A secretive smile curved her friend’s lips. “I’ve decided that I need more time to consider His Grace’s offer.”
Lottie understood Rosamund’s desire for revenge. However, she didn’t understand how or why the Duke of Camden would facilitate it. She had a suspicion her friend wasn’t ready to tell her just yet either.
“I reckon you will tell me more when it suits you,” she drawled, pouring herself a second cup of tea.
“Of course.” Rosamund fed Megs another bite of apple.
“With all this marriage nonsense in the air, one might think it catching. Fortunately, I am well armed against it. My pastexperience with that terrible institution is my suit of armor and shield.”
Rosamund’s brow furrowed. “Was it truly so horrid?”
Lottie thought of the heartache she had experienced when she had first discovered the man she loved was bedding another woman. He had left her after consummating their marriage, only to return in the early hours of the morning, smelling of another woman’s scent, his hair ruffled, a bruise on his throat from someone else’s mouth. When she had confronted him, he had acknowledged his infidelity.
“This sort of arrangement is done all the time, my dear,” he had said, without a hint of compunction. “It is good for a marriage.”
And then he had kissed her lightly on the cheek and told her he was weary, that she ought to return to her own bed, quite as if he hadn’t just destroyed her entire perception of him. To say nothing of her heart.
With a grim jolt, she realized that she had been wool-gathering, and she had added far too much sugar to her tea. She took a sip of the sickeningly sweet brew anyway.
“It was the second biggest mistake of my life,” she told Rosamund frankly.
The first had been falling in love with the Earl of Grenfell to begin with. But she had learned her lesson all too well. She would never allow herself to be so weak and vulnerable again.
CHAPTER 5
Lottie may not have excelled at being a wife; her marriage had been a miserable failure, though the fault had not been hers alone. She may not have had her own children—to her everlasting regret, her miserable union with Grenfell had not even produced a single pregnancy. But she was quite excellent at being a good friend.
And that was why she was presently sitting opposite her dear bosom bow Hyacinth in her salon. When one’s friend suddenly became a hermit, one needed to pay her a call and discover the reason. Hyacinth must have fallen in love with Viscount Sidmouth, with whom she had been having a torrid affair that had recently come to an end. And Lottie strongly suspected it was a broken heart that kept her friend confined to her home.
Oh, Hyacinth had continued to plead illness, of course, sending notes round to Lottie at regular intervals. But Lottie had decided that she’d had enough of Hyacinth’s avoidance. The time had come to discover what was truly afoot.
Lottie waited until they were comfortably settled in Hyacinth’s salon, the servants dismissed for privacy’s sake.
“How much longer do you intend to hide from Sidmouth?” she asked her friend without preamble as soon as the door had closed.
Hyacinth frowned at her, looking lovely in a green afternoon gown, if a trifle pale, her golden hair plaited in a Grecian braid. “I am not hiding from Sidmouth. Nor am Ihidingat all, in fact.”
Ha! Did she truly think Lottie would believe such a lie?
Lottie raised a brow. “You have not left your home in a fortnight. You cried off for the opera, Lady Siddon’s ball, Lord and Lady Maplethorpe’s masque. You told me you were too ill to go shopping, for heaven’s sake, which we both know is blasphemy.”
To say nothing of her lack of appearance at Brandon’s latest ball. Lottie knew Hyacinth had been invited, for invitations had gone out before Hyacinth and Sidmouth had ended their understanding. Sidmouth and Brandon were thick as thieves, and Hyacinth had no doubt skipped the ball to avoid her former lover.
“Ihavebeen ill,” Hyacinth claimed.
Lottie studied her friend more closely, thinking she’d never seen her looking so wan, plum bruises denoting her lack of sleep beneath her blue eyes. Now that Lottie looked more closely, there was a gauntness to Hyacinth’s form too.
“Youdolook pale,” she acknowledged. “Have you been eating properly?”
“I have scarcely been able to keep anything down, save tea and toast.”
That was rather worrying indeed. Perhaps Hyacinth had been unwell after all.
“You mean to say you are truly ill? Hyacinth, why did you not say so?”
“Ididsay so,” her friend pointed out wryly. “Several times over the last fortnight. And again just now.”
Lottie made a dismissive gesture. “Yes, but I thought you were lying.”
