Her eyes met Edmund's across the table; deep, melting, dark brown, frowning. He did not like Robert. That was clear. Or was he just pretending?
She wished he wouldn't. She was so tired of all this playacting.
Edmund was dressed in particularly garish colours today. He was breaking a taboo, for gentlemen were expected to wear white cravats at the dinner table. His was burgundy. He was the only splash of colour on the entire dinner table, for the gentlemen were all dressed in black and white, while most of the ladies wore white. The same cut, the same colour, the same style.
For a split second, she understood why he did it. Of course. Why had she not seen this before? His fashion was simply a statement. “I'll not be like you," it said. "I don't care what you think of me. I refuse to conform."
"What do you think, Tewkbury?" Dobberham asked. "Of your wife's famous father, I mean."
Ellen looked up, startled. She'd been gathering wool and had missed the general conversation about her father's literary merits. How could she have missed it?
"Yes, Tewkbury." Robert leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head with a grin. "What do you think of Lady Tewkbury's famous father, Mr Jacob Robinson? I hear he is a philosopher and literary giant." His eyes glittered maliciously.
Edmund shrugged. "I say. What's there to think? I don't read, so it doesn't matter what he writes about."
"You don't think. You don't read. What do you do?" Robert scoffed.
"Fashion and perfume." He wiped an invisible crumb from his sleeve. "How does the famous proverb go? 'Man is his waistcoat.'"
"He means to say, 'Man is his clothing.'" Dobberham winked at him as he raised his glass. "Or more commonly, 'Clothes maketh the man'. A saying which is undoubtedly true."
Robert pursed his lips in contempt. "Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
Edmund's face brightened. "I know that one." He snapped his fingers. "It's by that Greek fellow whose name is that of a porcelain dish." He pointed at his plate. "Plate."
"Plato. Well done, Tewkbury." Dobberham grinned at his friend.
"Him? You really married him?" Robert whispered in Ellen's ear.
"Yes, him." She put down her fork and knife and turned to him.
"Why, Ellen? When you could have had your pick amongst the most intelligent men in the country?" The unspoken phrase was, of course, "When you could have had me."
Ellen sat up and glared. "You really have the nerve to say that?"
He opened his eyes wide. "But, my dear Ellen. It was all a terrible misunderstanding, nothing more."
If she could, she'd smash her fork into his hand and scream. Instead, she took a deep breath. "Because, Robert, he gives me something you never could."
He looked at her in confusion. "I wonder what that could be?"
She watched as Edmund fiddled with the creases of his cloak.
A warm feeling ran through her.
"Love."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Of course she'd lied.
It was a white lie, born of the circumstances of the moment.
But it worked. Robert withdrew with a strange look on his face, as if she had somehow betrayed him.
It was all nonsense, for she had never betrayed him. It was the other way round: he had betrayed her.
And in the worst possible way.
