Nothing changed the fact that she had worn, on her own body, over her own skin, the dress meant for a woman to whom he’d made love as part of a business arrangement because he’d known she’d be gullible enough to take it from the modiste.
And she might never have known, if not for that gossip in the newspaper.
That the whole of the ton now seemed to know was unbearable. That they might actually believe she had all along been his mistress while masquerading as an innocent young woman made bile rise in her throat. That what had once been seen as charming and novel—her newness to the ton, the fact she was relatively unknown—was precisely the permission they needed to suspect her. She’d been like a shiny toy, batted aloft between them. She had reached the end of her usefulness, and the last bit of fun they could get out of her was tossing her away.
This embarrassment and shame had no precedence in her life; she was ill-equipped to bear it. It shuddered through her again and again. She didn’t know how to ease the torment of it.
To think, she might never have known how muscular her pride was if some man hadn’t dressed her in his mistress’s clothing.
Surely embarrassment in and of itself wasn’t fatal, her good sense chimed in weakly.Dothese people truly matter? And it was just a dress?
She didn’t want to listen to sense at the moment. Those peoplemighthave mattered if she’d had a future with someone like Lord Vaughn. Which she clearly no longer did.
She was finding great wells of strength in her outrage, which swelled into fear and back into outrage again. Because the possibility remained that shewasforever ruined. And this was a reason indeed to panic.
She breathed into her hands. In and out, in and out.
She pulled them away wet with tears.
Then she gave herself a shake, dashed her palm across her eyes, and went to find Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy.
Miss Keating wasconsiderablyless composed than Lord Kirke.
She sat across from Delilah and Angelique on the pink settee, visibly shaking. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and swollen from tears.
“I am so terribly embarrassed by the gossip. It isn’t true, I promise you! But I feel I must leave at once. It has become clear to me that my season is at an end.”
Her voice was thick.
They gave her a handkerchief embroidered with the initials TGPOTT. They were always prepared.
“We do not believe all of the gossip, Miss Keating,” Mrs. Hardy told her firmly, which was on the whole true. “And we do not believe it of Lord Kirke, either. We have loved having you here, and we verymuch hope to see you again. We’re so terribly sorry your season has ended so unhappily. But we understand why you feel you must return home.”
Miss Keating sat quietly for a moment. Simply breathing.
“Is he... has he gone, then?” Her eyes were suddenly wide in what looked like stunned realization.
“Lord Kirke? He departed a few hours ago,” Angelique told her gently. “He’s gone.”
She went rigidly still. As if she was only now absorbing the ramifications of this. “He’s really gone?” she almost whispered.
“Miss Keating...” Angelique said gently “...you must tell us at once if he behaved in any way inappropriately.”
“No,” she replied vehemently. “He has always been... he was always kind.”
The last word was broken, and she buried it in her new handkerchief. She wept, her shoulders heaving.
Delilah patted her soothingly, while she and Angelique exchanged bewildered looks.
Miss Keating finally looked up abruptly.
“You have all been so very good to me.” She hungrily swept with her eyes the sitting room, the chandelier, the Epithet Jar. Gathering it into her memory.
Catherine was so tired of saying goodbye to things she had come to love.
And yet, only a fool lingers at the scene of their devastation.
Lady Wisterberg was generously paying for the royal mail coach so Catherine would have a swifter journey home, and she came to The Grand Palace on the Thames to collect her first thing the following morning to escort her to it.
