“Pheasants?” Violet offered helpfully.
“No, not—” Lady Honora began, but Violet silenced her with a look.
“Yes! Yes, of course. Pheasants. Just so.” Iris settled back against the squabs. There, that should do.
Violet leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “Pheasant season doesn’t start until November.”
Iris glared at her sister. Violet was as wily as the wiliest fox. “Well, as to that—”
“You’re lying.”
“No. He really did go to Buckinghamshire, to…to…” Dash it, what could Lord Huntington be doing in Buckinghamshire that made the least bit of sense?
Lady Honora gave a delicate cough of disagreement. “I saw him in Bond Street yesterday, Iris.”
Iris froze for a moment, then deflated, slumping back against the squabs. Why could the truth never wait for the most convenient timing?
“Are you quite finished telling tales?” Violet asked.
It appears so. “Yes.”
“Well, then? What’s happened? Did he jilt you? Because thetonwon’t have it if he did. The Marquess of Huntington might be able to get away with quite a lot, but even he can’t—”
“He didn’t jilt me. He, ah…well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“If he didn’t jilt you, then why hasn’t he called on you? It doesn’t make any…” Violet hesitated, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh no. Don’t tell me you—”
Iris squeezed her eyes closed. “I jilted him.”
“You jilted theMarquess of Huntington?” Lady Honora let out an odd squeak, and collapsed against the squabs in a heap of pink silk skirts, quite overcome.
“I jilted him,” Iris repeated. No, it still didn’t seem real, even when she said it aloud. It would soon enough, however, once thetonswept in to persecute her with their vicious gossip.
“Butwhy? I mean, thetonwould have made things uncomfortable for him if he’d jilted you, but for you to jilt the Marquess of Huntington? Why, they’ll have your head on a platter! My goodness, Iris. What have you done?”
Violet looked so horrified Iris’s own heart gave an anxious lurch in her chest. “I—I—he doesn’t care for me. Not at all.”
There was more, of course, so much more, and part of Iris wanted to blurt it all out, then lay her head on the carriage cushion and weep. If she told them everything—about Lord Huntington’s wager, and Lady Beaumont, and the cravats and insatiable appetites and desires—they would understand. Lady Honora would soothe her, and Violet would fall into a rage on her behalf, then they’d both stroke her hair and tell her she’d done the right thing, and she’d feel so much better.
But something made her hold her tongue. She wasn’t trying to protect Lord Huntington, of course. He’d chosen his debaucheries, and he could live with them, but she hadn’t even toldhimshe knew his secrets. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Violet and Honora.
His secrets weren’t hers to tell.
“Oh, Iris.” Lady Honora’s face was the picture of dismay. “This isn’t because he refused to kiss you in the garden, is it?”
Iris didn’t answer, but turned away from Honora’s anxious face to look out the window. Lord Huntington thought that was the reason, but of course the kiss was only the sharp point of the dagger, and everyone knew it was the blade that did the real damage.
Iris could have overlooked a great deal to secure the match her grandmother had gone to such trouble to bring about. Lord Huntington’s wager with Lord Harley, his mistress, his disinterest in her—it was all quite distressing, but she would have gone through with the marriage, nonetheless. His lordship could blindfold his mistress with his cravat and tie her to London Bridge if he chose, and for her grandmother’s and sisters’ sakes, Iris would have done everything she could to ignore it.
But to imply she’d engaged in an indiscretion with Lord Wrexley? To cast aspersions on her virtue, and call her very character into question whenhewas the one guilty of so many secret sins?
No. It was too much.
Here was a man who’d hold his wife to absurd standards of propriety with one hand, while he tied his mistress to…to…well, whatever it was one tied a mistress to, with the other. Perhaps there were ladies docile enough to overlook it for the sake of becoming a marchioness, but Iris wasn’t one of them.
And marriage—a lifetime of marriage, no less—to a gentleman who didn’t care a whit for her, who’d dismissed her as dull and tedious before he ever troubled himself to know her at all? A gentleman who kept a mistress, and used his cravat for a purpose no cravat was ever intended to be used?
She thought of Lady Beaumont’s cruel taunts, her catlike smile. That vicious woman didn’t deserve the least bit of good fortune to fall in her path, but as it turned out, perhaps Lord Huntington would keep her as his mistress, after all.
