“Hmm.” Anna looked her up and down, a mischievous light in her eyes. “I don’t buy that for a second. Be honest. Seeing him again ruffled your feathers, didn’t it?”
“If you mean it was a shock, then of course. I hardly expected to see him there, and?—”
And he had been somagnificently handsome.
She had contrived to more or less stop thinking about his broad shoulders and the hard, firm line of his mouth, but there was no denying she had been captivated by them in that moment.
Hispresence.
But that was neither here nor there.
The young ladies on the blanket nearest them all broke out into titters. “What do you mean you haven’t heard of Alessandro Rossi? Darling, are you living under a rock?”
Thalia stiffened on instinct. Alessandro Rossi had been the name she had chosen as her pseudonym for her sculpting. Elliot had assured her that an Italian name would suit her purpose well. Many famous sculptors came from Italy.
“He is simplyfabulous,” another young lady gushed. “Everyone who is anyone has commissioned a piece from him. I quite assure you he is all the rage, although the waiting list is perfectly monstrous now.”
“Have you ever met him?” another lady asked. “Imagine staid old William’s face if I were to confess to meeting with an Italian sculptor. I think he would half go out of his mind with envy.”
Thalia grinned at Anna, who winked back. Of everyone in the world, Thalia trusted Anna the most with her secret. Even though Anna had married her husband, Simon Fitzroy, in a whirlwind romance, she had never once confessed Thalia’s secret.
“I think if the ladies were to meet the sculptor himself, they would be quite disappointed,” Thalia murmured, leaning closer to her friend.
“How is your latest project going?”
Thalia glanced at her father, who was glaring at her. She sighed. “Slowly. My father has been needling me about the upcoming Season and all the things Imustdo to gain a husband. It’s very distracting.”
Ripples ran through the crowd. Thalia glanced up to see a tall man approaching the picnic area, an older lady, and a fresh-faced debutante by his side.
The Duke of Marrowhurst.
A surge of unfamiliar emotion ran through Thalia as she observed the pretty young lady by the Duke’s side. She was entirely Thalia’s opposite, blonde with a delicate, angelic face, and dressed in a way that hinted at her naiveté.
This was not a young lady who would enter an underground club to save her friend from debtors.
Wasthisthe sort of lady the Duke preferred?
Well, in that case, he must have been relieved to have Thalia, a self-proclaimed hellion, off his hands.
She wished him joy.
And then she wished him misery, with a viciousness that shocked her.
What did his happiness matter to her?
What on earth was wrong with me?
Maxwell strode through the crowd, heartily wishing his duty did not involve this preening about thetonas though he were a peacock. The whispers spread through the assembled people, and although he had known he was the source of rumors for years, he despised it.
Did no one have anything better to talk about than this?
Lady Campbell approached him with a wide smile. “Your Grace! And this, no doubt, must be your… erm, ward?”
She sent him a glance, presuming perhaps that Lydia Parsons was his daughter, though the respective ages between the two would have made that—well, not impossible, but unlikely.
“This is Miss Lydia Parsons,” he said, inclining his head. “And Lady Rivenhall, her mother. The late Viscount Rivenhall was a good friend of my family.”
Joyce, Viscountess Rivenhall, simpered the way she had a habit of doing, and Maxwell suppressed a sigh. “We are most grateful to His Grace, of course.”
