“Are you forgetting who started the rumor?” Jane said in Ophelia’s defense.
“No, actually, I remember perfectly well who spitefully instigated its circulation again.”
There it was at last, a direct insult to Ophelia. Mavis was thrilled that she’d finally had the nerve to do it. And it didn’t go over Ophelia’s head as she’d feared it might. The gorgeous blonde wasn’t quite so gorgeous when her face was beet red with fury.
Edith gasped. Jane was too shocked for speech. Ophelia was sputtering, “Spiteful? You’re calling … me—!”
“Oh, yes, please do make a scene that will get you booted out of here for asecondtime,” Mavis interrupted with a brilliant smile. “Then perhaps the rest of us can actually enjoy ourselves again.”
Mavis turned to leave, aware that she’d completely severed her ties with this group, and proud of herself for finally doing so. But Edith and Jane, she had liked, at least when they weren’t behaving like brainless twits around Ophelia, and so she paused long enough to tell them, “When are you two going to wake up and realize that she’s no friend to you? She’d backstab you in a second if she thought it would get her something she wants, and have not a single regret for doing so.”
Mavis sauntered away with a bounce in her step and a grin on her lips. She knew she might as well pack her bags, that some atrocious rumor would start about her that very day. She just didn’t care anymore.
“Well, I never,” Jane huffed, unable to think of anything more appropriate to say after that shocking speech of Mavis’s.
“I never either,” Edith agreed.
“I’m not surprised, myself,” Ophelia said, recovering nicely, if boiling inside. “She’s such a liar, after all. I’ve caught her at it, oh, at least five times before, but was kind enough not to point out that I knew she was lying. Poor dear, I wonder if she just can’t help it. Some people can’t, you know.”
Twenty-three
“Sit down, Archibald, we have a problem.’
The Scotsman took the seat across from Neville’s desk in his sitting room and gave his nemesis a narrowed if skeptical look. He hadn’t liked beingsummoned,as he saw it, hadn’t had his breakfast yet, hadn’t slept well last night, and the heat in this particular room had started him sweating the moment he entered it. More problems, he didn’t need.
“We?” he questioned. “And how wouldwebe having a problem when the only thing we share in common is the lad, and he’s doing exactly what we asked o’ him? A fine passel o’ lassies ye hae gathered here, by the way, if I do say sae m’self. If I’d known ye had such an abundance o’ beauties down here, I might hae come tae visit after m’dear wife passed on, and found me anither one m’self.”
“Would that you had, then we might not be fighting over Duncan now,” Neville grumbled.
“Who’s fighting, eh? I could hae swore we were finally in agreement o’er the dividing o’ heirs.”
“Hardly a fitting solution, but not the point I wish to discuss either,” Neville replied. “If you didn’t notice last night, Duncan has done some inviting himself to this party, of one Sabrina Lambert, whom he proceeded to waste his time on theentireevening.”
“The buxom wee lass? Nicely shaped, but no’ exactly a beauty, sae dinna fash yerself o’er her, he’ll pick a pretty one in the end.”
Neville sighed and said in a weary tone, “I wish you wouldn’t harp so much on superficial beauty. A pretty face doesnotmake for an ideal wife, as was so drastically found out with the Reid girl.”
“Course it does,” Archie disagreed blithely. “Ye dinna hae tae listen tae a wife, can ignore them as ye please, but ye do ha’ taelookat them every sae often, sae a pretty face does take precedent o’er an empty head.”
Neville rolled his eyes, but pointed out, “Duncan must not feel the same, since he is showing a marked interest in this particular girl. Now, he may just enjoy her company. He admitted as much. She amuses him. If that’s all it is, then there is no problem.”
Archie frowned at that point. “Yer no’ making sense yerself, mon. If ye dinna care if he weds a beauty or no’, asyekeep harping, wha’isyer problem wi’ this lass? Is she no’ titled tae yer satisfaction?”
Neville sighed again. “Sabrina Lambert’s looks have not a thing to do with my concern, Archibald. As it happens, I think she’s quite pretty. Her eyes make all the difference, remarkable as they are.”
“Pretty eyes, eh? I didna notice.”
“Likely because all you look at are breasts and faces and so don’t take in any of the finer details a girl might possess, let alone if she had a lick of intelligence.”
Archie smiled over the sour tone. “Nae, I just havena met the lass yet tae get close enough tae see her eyes. It mun be her credentials yer objecting tae then.”
“No, as it happens, her great-grandfather Richard was a duke, her grandfather an earl. Her own father would have held that title as well, if he had survived his father, but he didn’t. She doesn’t need a title to be quite suitable in that regard, in fact, far surpasses most of the chits in attendance. What does concern me is she comes with two cantankerous old-maid aunts—”
Archie’s chuckle interrupted. “That’s yer problem, no’ mine, I’m pleased tae be saying. I’ll be going home after the wedding.”
“Thank God for that,” Neville said with undisguised relief. “But she also comes with a forty-year-old scandal that I’m told is making the rounds again.”
Archibald was no longer amused, sat forward to demand, “What sort o’ scandal?”
