She watched Leith’s eyebrow quirk up.
“What did you tell your family you were doing in London?”
Beatrice looked over at Sally, who gave her an ironic little smile.Explain this one, she seemed to say.Beatrice scowled at her sister.
“Well,” Beatrice said, delicately, “I was not exactly truthful.”
“What she means,” Sally added, “is that she was not truthful at all.Well, except for in my case.”
“Given that you insisted on coming with me to London, I had little choice.”
“I couldn’t let you go alone, Bea.Noteverythingcan be on your shoulders only.”
Beatrice stole a glance at Leith.He looked positively alarmed.
“Where does your mother think you have been?”
She bit her lip.She never thought that Leith and her mother would meet.She never thought she would have to explain this little subterfuge on her part.
But, she supposed, she had to let him in on this little secret now.She certainly couldn’t have him telling her mother the truth.
“She thinks I have been in London raising funds to pay my father’s debts.I told her that, among my father’s papers, I found records of loans that he had given out to high-ranking friends from his Cambridge days.”
“How did you plan on explaining your extended absence?Or when they saw your name next to mine in the scandal sheets?”
“Eventually I planned to tell them that I had found a position.As a companion to a wealthy widow.Or some such.And my mother and my brothers do not read the scandal sheets, so they would never be the wiser.”
“Everyonereads the scandal sheets.”
Beatrice shook her head.“I assure you that they don’t.My mother only readsThe Lady’s Magazine.And they do not have social pages.”
“Yes,” Leith bit off.“One of the few areas I can agree with Henrietta’s conduct.So your family, they are completely ignorant of your true activity in London?”
Beatrice shifted.It did not please her to lie to her family, but she had seen no other option.
“Yes.”
“Do you not think they might have liked to have a say in such a sacrifice on your part?”
“It was not a sacrifice,” she said, loathing the air of judgment in his tone.“Or, at least, not one that I wasn’t very happy to make for their sakes.”
“They would have never allowed her to go, if they knew the truth,” Sally added.
“Sally!”Beatrice chided.
“You know it is true, Bea.Certainly not your mother or Malcolm.”
“Malcom?”Leith asked, his expression bewildered.“I thought your brother’s name was George?”
Beatrice sighed.She hadn’t revealed this aspect of her life to Leith either.
“I was not my father’s only by-blow,” Sally said, her tone an uncanny echo of her own jaded delivery.
“We have four brothers,” Beatrice informed him.“George, of course.But then there are three others—Philip, Severn, and Malcolm—who are…not my mother’s.”
“And they live with you?At Parkhorne?”
“Yes,” Beatrice said, adjusting her skirts.
