Pip usually enjoyed sparring with her maid, but right now she wanted sympathy. “That odious beast thought I had arranged to be found by his mistress. Hismistress!Can you believe it? He thinks I deliberately compromised him into marriage. Well, I will tell you this. He can wait until he’s stooped and drooling before I accept him.”
She spent the diatribe pacing the room as if she could outpace the disaster she had just created.
“But you were found together,” Lizzie protested, waving her hand in ineffectual punctuation. “Didn’t you?”
Pip spun on her. “Didn't I what? Seek to compromise him into marriage? Plot and scheme to make sure that he would be condemned to life with a woman he obviously loathes? When exactly have you heard me express such a desire, Lizzie? When have I ever done anything that would convince you that I could so betray Beau's trust?”
Lizzie frowned. “Then you didn't wish to compromise him into marriage?”
“Of course not!”
“Well then, whatwereyou doing?”
Which brought Pip stumbling to a halt, shocked to silence. She could not tell Lizzie, of course. She couldn't tell anyone. She had never even spoken to Joyful about Beau's clandestine activities, and Joyful had been her maid since she was ten.
“Pip?” Lizzie asked.
“Missy?” Joyful echoed.
But Pip couldn't think how to answer them. She laid a careful hand against her bodice, if only to feel the reassuring crinkle of paper. She had saved Beau from being exposed, possibly killed. But in doing so, it seemed she had backed them both into a trap.
Oh, sweet lord, what was she going to do?
She was briefly saved by the duchess sweeping through the door. “Drummond is going to write to your father for permission,” that kind lady announced. “With the time that will take, I anticipate a spring wedding.”
Pip swung around, swamped by relief. Yes. If they could wait five months, maybe she could find a way to avoid this disaster. She didn't want to think about how much it hurt that the thing she had always dreamed of would effectively destroy any affection she and Beau had ever shared, much less the more tender feelings she suffered.
She was glad she hadn't seen Beau's expression when the duchess offered this escape. She could not have borne seeing the relief in his eyes.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I will write father as well, shall I? He can help us sort this all out.”
“After we make the formal announcement downstairs,” the duchess said. “Drummond is waiting for you. Why don't you tidy up a bit, and find your spectacles? And perhaps pinch a bit of color into your cheeks?”
Pip's smile was half-hearted. “You mean I am not ruddy-faced with humiliation?”
The duchess’s smile was indescribably gentle as she lifted a soft hand to Pip's cheek. “You are too much of a lady to allow yourself to resemble a tomato, my dear. Now, come along, do. We are keeping your fiancé waiting.”
“And his mistress,” Pip muttered as she sat to allow Joyful to rethread the bronze ribbon she had somehow dislodged from her short curls.
Lizzie huffed in surprise. The duchesstsked. “You are also too much of a lady to acknowledge that unfortunate situation as well.”
“No,” Pip demurred with a sad shake of her head as she exchanged her pretty lorgnette for her practical wire-rimmed spectacles. “I don't believe I am. Which is why it is good that my father will undoubtedly intervene. Otherwise, I would end up confronting Beau about that harpy and find myself locked away in Delamere. Or Bedlam, depending on his mood.”
“I say you just scratches her eyes out and be done wit’ it,” Joyful suggested with a sly grin.
“You are not being helpful, my dear,” the duchess suggested with her own sly smile. “Now, come along, Pip. Make this right.”
Pip's stomach felt sour, and she thought she was developing a headache, but she linked arms with Lizzie and followed the duchess out the door and all the way down the grand staircase to where she could see Beau waiting at the door to the ballroom.
“Oh, no,” Lizzie muttered, slowing.
The duchess made an inarticulate sound as she, too, saw who was speaking with Beau. Haranguing Beau, more like it, her pudgy fingers wrapped securely around his arm and three of her guards and Lady Mercer Elphinstone flanking her.
“I haven't been so diverted inages, Drummond. I simply insist you allow me to help. After all, what good is it being the heir to the throne if I cannot even procure a simple special license?”
Pip slowed almost to a halt, her stomach plummeting. Blessed Beatrice’s beads.She was sunk.
The duchess, never one for flight, stepped right around Pip and approached the princess.
