“I didn’t intend to hide it. I—that is…” In truth, Iris hadn’t even considered it at all. She’d been so busy running after Lord Wrexley, and running away from Lord Huntington, the jilting itself had faded to the back of her mind. “Oh, no. Of course not. I had every intention of telling them, my lady.”
Lady Tallant raised a skeptical eyebrow at this, but she didn’t pursue it. Instead she took a seat on the chair in front of Iris’s dressing table, and waved a hand at the bed. “Do sit, Miss Somerset. I need to speak with you.”
Iris sat. One didn’t argue with a wicked widow.
“So, you’ve jilted a marquess. My, that’s not a sentence one often has a chance to say. You’re either the bravest young lady I’ve ever known, or the most foolish. Which is it?”
Iris tapped her finger against her lower lip, considering. “My courage has led me into foolishness, Lady Tallant. No, wait. That’s not right. Perhaps it’s the other way around.”
“Yes, it’s often difficult to tell the difference between the two, isn’t it? All right, then. Let’s start with something simple, shall we? Why did you jilt him?”
Iris’s litany of vague excuses rushed to her tongue, but it seemed she’d only been waiting for a chance to unburden herself, because much to her surprise, when she opened her mouth, the truth came pouring out.
“Because he wagered with Lord Harley and Lord Wrexley over which one of them would have Lady Honora and which would have me, and he only offered for me because helost. Because he has a mistress, or he had one, and she’sawful. Because he wouldn’t kiss me, or let me kiss him, and because of the other bit with the blindfolds and silk scarves, though I can’t explain that because I don’t entirely understand it, and because he’s cold and detached, and he doesn’t care for me at all.”
Dear God, it sounds even worse when I say it aloud.
Iris sagged back against the bed, limp and exhausted.
Lady Annabel abandoned her seat at the dressing table, and sat down next to Iris. “Is that it?”
Iris turned to stare at her. “Isn’t that enough?”
Lady Annabel laughed. “For many young ladies I’d think it was more than enough, but only you can answer that question, Miss Somerset.”
Strangely, that laugh echoing in the quiet room soothed Iris. If Lady Tallant could laugh, then perhaps it wasn’t as dire as she imagined. “Well, I’ve jilted him, so I suppose I’ve already answered it, haven’t I?”
“Yes, one would think you had, and quite definitively, but there is one little matter still unresolved. If you’ve jilted Lord Huntington, what’s he doing here? Why would he accept the invitation to Lady Hadley’s house party?”
Iris gave the bed another half-hearted kick. “Oh, to save me from myself, of course. He’s come to inform me he’s ‘rejected my dismissal,’ which essentially means he’s insisting we go ahead with the marriage, despite the small matter of my having jilted him.”
Lady Tallant’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t realize gentlemen were permitted that option.”
“Oh, well, it seems a marquess is permitted to do whatever he wishes, Lady Tallant. Or perhaps that’s just the exalted Marquess of Huntington.”
Lady Tallant’s lips twitched. “Well, this is a rather fascinating state of affairs, and at a country house party, too. Who would have imagined? But Lord Huntington must be enamored of you, to chase you all the way to Hampshire.”
Iris snorted. “He’s indifferent to me, I assure you. Passion may not move Lord Huntington, but obligation does. He’s here to save me from an unworthy suitor. I’d hardly had a chance to scrape the dust from my boots after we arrived yesterday before Lord Huntington was in my bedchamber, demanding I marry him, and that I stay away from Lord Wrexley.”
Oh, dear God.She’d just told Lady Tallant Lord Huntington was in her bedchamber.
Iris waited in dread for her visitor to leap from her chair and rush to report this scandalous lapse in propriety to Captain West, but aside from a slight hardening of her features when Lord Wrexley’s name was mentioned, her ladyship didn’t react at all. “Lord Huntington doesn’t care for Lord Wrexley?”
“I think it’s safe to say they don’t care for each other, my lady.”
“Let me see if I understand you, Miss Somerset. Lord Huntington came all the way to Hampshire to insist you marry him, because he wants to protect you from a gentleman he thinks is unworthy of you? It doesn’t sound as if he’s as indifferent to you as you imagine.”
Iris blinked. She hadn’t thought of it in quite that way. “Lord Huntington is cold and detached, but he’s a proper gentleman, despite that awful wager. He realizes he left me no choice but to jilt him, and I suppose he feels a responsibility for me, for that reason.”
“He didn’t look cold or detached just now, when he chased you onto the terrace. He looked quite wild, in fact.”
He had.
Iris didn’t know how to account for those odd moments with Lord Huntington. This other gentleman who seemed to have risen from the ashes of the man she’d been betrothed to was so different from the cold marquess who’d always been so blandly unaffected by her, she hardly recognized him. She could almost imagine she’d wounded him with her words today, and then there was that odd comment he’d made, about never having run a race before. It didn’t make sense. Hadn’t every child run a race at some time or another?
I was never a child.
What could he have meant by that?
