Rebecca laughed.
Rose ignored them and glanced toward the far side of the ballroom to a grand staircase, where the retiring rooms were located. She had only to skirt Lady Ingleby and her companions—notorious gossips—Ladies Gorman and Lockhart to make her escape complete.
“I just need a moment,” Rose murmured to Gabriella and Rebecca.
“Don’t be long,” the duchess said. “If Sebastian appears before you return, I shall never hear the end of it.”
Rose smiled faintly, turning away and making her way up the stairs to a corridor that was blissfully quietandcool. Here, the music was muffled by distance. Inside the ladies’ retiring room,she crossed to a washbasin, dipped a cloth, then damped it to her forehead. Goodness, that felt good. She found her way to a chair that offered a modicum of privacy and sat down—mostly to bolster her courage.
She drummed her fingers on the arm and ran through her stratagem. It entailed finding the study, slipping inside, and attempting to uncover some hint of what or who Emerson was looking for. Whether he realized it or not, heneededher help. Her blood boiled at his utter arrogance at stating otherwise.
Rose came to her feet with a new determination, but—
Voices.
Faint. Low. From the adjoining sitting room. Rose failed in recognizing them. They were young, she guessed.
“Not even out yet. Just disappeared. I overheard Papa talking to Mama—”
“You and your eavesdropping, Theo. I vow it will be your downfall,” her companion chastised. Then, she added, “Well, are you going to tell me what you heard?”
Ah, Lady Theodosia. Lady Faulk’s granddaughter. Another incorrigible gossip of theton, next to Lady Ingleby.The other chit must be Miss Nancy Quincton, then. The two were thick as thieves.
Theodosia giggled. “He believes that her aunt cast her out. Right onto the street with nothing more than the clothes on her back.”
Miss Quincton gasped. “I-I don’t believe it!”
A chill stole up Rose’s spine, lifted her hair.
“Then she just disappeared.” Theodosia’s voice was brittle with scorn. “That old biddy, Lockhart. Someone should run her through with their carriage at top speed.”
“How could Viola have just disappeared?”
Rose could practically hear Theodosia’s shrug.
“Who would notice but girls such as us? She hadn’t even been presented yet. I suspect her aunt sold her for the blunt. Why else would she not have been presented? Because the gown was too costly, I daresay.”
A pause.
“But where could she have gone?”
“Don’t you have any imagination at all, Nancy? She’s been scooped up by now and likely dropped into the nearest bawdy house. Viola, that pretentious little prig, could never survive the streets.”
“Well, I think we should try to find her. The streets are no place for a young lady.” Nancy’s concern was touching.
It was Theodosia’s reply that stunned Rose. “I doubt she’s a lady by now.”
The temptation to step forward and slap that silly Theodosia’s face and shoveherinto the street reeled through Rose. She needed to reach Gabriella and Rebecca. Tell them.
“Papa thinks that steward of Lady Lockhart’s arranged the entire plot. He said something about rooms in Whitefriars. But I had to slip away before I was caught with my ear against the door.”
“This is awful, Theo. Absolutely horrid.”
Theodosia’s voice lowered. “We should be glad for our own safety, Nancy. Stay out of matters that don’t concern us.”
Rose had heard enough. She desperately wanted to find Emerson, but there was no time. Whitefriars wasn’t all that far away. She could instruct her own driver to take her. No one need ever know she was about. She waited for the girls to leave, but more voices entered the retiring room, trapping her momentarily. Thankfully, with the new visitors, Nancy and Theodosia made their exit, and Rose stepped from her small sanctuary.
“Oh, hello, Rose,” Maeve said.
