It was like being caught admiring a groom while he brushed down a horse. The only way through was to brazen it out.
“It might not have been the done thing two years ago, but a good novel is quite in vogue since Teresa Cummingsworth first published. Really, Lulu. You must keep up. I can lend you one before you leave.”
Lady Luella ground her teeth but didn’t issue a contradiction. Amelia had always known everything first. Heavens, she’d created half the recent fashions. And it was clear by the look in her protégé’s eyes that she wasn’t sure if Amelia was bluffing—and wasn’t about to risk it.
Lord Karstark he-hemmed. “Novel reading is a frivolous pastime for frivolous females who ought to be focusing on more useful pursuits.”
A good ten feet of table, china, and vases stood between Amelia and Lord Karstark. Lucky for him.
She took a sip of wine and gave him a saccharine smile. “And what, pray tell, would those be?”
“Learning how to properly manage a household is one. Something you should remember next time you choose to open a book rather than properly instruct your servants.”
Every head in the room had been swiveling as each parry was thrust. Now all eyes were on her.
Serene. Unruffled. Unruffle-able.
“I—”
“Lady Amelia isn’t frivolous,” Peter called from the side of the room where he was waiting with a bottle of wine.
If her guests had been shocked at the conversation prior, it was nothing compared to the shock of hearing a footman contribute to the conversation.
“Thank you, Peter,” Amelia said. “That’s enough.”
But the boy was not to be silenced. “She works hard, she does. Hard as anyone. Why, she polished the ballroom floor herself.”
Her heart stopped. Her breath would not come. If ever the floor would just open up and swallow her, please God let it be now.
Snorts of laughter and giggling came at her from all directions—each sound a hot iron to the skin.
She twisted a napkin in her lap and smiled widely even though she could feel the cracks appearing all over her. “You’re dismissed, Peter.”
“But—”
“Out, before I reconsider your employment entirely.”
Peter stiffened.
For a moment, she thought he was going to argue, to say something else that would make her a mockery in front of her guests. But he knocked his heels together and stalked down the length of the room toward the servants’ entrance.
“You need a better class of footman,” Luella said.
“Servants are not hired for their wits.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Not just because the hard slam of the door suggested Peter heard her or because Fiona was looking at her with such disappointment.
No, she regretted them because it was the cruel kind of thing she’d have said months ago, before she knew better. Was better.
Shame ate up every inch of her. Blinking back the tears before they could be seen, she looked to Benedict for support.
He looked back, his face set in an expression of absolute disgust.
Chapter28
Servants are not hired for their wits.
Benedict had been a fool to think that the life he’d built had a foundation of anything but sand. For all that his wife had appeared happy and content, it had taken two short days back with her friends for all of that to shatter.
