Evangeline rose, tired of the visit. She did not want to argue with her sister-in-law. She did not want to think of Richard with another, younger, woman. She did not want to be left amid the wreckage of another scandal while the man who caused it walked away untouched.
She burned to storm over to Richard’s house and see if he had returned, or perhaps to see Mr. Rieger if he were about and shake some answers out of him. Surely he would know. “Thank you so much for calling, Marion. Do give my best to George, and remember me fondly to Joan and Douglas.”
Marion stood, clutching her reticule. “I am worried for you. But also... for Joan’s and Douglas’s sake. I know you haven’t a mother’s sensibility on these things, but children are so impressionable... I would hate for them to draw the wrong conclusion.”
Evangeline raised her brows. Joan was about to turn eighteen, and Douglas was twenty-two or twenty-three. Hardly impressionable children. “I wouldn’t dream of speaking to either of them about my love affairs.”
She looked away, her chin working back and forth. “But they will hear, and when everyone learns he’s bought the house next to yours...” She bit her lip and fell silent.
“Yes, how devastating it will be if they learn Sir Richard has taken a house in the country.” Evangeline had no idea how Marion planned to protect her children from rumors and gossip, particularly since she herself enjoyed them immensely. And really, there was nothing Evangeline could do to preventpeople talking about her; she’d learned that well enough over the years. If she’d ever had children, she liked to think she would have erred on the side of telling them everything, in her own way and time, rather than trying to shelter them from anything she disapproved of.
But again, perhaps she was wrong. She’d never had to test it.
“Come, let me walk you out.” Evangeline rang for Solly, who appeared at once, as if she’d been lurking nearby and heard the raised voices. “Bring Lady Bennet’s things, please, Solly.”
Marion gripped her arm when she would have led her out. “Break it off with him,” she said with sudden passion. “Please. At least until next year. Joan’s just made her debut. Please don’t let there be any unkind gossip to distract from that.”
Evangeline all but gaped at her. Next year? “Why would anyone holdJoanresponsible for my actions?”
Marion set her chin. Evangeline knew the answer was that the gossips—even Marion’s own friends among them—included some vicious harpies who spared no one. “Not responsible, but associated. You know how these things spread.”
“They would say such things about your own daughter?”
Now Marion flushed. She knew they would. “Please, Evangeline. She is my only daughter. Perhaps I am being over cautious, but I—I could not bear it, if I were too lax and my daughter suffered the consequences.”
Would she feel this way, if Joan were her daughter? Perhaps. She sighed, trying to be sympathetic to a mother’s anxiety. “I understand. Really, I do. But surely that is extremely unlikely?—”
“Break it off,” repeated her sister-in-law, her voice tight with anxiety. “Or I shall have to break with you.”
She blinked in alarm. “But why? I’m not in London, flaunting anything! And he’s a very respectable man, lauded in society! How can we possibly bring disrepute on Joan?”
Marion’s fingers dug into her arm.“Please,Evangeline.”
She stared at the other woman. They were about the same age, and though they hadn’t been friends as girls, Evangeline had always hoped for a sisterly relationship. Her disastrous marriage to Court had derailed that—Court’s affairs being both widely known and thoroughly scandalous, and thus a horror to Marion—but this...
“I’m sorry, Marion,” she said quietly. “I can’t. I—I find Richard excellent company, and I care for him a great deal. We shall always be discreet?—”
Her sister-in-law released her as if scalded. “Very well,” she said. “I understand. You do as you wish.” And she turned and walked out, leaving Evangeline staring after her, speechless.
Chapter 22
Richard strode up the drive to Wyndham House, heart thudding.
Lately he’d begun walking through the woods, arriving to her garden with Hercule at his heels. Not today. Hercule was at home, and Richard walked up to the front door and rang the bell, like any visitor uncertain of his reception.
When Solly opened it, she gave him an appraising look. “Welcome back, Sir Richard.”
I hope I am welcome,he thought as he came in and removed his hat. “Thank you, Solly. Is she in?”
“I think she will be, to you,” replied the woman, gesturing for him to go into the front drawing room. “Wait here. There is brandy in the cabinet, if you feel in want of any.”
He did, but he smiled and shook his head. She closed the door behind him, and he let out his breath.
He liked this room. It was the most formal in Evangeline’s house, but even here it was relaxed and comfortable. By now he had seen enough drawing rooms in London to know that hers was different. It was the room, he realized, of a woman who had decided to live life on her own terms, regardless of what fashion and style dictated. Who didn’t mind leaving out her embroideryspilling across the table, or a little basket of toys for her dog, or hanging a watercolor of haphazard skill on the wall.
He knew the last had been done by her niece as a girl and given as a gift, and Evangeline had hung it in the most public room of her home, opposite a large painting he suspected was by Canaletto. On the mantel beneath it was a roughly carved wooden ship. She had told him that her nephew had made it with the penknife she’d given him for his twelfth birthday, all the while beaming proudly at the carving as if it were a priceless sculpture.
She cared for those children as he did for his nephews. Surely she would understand why he’d been away so long. His actions at White’s...
