“Lady Deering,” said the familiar voice of her chaperone. “May I come in?”
Ah. It would seem he had sent a proxy. The coward.
She sighed and turned to the door. “You may.”
Lady Deering swept into the room, her countenance a study in worry and dismay. “What has happened to your gown?”
Oh dear. Virtue glanced down at her bodice, finding the seams still gaping at her sleeves. She’d quite forgotten in her upset when she’d stormed back to her rooms that Ridgely had ripped the threads.
Her face went hot at the memory, and her traitorous body warmed in sinful places before she tamped down the unwanted longings.
“My gown was caught,” she lied lamely. “I will have to repair it.”
“Caught?” Lady Deering’s expression was shrewd. “By whom?”
The knowing tone of her voice told Virtue that her chaperone knew precisely whom.
“I suppose he has sent you here to me,” she said instead of answering, hugging herself around the waist.
“He has.” Lady Deering approached her, looking grim. “There is no alternative for the both of you now save marriage.”
Virtue’s answer was instant and vehement. “I’ll not marry him.”
Not after what he had done, selling Greycote Abbey without warning. Nor before then, either. She had no intention of wedding anyone, and particularly not Ridgely. Her attraction to him was maddening, but she had no doubt that time and distance would cure her of the affliction.
“You haven’t a choice,” Lady Deering said gently, giving her shoulder a consoling pat. “You’ve been compromised.”
Compromisedwas a thoroughly genteel manner of describing what had happened in the music room. Bloodless and cold. Thinking about it now, the way Ridgely had made her feel with his clever mouth on her body, made Virtue distinctly warm. Too warm.
Still, her reaction to Ridgely was purely carnal. She didn’t like him. She wouldn’t marry him. His insistence that they marry was the height of foolishness, considering they were the only two witnesses to their folly.
“No one knows,” Virtue countered, just as she had earlier with Ridgely.
“Yes, butIknow,” her chaperone said, frowning. “There also remains a possibility that the servants are aware as well. All it requires is one person to whisper a hint of scandal. Believe me, my dear, bad news travels with far greater alacrity than good.”
She didn’t doubt it was so. Still, she would not relent. Ridgely had betrayed her. Her heart was crushed into a thousand jagged shards, and he was responsible.
“I won’t marry him, my lady,” she said.
“If we are to be sisters, you should call me Pamela,” Lady Deering told her, giving Virtue another shoulder pat. “And youwillmarry Ridgely, dearest. You must now, after today’s indiscretions.”
Frustration rose to a maddening crescendo within Virtue. “From the moment my father died, I have been told what I must do. I must have a guardian, I must go to London and leave Greycote Abbey and the only home and family I’ve ever known, I must find a husband, and now I must marry Ridgely. I am sick to death of hearing what Imustdo. What about what Iwantto do?”
Lady Deering’s expression turned wistful. Almost sad. “I am afraid ours is a life of duty rather than wants.”
The other woman’s calm acceptance only served to heighten Virtue’s frustration. “Did you never want something more than the life you were told you should lead?”
But of course Lady Deering must have. Virtue thought of what she had seen and overheard earlier between her chaperone and the guard known as Beast.
“It wouldn’t signify if I did,” Lady Deering said quickly. Far too quickly, Virtue thought. “We are, all of us, governed by society. We must follow its dictates or suffer the consequences. I do not think you are prepared to pay the price, Virtue.”
“What price is dearer than marriage?” she asked, shaking her head, more stubbornly determined than ever. “No, I’ll not marry him. Not after the way he sold Greycote Abbey without a word of warning to me. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, nor to see it one last time.”
Tears pricked at her eyes as she thought of Mrs. Williams with her kindly blue eyes and ruddy cheeks and ready smile. Of Miss Jones who had taught Virtue all her finest recipes in the kitchens. Of the doting and kindhearted butler Mr. Smith, who had been a fatherly figure to her when she hadn’t one because her own had been perennially absent.
All lost to her now.
She hoped they would remain with whomever it was who owned the estate. Greycote Abbey was as much the home of its many loyal domestics as it had been hers.
