Isobel glanced to Jason, checking for some reaction. If he’d wanted her to come to him, well—why not arrive with every part of her? Including her radiant actress mother.
But of course this was the bold confidence she’d feltbeforehis lovely mother had taken her into her safekeeping and introduced her to all of her friends. It was before the dowager hadapprovedher.
And how had Isobel responded? She’d seen Lady Northumberland’s approval and raised her by the force of nature that was Georgiana Tinker.
Before Isobel could make some statement that sufficiently prepared the dowager to meet her mother, the second heart-stopping event of the night burst into the room.
“Lady Wendy Bask, daughter to the late Earl of Cranford,” announced the page at the doorway to the ballroom. “And the Dowager Countess, Lady Cranford.”
Isobel lost all powers of self-possession and spun at the sound of the names.
The sight in the doorway was this: her half sister, Wendy, bustled into the ballroom with her mother, Lady Cranford, the pair of them gazing about with looks of seasoned outdoorsmen on the first day of hunting season.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The last thing that Isobel saw before her vision blurred was North. The duke.Jason.
He’d broken away from his sister and was making his way to her.
She blinked, trying to clear the fuzz. Panic tangled her brain. Likely, her skin had turned one of the many improbable colors of her mother’s dress. She was incinerating, burning alive.
She swung her gaze to the dowager. Lady Northumberland was oblivious, lecturing a footman.
She looked again to Lady Wendy. The younger woman was scanning the ballroom and caught sight of North. Making no effort to hide her scrutiny, the girl began sizing him up.
Georgiana had not yet reached Isobel—she was four feet away—but now she stopped, pivoted, and stared openly at Lady Cranford and Lady Wendy.
Isobel’s first instinct was simply to run. To dart from the ballroom and leave all the remaining players to do their worst.
Her mother harbored an impulsiveness and an instinct for drama that thrived on large crowds and pageantry. Lady Cranford surely knew of her late husband’s “otherfamily” and would be vengefully bitter. Lady Wendy now watched Jason with the calculating purpose of a fox beneath the rabbit hutch.
Isobel’s head swam with all the accusations, thetruthsthat were about to be revealed.
Isobel Tinker is the illegitimate daughter of an earl.
Georgiana Tinker is an ostentatious actress.
Isobel was raised in Europe and had lovers and lost a baby and now peddles holidays to wealthy girls.
Isobel sailed, unchaperoned, to Iceland in the company of the duke and then traded herself to pirates.
Not all of it would be revealed tonight, Isobel knew. But some of it would be. There was no way around it. The rest would follow.
Insecurity and defeat fell like an avalanche; she couldn’t breathe for the weight of it. What had she thought? That she could triumph at the ball of a duke? As hisbetrothed, for God’s sake? To earn the approval of the dowager?
Meanwhile the approval of Wendy Bask was guaranteed. The girl needed only sail through the door.
Isobel felt hollow inside, light enough to float away.
This—after the dowager duchess had been so lovely.
After she’d squired Isobel on her arm and introduced her to her guests.
Now, Lady Northumberland and her daughters would be part of the gossip mill for weeks.
Worst of all, Jason would be lost.
She looked back to her mother. Georgiana was staring at Isobel. Her expression showed such deep, painful regret it pierced Isobel’s heart. Isobel couldn’t remember her mother ever looking so diminished.
