Her sister dressed with an elegance that was too conservative for his taste, but nonetheless without a festoon of lace and ribbons and bows and garish patterns and…was that a fucking artichoke tucked into the gathered fall of her skirts?By God, he thought it was. A silken, stuffed artichoke!
“Have you not done enough, Zachary?” the duchess demanded of him, her disapproval and condemnation enough to jerk him from his appalled observation of Lady Isolde’s departing figure. “Was it not sufficient punishment that you made the scandal last night so much worse by taking her to Barlowe House? Now you have brought her to tears with your uncharitable words.”
For the first time in as long as he could recall, an ache bloomed in his chest. Not pity, he did not think, for last night, he had most definitely pitied Lady Isolde. The pang, however, had been conspicuously absent. This was new. Neither guilt nor shame.
Rather, regret, mingled with concern. Somehow, over the course of the last day, he had begun to feel responsible for Lady Isolde, even if in the smallest of ways. He rose from his seat.
“Forgive me,” he apologized to the duke and duchess both. “I will speak to her.”
Without waiting for a response from either of them, he stalked from the room, determined to find Lady Isolde.
* * *
She had never been moremiserable in her life.
But Izzy would not shed a tear.
Not, at least, until she reached the chamber where she was staying. Then, she could weep all she liked. And quite happily, too. After everything that had unfolded within the last day, it would be her right.
The Earl of Anglesey’s mocking words were echoing in her mind as she fled from tea.
Do you truly believe I have any interest in marrying a lady whose kissing abilities, or lack thereof, rivals her abysmal taste in gowns?
He thought her an abysmal kisser?
He disliked her gowns?
Fine! Excellent! Bloody perfect!
Because she thought him utterly bereft of morals. And disturbingly perfect. And irritatingly handsome. And everything she hated in a man.
Oh, who was she fooling?Menas a species were everything she hated. First Arthur throwing her over for Miss Harcourt, and then the humiliation of knowing she had drunkenly thrown herself at Anglesey, only for him to reject her. For him to dismiss her kissing ability and the gowns she had selected. This gown was perfectly lovely.
And he was perfectly horrible.
“Lady Isolde, wait.”
Anglesey’s voice, deep and pleasant and altogether maddening, called after her as she made her way to the staircase. She caught her gown in each hand—great fistfuls of orange silk—and began taking each step two at a time.
