Juliet let out a laugh, but there was a sharp, ugly edge to it. “You heard Lord Cudworth, my lady. It’s the Lady in Violet now.”
The bitterness in that laugh, the anger and hurt Juliet was trying so valiantly to hide cut Emmeline to the heart. What an utter fool she’d been, to believe the Templetons couldn’t be ruined a second time. How laughable it was, to think the ton ever forgot or forgave anything.
Lady Fosberry pressed a weary hand to her brow. “We need to think what’s best to do, girls. It’s only a matter of time before your name will be on the lips of every gossip in London, Juliet.”
“Oh, I daresay it already is.” Juliet, who’d stuffed herself into the furthest corner of the settee, didn’t meet either Emmeline’s or Lady Fosberry’s eyes. “Or it will be, before the end of the second act.”
Lady Fosberry joined Juliet on the settee, taking her hand. “Juliet, dearest, I won’t be angry with you, but I must know if you—”
“Lord Cudworth is mistaken, my lady.” Juliet raised her chin, but she couldn’t hide the trembling of her lips, the defeat written into every line of her face. “I’m not the Lady in Lavender.”
Lady Fosberry’s eyes slid closed as she let out a long breath. “No, I thought you couldn’t be. You must forgive me for asking, dearest, but—”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Emmeline’s voice was dull. “It doesn’t matter if she’s the Lady in Lavender or not. The truth doesn’t matter.”
Lady Fosberry blanched at the expression on Emmeline’s face. “Emmeline, my dear girl, it’s—”
“Juliet’s done nothing wrong, but her innocence won’t make a bit of difference to the ton. Soon enough they’ll all be saying she intentionally lured Lord Melrose into an indiscretion so he’d be forced to marry her.”
They’d say that, and worse. They’d claim Juliet was just like their mother had been, every inch a devious Templeton, and from there it would go on and on, the lies and innuendos piling up until the truth was crushed under their weight.
“I grant you the situation is dire, Emmeline,” Lady Fosberry said with a quiet sigh. “But I can assure you I have no intention of allowing Lady Christine and Lord Cudworth to get away with such a horrendous lie.”
“They’ve already gotten away with it. As Juliet said, it’s such an amusing lie! Isn’t that all that matters? Everyone in that theater tonight knows Lord Cudworth is lying about Juliet, just as they know Lady Christine put him up to it, but that won’t keep them from repeating it all over London.” She was rambling, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “The truth is a dull, tedious thing, though in this case it might be shocking enough to satisfy even the ton.”
“The truth?” Lady Fosberry paled at Emmeline’s words. “God in heaven, what now? What do you mean, Emmeline? What is the truth? I must insist on knowing the whole of this business this instant.”
“I should have told you at once. I beg your pardon, my lady, for lying to you.” Emmeline rose slowly to her feet, her knees trembling. “I was the lady in the library with Lord Melrose the night of your ball. I’m the Lady in Lavender, Lady Fosberry. Not Juliet, but me.”
Whatever Lady Fosberry had expected to hear, it wasn’t that, and her jaw dropped right into her decolletage. “You? But…I don’t understand. You weren’t even at the ball! How could you and Lord Melrose have—”
Emmeline’s face felt stiff, her lips numb. “I wasn’t at the ball, no, but I did venture into the library in search of a book that night. Lord Melrose happened to come in when I was there, and…I didn’t intend to…my encounter with his lordship was a mistake, my lady.”
If she’d been any less devastated, Emmeline might have laughed that the odd chain of circumstances that had led to that kiss could be called a mistake. It felt far more like fate, a sequence of unlikely occurrences that would nevertheless change the entire course of her life.
Indeed, it already had.
She was in love with Johnathan. Perhaps she had been from that first moment he’d touched her in the library, and now…that would never not be true. How could anything ever be the same as it had been before that kiss, when she would never again be the same person she was before she fell in love with him?
“Of course it was, dearest. I could never think otherwise.” Thankfully, Lady Fosberry didn’t demand to know how Emmeline could have kissed Lord Melrose by mistake, but only gave her hand a gentle pat. “There’s only one thing for it, then, and that’s to tell Lord Melrose the truth at once.”
“He already knows.” He’d known almost from the start. All that time she’d been telling herself he didn’t recognize her as the lady he’d kissed, he’d been quietly watching her, and drawing his own conclusions.
All the correct conclusions, as it happened.
But that only made it more painful. If she could have made herself believe Johnathan felt only a responsibility to the Lady in Lavender rather than a particular regard for her, she might someday have recovered from the loss of him.
But he’d seen her in a way no one ever had before, and now her heart was wholly, irretrievably his.
Lady Fosberry saw her distress, and an anxious frown creased her brow. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me at once. Would it really be so terrible, Emmeline, to be the Countess of Melrose?”
“I’m not destined to become a countess.” Wasn’t that what she’d told herself? That she was the flaw, the mistake that should have been corrected before the experiment even began?
How absurd, to think it could be done as easily as that.
“Nonsense, Emmeline. You’d make a splendid countess, and then there’s the small matter of your being the lady Lord Melrose is searching for.”
“But—”
