“Lady Hackworth,” she breathed suddenly. “She said she inquired after the bolt of silk and was told it was spoken for. Someone must have told her it was being held foryour mistress.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. “Fucking. Hell. Tell me. Was I wrong about the Hackworths?” he said tautly.
She didn’t even wince at the cursing, and he didn’t apologize.
“How much did it cost? Dear God, the cost of a dress like that!”
“The cost is beside the point,” he said almost coldly. “You were never meant to know it was I who paid for it, and you were certainly never meant to know the cost. You were simply meant to have the dress. I in fact entertained this possibility before you and I became in any way... significant... to each other. I knew it would make you happy and you would look spectacularly beautiful in it. And it did and you did.”
She stared at him, still reeling. She gave a short, stunned laugh.
“Good God,” she breathed in wonder. “You do think I’m an absolute idiot, abumpkinof the first order. ‘Clover,’ indeed. Why else would you think I’d believe Madame Marceau wouldjustgive me such a dress. I feel like such afool.”
His stance was wary and tense. “No one can make a fool of you if you don’t allow them,” he said tersely. “The gossip columns have not made a foolof you. You are not a fool, by any definition of the word. Why on earth should that dress go to waste when you could do it justice?”
“So it was by way of being practical, is what you’re saying,” she said sardonically, still light-headed from furious disbelief. “Like putting last night’s leftover peas into tomorrow night’s stew.”
He dragged a hand over his face, as if he was about to lose the battle to maintain his composure, and his words were more clipped now.
“Believe it or not, Catherine, I took every bloody bit of this into consideration. I had no way of knowing whether you’d accept the dress, but I asked Madame Marceau to try. I considered your possible reaction, if you should ever discover it. I knew the chances were very slim—but not nonexistent—that anyone in the ton at large would know anything about the origins of your dress. And then...” He paused at length. Then gave a short, bitter, wondering laugh. “I did it anyway.”
“But...why?”
He was silent for so long that she began to believe she was witnessing history: for the first time, Lord Kirke simply had no idea what to say.
His face remained leached of all color, which made his eyes look obsidian dark.
“You didn’t see your face when you saw Mrs. Pariseau’s new dress,” he said quietly, finally. “But I did.”
He sounded ever so faintly... not quite defeated. But resigned. As if he was confessing to a crime after years of running from the law.
What other words had he entertained and dismissed during that long hesitation?
But he said nothing more.
She froze, absolutely blank with astonishment. Uncertain and off-balance now.
Had the ache of wistful covetousness, the stab of pain she’d felt when she’d seen that dress been so obvious on her face? The notion made her feel raw and exposed and so terribly embarrassed.
But his strange composure and white face suggested to her that there was something else he was determinedly disguising. She could not quite bring it into view through her haze of furious, horrified mortification.
Her voice was hoarse and clipped. “I suppose none of that matters, anyway. Because here is the irony, Lord Kirke. You once claimed to have dreaded ruining me. And yet it seems I am now literally ruined. Lady Wisterberg informs me thatthirty-twoof the people who previously accepted an invitation to her party have now sent their regrets, canceling. We have canceled the party. My invitations to events have stopped completely. As far as the ton is concerned, I have clearly been cut dead. As though I never existed. My chances of a decent matchanywherein England are possibly over. My season certainly is. But I suppose you did warn me there would be consequences for dancing with you. I take responsibility for that.” She said this bitterly.
She could hear the blood ringing in her ears in the silence that followed.
“I am sorrier than I can say to have caused you such distress,” he said finally, so gently. “When I have valued our friendship more than I can say.”
Friendship.
She didn’t think she would ever forget how this room looked during this moment. The slant of the shadows. His coat slung over the chair. His papersstrewn over the desk. How desperately she had wondered about the intimate details of his life. How she’d longed to know everything about him, as if in so doing she could finally know his heart. When this had always been impossible, because this broken man simply would not allow it to be known.
“I will find the person responsible for this little paragraph,” he said calmly, “and I will destroy them.”
She stared at him. She felt the little hairs prickling to attention at the back of her neck.
For the first time she understood how much of his eerie calm was merely skillfully contained fury.
“Will that make the fact that I wore your mistress’s dress any less true?” she said bitterly.
