“I can explain, Eugenia,” he said calmly, raising his palms to her in a placating gesture.
“I fail to see how you can,” she snapped, stalking past him to pace the length of the chamber in a swirl of pale, dampened muslin skirts.
As always, she was magnificent. In her anger, in her passion—hell, even in polite discourse at the dinner table—Lady Worthing was ethereally lovely. Pity that her personality was not nearly as beautiful.
“You told me to meet you in the library,” he began.
“Do not tell me you couldn’t find the library.”
“I could,” he continued. “However, your governess was within. I kidnapped her, mistaking her for you.”
“What was that jade doing in the library?” Eugenia’s eyes narrowed. “I should have known better than to take on a new governess with no experience to recommend her. Only a letter from her distant relative, Lady Andromeda Harting, who everyone knows lost all her funds gambling. And why would Miss Brooke not tell you who she was, that you were mistaken? None of this makes sense, Torrie.”
Eugenia paused at the end of the chamber and whipped around to face him in an agitated swirl of skirts.
“None of this is the fault of your governess,” he felt compelled to offer. After all, it was Eugenia’s nonsensical scheme to be kidnapped, coupled with his own failure, that had led to him absconding with the wrong woman. “And she did not tell me who she was because I gagged her with my cravat.”
The last, he added rather weakly.
Her face was frozen into a cold mask of fury. “You might have made certain you were spiriting away therightwoman. The mere thought of you mistaking me for that dreadful-looking girl…”
She allowed her words to trail off and shuddered, as if the prospect engendered such disgust, she no longer had the capacity for speech.
There was nothing dreadful looking about Miss…Miss…by God, he had forgotten her name again. But her face, by the flickering light of the carriage lamp, had been lovely in its own way. There was something compelling about her, as if there were secrets and mysteries lurking beneath her prim façade. For no reason at all, the thought occurred to him of what it would be like to see beneath all her layers. To have such a woman naked in his bed.
He struck the notion away, for it was unworthy. He had already caused the poor girl enough distress without lusting after her.
“I take full responsibility for what has happened,” he told his irate mistress, wondering why he had ever agreed to her addlepated idea. “I’ve already spoken with the lads in the stables. They are all pleased to accept my explanation that tonight was nothing more than a drunken mishap in which I entered the wrong house. I’ve paid them handsomely to keep your name and the governess’s out of everything that transpired.”
“You ought not to have paid them a ha’penny on her account,” Eugenia said coldly, in high dudgeon. “I’ve half a mind to throw her out on her ear this very night.”
He couldn’t blame Eugenia for her reaction; he had bungled this affair badly. But he couldn’t, in good conscience, allow the governess to bear the brunt of the shame for his own mistake.
He crossed the chamber, taking Eugenia’s cool, smooth hand in his and bringing it to his lips. “Please, Eugenia. You mustn’t dismiss her. It isn’t fair for her to pay the price for my misdeeds.”
She snatched her hand away, unplacated. “Do you have any idea how it felt to see you carrying her in your arms? To know that you spirited her away and werealonein your carriage with her? And my God, such a pathetic creature as she. Five Seasons and couldn’t make a match. Little wonder, such a drab thing.”
Her anger with him was understood. Acceptable, even. He had been careless. He had made mistakes. Not the first of those he could remember, and nor would they be the last, he knew. But he could not allow the continued aspersions being heaped upon the governess.
“You needn’t pay her insult, Eugenia. It’s unkind.”
Her eyes widened until she almost resembled a bug in her rage.
“Unkind?” she spat. “You dare to defend that wretch?”
“Your rancor toward the governess is unnecessary,” he said calmly, having endured some of Eugenia’s tantrums in the past. “It ought to be aimed solely at me.”
“Did you fuck her?” Eugenia demanded. “That despicable whore! Of course, you did. You’re a libertine. You would bed a petticoat if it moved.”
“Of course I did not,” he snapped, growing rather irritated with her refusal to at least relent and see a bit of reason. To say nothing of the insults she paid the governess and himself. “A mistake was made. One I took haste in rectifying.”
Bed a petticoat if it moved? That was rather a low blow, even by Eugenia’s standards. God. Was that what she thought of him? Torrie shuffled that question from his mind to revisit later, because he was certain he wouldn’t like the outcome.
Eugenia’s eyes narrowed, and it was then that he realized their color—a cold, calculating blue. “By seducing her in your carriage and then carrying her through the rain in your arms. Well, my lord, if you truly believe I will endure your faithlessness, you are wrong. I’ll not stand for it. The girl must go by morning. I’ll destroy her myself and enjoy every moment of it. All London will know what she has done before I’ve finished.”
Torrie didn’t doubt the veracity of her words. The Countess of Worthing was cunning and coldhearted when she felt as if she had been betrayed. It was one of the reasons why she took such great delight in cuckolding her husband. The earl had apparently kept a mistress for years. Still kept one, a woman with whom he had fathered illegitimate children whom he had settled unentailed estates upon. Eugenia reviled him for it.
He followed Eugenia, who had resumed her furious pacing, catching her elbow in a light grasp and spinning her to face him. “Eugenia, I beg you, do not ruin the poor girl. She is an innocent in all this.”
