Jasper shrugged. “I may have my sights set on a lucky lady.” Then he grinned. “But let us deal with you first, shall we?”
Caroline didn’t thinkshe could feel any more miserable, but then she heard Lord Trent’s voice downstairs. Geoffrey was plainly trying to reach her despite thinking her complicit in some scheme of treachery, which she couldn’t imagine.
Hardly sleeping the night before, she was torn between the wondrous sensations Geoffrey’s intimate touch had elicited and the black melancholy from seeing how he looked at her after Lord Mangue arrived.
Plainly, Geoffrey thought himself betrayed, but she hoped he had come to a more sensible conclusion.
Their butler informed Lord Trent she was not accepting visitors. Caroline assumed her mother had given those instructions. She would not create an unpleasant commotion by rushing down the stairs and trying to see him against Lady Chimes’s wishes.
However, as soon as he departed, Caroline descended, hoping Geoffrey’s friend had at least left a note.
Her mother was in the drawing room, reading from a single sheet of paper.
At her entrance, Lady Chimes looked up, her green gaze hard as emeralds.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I will not let you throw yourself away on Diamond.”
“Throw myself away?” Caroline sputtered. “He’s not a pauper or a reprobate.”
Her mother pursed her lips and looked back down. “You shall not be going to Hatchards bookshop again, not until you are a happily married woman.”
“Happily?” Caroline shot back. “Or merely married to anyone as long as he does not carry the name of Diamond.”
“Why is Lord Trent acting as a messenger?” She waved the note she was holding. “I allowed him to dance with you in good faith and even to spend time with you at Vauxhall. Apparently, he is as unsavory as Diamond.”
“Mother, please give me the letter if it was intended for me. You have no right to —”
In response, her mother turned, crumpled the page, and tossed it into the glowing hearth.
Caroline nearly darted forward to snatch it back, but she was a woman, not a child. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“If I don’t want to marry Lord Mangue, then I won’t. I have your red hair, and I also have your spirit.” Turning on her heel, she walked out.
With no idea when she was supposed to go to Hatchards, she couldn’t meet Geoffrey. Lingering for hours in a bookseller’s shop was not an option. Her other avenue of communication was Daphne. However, not wishing to bring scandal to her friend’s door, she would have to tread carefully in that regard. Caroline regretted the hint of impropriety having already taken place in the Hollidge home.
Having already sent Daphne a letter of apology, Caroline would wait until she encountered her at the next assembly and hope they were still as close as sisters. Meanwhile, there was nothing she could do tofurther her own cause.
By dinnertime, with the delivery of the evening papers, her world had turned upside down.
Lord Chimes came from his study clutching a newspaper.
“My daughter was caught in a compromising situation at a dinner party, and I have to learn of it inThe Times?” he demanded of his wife.
Caroline and her mother were silently seated in the drawing room, ignoring one another. She was reading the Waverly novel while her mother attempted needlepoint and doing it badly, as she always did.
At her father’s words, Caroline and her mother exchanged matching wide-eyed verdant glances. Suddenly, they were on the same side of the battle, for they had both kept the truth from Lord Chimes.
That gave Caroline a small sense of satisfaction.
“I would have thought Mother might have come straight home and told you,” Caroline said, sounding bored.
“What?” Lord Chimes exclaimed, rounding on his wife. “Lydia! What is our daughter saying? Youknewabout this?”
“I rescued her from Diamond’s clutches,” her mother said dramatically. “No one saw her, not even the hostess.”
“No one except Lord Mangue,” Caroline pointed out. Perhaps the man had changed his mind, and instead of marrying her, he’d decided to drag her name through the gutter as revenge.
“And Diamond,” her mother said.
