He did not think about any of it but was not especially successful.
CHAPTER 9
“It came on this afternoon,” Albina announced her headache, from her position on the chaise in her sitting room, where she was reclining with every appearance of comfort and a novel open on her lap. “Quite sudden, and now I’m afraid dinner is entirely out of the question.”
Temperance looked at her mother with suspicion.
“You seem very comfortable,” Temperance said.
“I find that comfort helps.” Albina turned a page. “You’ll manage perfectly well without me, and you’ll have your friends. I suppose it is a good thing that I shall not be there, but in any case, you will not be alone.”
“Harper will be there.”
“Yes.” Albina did not look up. “I know.”
Temperance studied her mother for a moment longer, with the particular attention she brought to things she suspected were more deliberate than they appeared. Albina did not let much on, however.
“I hope you feel better,” Temperance said, finally. She knew that it was no use interrogating her mother.
“I’m sure I will,” Albina said, pleasantly. “By morning.”
The dinner was at the Pembridge townhouse, which was large and well-lit. But more so, full of exactly the kind of people Temperance had been navigating for three years. Hypocrites, she liked to call then. They were the ones who were perfectly civil to your face and perfectly entertaining about you the moment you turned away.
In any case, she had dressed carefully for the occasion.
Harper handed her down from the carriage without comment and they walked in together in relative silence. It was better off this way, she had thought to herself.
Her conversations with the duke were always difficult, to say the least.
She found Charity and Alethea within ten minutes, which was fast even by her standards, and she stayed with them.
It is better this way,she told herself again.
But she was aware of Harper, across the room the way one was aware of a change in weather, which was not always looking directly at it but always knowing it was there.
He was talking to a man she didn’t recognize, who said something, and Harper’s mouth moved in what might, on another face, have been described as a smile, and Temperance turned firmly back to Charity.
“My mother has a headache,” she said, trying to take her mind off him.
“Your mother,” Charity said, “has the constitution of someone who has never had a headache in her life and the instincts of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. She left you alone with him.”
That would be devious,but not unlike Albina in the slightest.
“She left me alone with forty other people, two of whom are you.” Temperance accepted a glass of wine from a footman. “It’s a dinner party, please.”
Harper’s friend’s name was Edmund Carew, and he had known Harper since they were seventeen years old.
“You look tired,” Edmund said, by way of greeting.
“I’m perfectly well,” Harper said.
“You look tired,” Edmund said again, “How is the new estate? I heard you finally made the journey.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“And?” Edmund raised his eyebrows. “The scandal sheet dowager, the spinster daughter. Oh, I have heard many things. Was everything as you expected?”
“Nothing,” Harper said, “was what I expected.”
