“I made her come home,” said Evangeline in a rush. “I felt a headache...”
Marion gave her a look that sent a chill to her bones—anger, humiliation, fear. “And you were remarked searching the house for Joan!” She turned to her daughter. “Where did you go, young lady?”
Joan did not share Evangeline’s devious, sneaky soul. Instead of putting up her chin and brazening it out, she stammered, she blinked, and her cheeks went from white to scarlet in the blink of an eye, as damning as any confession.
Stricken with guilt, Evangeline lowered her gaze to her hands and listened as Marion recounted every fact that had so alarmed her last night: Burke’s disappearance, at the same time as Joan’s, after they had danced together—“indecently close!” Marion exclaimed in dismay.
Joan flinched with each word. She looked as if she would cry, even before her mother started talking about sending George to deal with the man. “Oh Joan, what have you done?” she finished in despair.
Evangeline’s knuckles were white; her fingers had gone numb. She made herself look up, her throat painfully dry, and Marion sent her a look filled with such betrayal, she simply bowed her head. Marion sent Joan back to her room, then turned on her. She had got to her feet but now swayed unsteadily.
“Evangeline,” she said, her voice thick, “did you lie to me?”
She took a deep breath. “No. I... I omitted a few things.”
Marion gave a little sob, then collapsed into her chair.
“She did go off with him,” Evangeline made herself say. “Or perhaps he led her away. I did look for her, but discreetly. I... I do not know what happened between them.”
Without a word Marion held out the wretched letter. Evangeline would rather read her own death warrant, but she took the paper.
Althea Crocker, read the signature at the bottom. Dimly Evangeline remembered the woman in the retiring room with a loose button on her glove. The letter was polite, even effusive, but—like Catherine Brentwood’s note to Evangeline—that was merely a sugarcoating on malice. She wrote of her delight at seeing Joan in society, even if so surprisingly attired; her astonishment that the elusive Lord Burke danced such marked attendance on Joan; her concern at noting Joan wasn’t seen at supper; and how frantically Evangeline had been searching the whole house. She made it sound as if Evangeline had run up and down corridors screaming Joan’s name. She ended with concern for how it would look, Joan disappearing with Lord Burke from the ball and neither ever returning. She hoped Joan hadn’t suffered a misadventure.
Lady Crocker, of course, had two unmarried daughters of her own. And, now that Evangeline thought about it, the woman was also friends with Lady Ambrose.
“This puts the most spiteful exaggeration on everything,” Evangeline said quietly. “She merely saw me glance in the retiring room for Joan.”
Marion had leaned back, resting her head on the chaise behind her. Her face looked bloodless, and lines of stress bracketed her mouth. “Althea Crocker is a horrendous gossip. If this is how she’s portraying it to me...”
It would be even worse when she told others. How well Evangeline knew that.
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “Surpassing sorry.”
“So am I,” said Marion, as a tear leaked down her cheek, quickly followed by another and another. “But I must leave it to George now, and I have no idea what he’ll do.”
Chapter 32
Evangeline left Audley Street before she could be thrown out.
As Smythe opened the door for her for the last time, she paused. “Thank you, Denny,” she said softly. “For attempting to guide me.”
His eyes softened. “It was a pleasure to see you again, Miss Evie.”
She nodded, her throat too tight to speak, and got into her carriage.
The drive home seemed interminable, and yet she was startled to see Wyndham House appear in front of her. Her own home seemed foreign and strange to her, after all this time. She wandered through the house until she reached the conservatory, her favorite room, and stood staring out the tall windows.
All the way home, she’d been telling herself that George was a different sort of father to their own. He loved his daughter, very much. Even if he went to speak to Burke, he would keep Joan’s happiness in mind...
But he would have to call on Burke, while Marion prayed he wouldn’t call the manout, because of Evangeline. He had entrusted her with his only daughter. She had promised she would take good care of the girl, and then she had failed.Even now, that harpy Lady Crocker was no doubt gleefully telling everyone that Miss Bennet had been lured away by the scoundrel Lord Burke to debauchery and ruin, which should surprise no one since her so-called chaperone was the wicked and scandalous Lady Courtenay.
Her throat closed as she imagined Joan being burned alive by vicious gossip in all the drawing rooms of London. George browbeating Burke into doing the right thing, perhaps risking his life to protect his daughter and her reputation. Joan walking down the church aisle, cowed into acquiescence by her frantic, worried mother. Joan fighting back tears on her wedding night, knowing she was the property of a man she hadn’t chosen, ’til death did them part. Evangeline’s stomach churned so hard she thought she would be sick.
She knew exactly what that felt like. She had lived it herself.
But this was worse than when it had happened to her. Then, she had been the victim. This time, she was theperpetrator. She had been careless. She trusted Joan, she truly did—but Burke? She did not know him. She had no reason to trust him. He could be another Court, craving only the pursuit, willing to lead an unsuspecting young woman astray if it served his own pleasure. He seemed to care for Joan, and Evangeline wanted desperately to believe that he did... but she could be wrong, as she’d been wrong about Court. She had been fooled by her own wishes and fancies, dreaming arrogantly that she could help her niece find the sort of happy marriage that had eluded Evangeline herself.
Instead of learning from her own mistakes and unhappiness, she had done even worse. Joan wasn’t evenherchild. Evangeline had betrayed Joan, and George, and especially Marion, who had been so very right to doubt her.
