It was Lady Selina Archer.
Prue froze in the middle of the corridor, her feet suddenly locked in place. How strange, that she should have so instantly recognized Lady Archer. She’d only ever seen a tiny painting of her, and there were dozens of blue-eyed, dark-haired ladies at Franny’s ball.
But she knew her at a glance, and the expression on that beautiful face sent a chill darting down Prue’s spine.
“Ah, the Duchess of Montford, at last.” Lady Selina’s lovely, red bow lips curled upward in a smile as jagged as shattered glass. “I’ve quite longed to meet you since you arrived in London, Your Grace.”
“I can’t imagine why, Lady Archer.” Prue’s voice was cool, composed, but underneath her show of calm she was trembling. What was Lady Archer doing here? Franny hadn’t invited her tonight, that was certain, which meant the woman had risked incurring the wrath of the Duke and Duchess of Basingstoke by coming to their home without an invitation.
There could be no innocent reason for that.
“Can’t you? But we have so very much in common, Your Grace! Surely, we have just dozens of things we might talk about between us.” Lady Archer let out a tinkling laugh, like icicles hitting a glass window.
Prue raised her chin. “I beg your pardon, but we haven’t a single thing in common.”
Lady Archer tossed her head back with another of those strange laughs, her dark, silky curls cascading down her back. “But of course, we do, Your Grace! We have Montford.”
We have Montford.We. . .
“Oh, dear. You didn’t know.” Lady Archer gave a pitying shake of her head. “I do so hate to shatter your girlish illusions, Your Grace, but you must have known Montford wouldn’t be satisfied with an awkward country girl like you for long.”
She was lying. Both Franny and Jasper had warned her about Lady Archer, about the grudge she bore Jasper, and about the woman’s vindictiveness—
“There’s hardly a whiff of the country about you now, is there? Why, you look almost like a real duchess! Still, underneath it all, you’re just a nobody from some tedious little village in . . . oh, dear. Montford told me, but I’ve forgotten. Is it Wiltshire?” Lady Archer ran a cold eye over Prue’s emerald-green gown. “Alas, even the costliest silk gown can’t hide everything.”
She traced a bejeweled finger around the plunging neckline of her own scarlet satin gown, and that was when Prue noticed it. A heavy gold necklace of magnificent rubies flashing with a deep, crimson fire, each stone surrounded by diamonds, with tiny pearls dangling from the ends.
Lady Archer noticed her stare, and triumph flashed in her dark blue eyes. “Do you like it?” She raised a hand to her throat and caught one of the rubies on the end of her fingertip. “Montford gave it to me just this week. A reunion gift, of sorts. The rubies do catch one’s attention, do they not? But of course, they’re not merely rubies. There’s a great deal more to them than meets the eye.”
Tiny portraits hidden inside the ruby lockets . . .
Jasper, every inch of him gloriously bare, and the other one, with Lady Archer on her knees before him, his hands in her dark hair—
Prue squeezed her eyes closed, but there was no escaping it, nowhere she could look that she didn’t see it, and now here was this necklace with its half-dozen massive rubies, hiding . . . what? Portraits of Jasper with this poisonous woman in his arms, their limbs tangled together and his lips on hers, kissing her, touching her—
“Montford’s very wicked, is he not? But perhaps you’re not as shocked as you should be at his antics, hmmm, Your Grace? You’re not quite the innocent you’d have all of London believe.”
“What?” Prue’s jaw felt tight, rusty. “What did you say?”
Lady Archer gave an exaggerated shrug, but her blue eyes were gleaming. “I only mean you weren’t as pure as a sweet little country lass should be when you came to your husband’s bed.”
Cold fell over Prue then, so icy it stole her breath. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’tbreathe—
“Did you truly think Montford wouldn’t notice?”
The pristine white sheets, the morning after their wedding night . . .
A gasp tore from Prue’s throat as panic descended on her in a numbing fog. There was only one way Lady Archer could know such a thing, only one way—
“Oh, yes, Montford told me all about it. Thetondoesn’t yet realize what a whore you are, but they’ll find it out soon enough.” Lady Archer sneered, all pretense of politeness dropping away from her, leaving nothing but spite in its place. “I wonder what they’ll think of their favorite then?”
Lady Archer went on, a torrent of words falling from those red, red lips, words piling atop each other, each one uglier than the last, so many words they might have drowned Prue, but she could no longer hear them over the roaring in her ears.
Tonight, Jasper had told her she was lovely. He’d held her in his arms, and told her he missed her, and she . . . she’dbelievedhim.
A curl of anger rose in her belly, andyes, it was good, because it was that little flare of rage that broke the strange hold Lady Archer had on her, and she fled back down the corridor the way she’d come, but it was as if it weren’t even her any longer. It was another lady, a duchess in an emerald-green silk gown, her footsteps echoing in the corridor as she ran, vestiges of Lady Archer’s mocking laugh swirling around her, clinging to her hair and her skirts like the poisonous haze rising from a witch’s cauldron.
She didn’t go back to the ballroom. She couldn’t. There was no way she could face all those staring eyes. She slipped into the Duke of Basingstoke’s study instead, and curled up on the settee in front of the cold fireplace.
