She couldn’t remember her father ever using the word “besmirched” before, and for some reason it was that that burned away a little of her shock and revealed to her the true horror of her circumstances.
Not the least of which was this: Mr. Cassidy’s little speech had pulled her back from the razor’s edge of ruin.
A stubborn little voice inside her insisted:But it wasn’t my fault that we were caught. Iwasexercising discretion.
What other possible end could there be to their dalliance? It was explosive all along, and it had concluded, like any good show of fireworks, like a Roman candle going up.
“And so, given your nimble mind, Lillias, I do wonder what your solution would be if, as you say, you did not want to marry him. It certainly poses a fascinating intellectual conundrum.”
There was quite a long pause.
“I suppose I’ll have to sleep on it,” she said carefully.
“You do that.” He stood up with a great sigh and headed for the door. “If you can. Now, I’m off for a word with Mr. Cassidy.”
“He wants to live in America,” she called after him, rather desperately.
“Well,that’snot going to happen,” her father said, almost mildly.
He shut the door behind him.
Hugh was in the smoking room.
He couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten here. He couldn’t, in fact, quite feel his own limbs.
He felt a bit like a ghost at his own funeral.
After his burst of eloquence everything was a bit of a blur, as if every bit of his emotional and physical resources had been spent.
The hush, despite the presence of the three other men staring at him, was dense as the carpet.
Six eyes—Bolt’s, Hardy’s, and Delacorte’s—were fixed upon him. It occurred to him that this was likely how he’d gotten there. They’d somehow escorted him away from the stage and back into The Grand Palace on the Thames’s main building.
Those eyes were variously amused, pitying, sympathetic, and wondering, the expression shifting across them the way light glanced from mirrors.
Still, nobody spoke.
Heoughtto smoke. It would clear his head. The act of selecting a cigar, lighting it. The soothing familiar ritual.
He reached for the humidor. He was shocked to see his hand shaking badly.
He pulled it back as though it had betrayed him and thrust it into his coat pocket. The hand that had so recently touched a trembling, sighing Lillias.
His breath stopped for an instant.
Lucien was the first one to speak.
“Perhaps we ought to have discussed this during one of our evenings in this room... but getting caught is optional, Cassidy.”
And at this Hugh moaned, sank down into the brown wing chair, bent forward at the torso, and crossed his arms over the top of his head, as though a boulder were hurtling out of the sky toward him.
Although of course, metaphorically, the boulder had already struck.
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
He heard his own breath as though he wereinside his little cabin in New York and the wind outside was battering at it.
