“Primrose!”
Prim sighed and set the sheet on the little table right next to her armchair. She stood up to explain herself, but didn’t get the chance. Her father walked in, a deep scowl on his already red face. He eyed her with a disapproving disbelief.
“What did you do, Primrose?”
“I…” Prim tried.
“Do you have any idea what this,” he slapped the sheet with the back of his hand, “will do to us? What would it mean to your mother and me?”
Prim scowled. That was what they were worried about? What would it do totheirreputation? They didn’t even pause to think about what all of this would mean forher? How it would cling to her, follow her, whispered behind fans and gloved hands?
And granted, Prim herself had little regard for her own reputation. But did her own parents stop to think what this rumour would do to her sisters? How would it ruin theirprospects in the same Season they are debuting? Their chances were ruined before they had the chance to entertain even the idea of entering the marriage mart.
As if summoned by her worry, Camilla and Myrtle walked into the drawing room, their arms entwined the same way they must have been in the womb of their mother. The twins looked at her with so much emotion. Prim felt relieved that none of those emotions were judgment.
“You ruined us!” Her mother’s accusation, spoken with that soft voice of hers, landed somewhere in Prim’s stomach.
“Mother-” Prim tried again.
“How could you fall into the traps of such a man!” Her father huffed and took a step toward her. “How can your mother and I show our faces anywhere this Season?”
Prim looked down and took a deep breath. It seemed that her father and mother thought that she was capable of doing what the sheet claimed. That she would seduce a Duke, offering herself to him, to the point he would call hermy rose, a title that alluded to intimacy beyond mere batting eyelashes and fleeting touches.
“Prim would never!” Her sisters ran to her side in seconds.
“Go to your room, girls!” Their mother ordered. “This has nothing to do with you!”
“Please,” Prim tried.
“This is outrageous,” her mother paced till she resorted to stand by her husband. “The Campbell ball is tonight! We can’t possibly attend after… How could you do this?”
The Campbell ball? Before them stood their three daughters, their reputation in ruins, and all they cared about was how they couldn’t mingle in the Campbell Estate.
“It is an utter disaster!” her father flailed in despair. “A devastating blow. Our name dragged in such a nasty business.”
Camilla and Myrtle flanked her, and now their arms were around Prim’s, a silent support that Prim cherished.
“This can’t be true,” the twins insisted, looking at Prim with unwavering care.
Prim’s heart tightened. At least her sisters knew her heart well enough to instantly know that Prim was incapable of doing such a thing. It consoled her a little and gave her the strength she finally needed to speak up.
“It’s a lie!” Prim straightened her spine.
Her parents looked at her. They studied her face and then looked at each other. They seemed to be having a silent conversation like secret co-conspirators. They glanced back at Prim as if theywere just adding her previous well-mannered behaviour into account.
“Well,” her mother said without looking at Prim. “We are listening.”
“I have nothing to add, Mother, other than that this,” she points at the discarded sheet, “is nothing but lies, top to bottom.”
“So,” her father squinted at her, “you were not… intimate with the Duke.”
“Of course not!”
Prim felt the humiliation of hearing the accusation uttered deep in her bones. All her life, she carried the burden of being the first, precious daughter of the Viscount of Pembroke. Her every move was measured and thought of to avoid exactly what she was experiencing right in this minute.
And yet, her own parents knew her so little that they would easily think that she would go as far as to get entangled with a man. And not just any man. The Duke of Mildenhall of all people.
“I…” her father uttered. “We believe you. You didn’t concoct some seductive scheme to snare the Duke.”
