But Juliet didn’t have any words left. So, she didn’t answer, but buried her face in her sister’s shoulder, and burst into tears.
“You do realize,Helena, that this entire wretched business started with a plate of tea cakes?” Juliet was sitting cross-legged on an enormous bed in one of Lord Hawke’s many bedchambers, a room with heavy beams set deep into towering ceilings, and the largest fireplace she’d ever seen.
Helena was lounging in a nest of pillows beside her, and balanced on a pillow between them was a plate piled high with tea cakes.
“Tea cakes?” Helena paused to consider that, a half-eaten cake in her hand. Mrs. Birt, Lady Fosberry’s cook had been keeping Helena well-supplied with them since she’d arrived at Hawke’s Run. “No. I don’t follow it. Tell me your theory.”
Helena was fond of theories. Almost as fond as she was of tea cakes.
Juliet waved one of the offending cakes in the air. “If the scent of Mrs. Birt’s tea cakes hadn’t lured me into the drawing room the afternoon Lady Fosberry came to Hambleden Manor, I never would have made that dreadful wager, and—”
“If you hadn’t made the wager, you and Emmeline wouldn’t have gone off to London for the season, and—”
“—and if we hadn’t gone to London for the season, we wouldn’t have landed in the middle of a disastrous scandal.”
Anotherscandal, that is. Some ladies excelled at singing, others at playing the pianoforte, and still others at tatting lace, or painting on tiny bits of ivory.
The Templetons excelled at scandal.
“It’s mortifying that my weakness for such an ordinary confection landed us in the midst of yet another tangle of rumors and lies. It’s rather like the city of Troy falling to rubble because of a squabble over a lady’s pretty face.” Though to give Mrs. Birt her due, her tea cakes were lovely currant and almond ones, sweetened with just a touch of rosewater, and thus not ordinary at all.
Mrs. Birt was a dab hand with the rosewater.
But that didn’t excuse Juliet, any more than it did the Greeks or the Trojans. “Blasted tea cakes. It’s all their fa—”
“Your theory is flawed.” Helena popped the last bit of a tea cake into her mouth, and dusted the crumbs from her fingers. “You would have come to the drawing room to see Lady Fosberry, with or without the tea cakes, and thus would have made the wager and gone to London, thereby setting the scandal in motion.”
“I detest it when you pick apart my theories, Helena.” Juliet waggled her tea cake accusingly at her sister.
“But think of this, Juliet. If Lady Fosberry hadn’t tempted you into the wager with Mrs. Birt’s tea cakes, then Emmeline wouldn’t be betrothed to Lord Melrose.”
“Yes, that’s so. Something wonderful did come of that wager, didn’t it?”
Lord Boggs had lied about seeing Lord Melrose in London. Lord Boggs, it seemed, couldn’t open his mouth without a dozen lies and ugly rumors falling out. He was behind the worst of the gossip about her, too—she was certain of it. It had all been a ploy to make her so desperate she’d agree to become his mistress.
Given she’d sooner toss herself into the Thames, it hadn’t worked.
As for Lord Melrose and Emmeline, according to the letter Euphemia had sent Helena, Lord Melrose had pleaded his case so tenderly that Emmeline had succumbed with very little fuss, despite being the stubbornest of all the Templeton sisters.
Their betrothal was the one bright spot in an otherwise unremitting sea of gloom.
Juliet sighed, and helped herself to another tea cake. “Lord Hawke won’t be angry that I’ve come here, will he?”
“Lord Hawke?” Helena snorted. “I haven’t the faintest idea whether he’d be angry or not. I haven’t laid eyes on the man since I arrived at Hawke’s Run.”
“But you’ve been here two months.” It wasn’t unusual for a nobleman to spend a great deal of time in London, but one would think Lord Hawke might wish to see his sons on occasion. “What of the boys?”
“The boys? Oh, I’m afraid Lord Hawke is far too busy drinking himself into a stupor and chasing ladies of ill repute from one corner of London to the other to spare any time for Adrian and Etienne.” Helena seized one of the pillows scattered across the bed, fluffed it with a bit more aggression than necessary, then added it to the stack piled against the headboard. “I’d say it’s just as well he kept away from them, but the boys miss him. They ask for him every day.”
Juliet’s tea cake turned to dust in her mouth. “That’s awful, Helena. I’m sorry for them.”
“I do my best for them, but those boys need their father.”
“They do. All boys do. But Lord Hawke was wise enough to choose you as their governess. That speaks well of him.”
“Lord Hawke had nothing to do with it. His housekeeper, Mrs. Norris hired me. I doubt he even knows I’m here.”
“Oh, no. Those poor little boys.”
