Page 34 of The Luckiest Lady in London

It lasted only a moment, but the sweetness of that secret communion lingered: a joy that was also an ache in her heart. They were two of a kind—she wished she wouldn’t need to always guard herself from him.

“May I present his lordship the Marquess of Wrenworth?” said Lady Balfour, still giddy from having pulled off the most spectacular match—or mismatch, as Louisa sometimes thought of it—in years. “Sir, my dear cousin Mrs. Cantwell, Miss Julia, Miss Matilda, Miss Cecilia, and Miss Cantwell.”

Frederica, addressed as Miss Cantwell, as she was the eldest, kept her head lowered.

Lord Wrenworth approached her chair. She still sat with her head down.

Much to the surprise of everyone present, he lowered himself to one knee, so as to be level with her. Flustered, she turned her entire body to one side. He studied the angle she presented him, then calmly rounded to her other side.

Lady Balfour and Mrs. Cantwell both glanced toward Louisa, who could only shake her head to show that she had no idea what he was doing.

He straightened. “I understand you have been mourning the loss of your beauty for years, Miss Cantwell. What I do not understand is why your family has allowed such an act of rampant narcissism.”

Frederica looked up in shock.

“The only imperfections I see are a few shallow pockmarks on your right cheek. I would never have permitted any sister of mine to brood over such minor blemishes for the better part of a decade.

“Had you come for a London Season, you would not have dislodged Mrs. Townsend from her perch as the most beautiful woman in London. You might not even have disturbed Miss Bessler’s place third on that list. But make no mistake, you would have been mentioned in the same breath as those women. Instead, you have wasted your youth grieving for a gross misfortune that never took place: You are perhaps five percent less lovely than you would have been without the pockmarks, not fifty percent.

“Miss Louisa asked me to compliment you, but I shall not, not when you can go out and garner hundreds of them on your own with minimum effort. And if you will not, then there is nothing anyone can do for you—the matter is not with your face, but your head.”

Without waiting for a response, he moved on. “My dear Miss Matilda, did you have a pleasant trip?”

* * *

If anything, Louisa had expected a charm offensive—and a charm offensive this was not. He acted as if he’d never encountered such a ridiculous thing as Frederica considering her looks ruined.

It was ridiculous, except Frederica refused to believe her family when they tried to convince her otherwise, certain that her mother and sisters were lying out of love—or pity. But Lord Wrenworth’s simple, almost brusque repudiation of the truth she’d long held to be self-evident had a far more dramatic effect on her. By the time he was saying his good-byes, Louisa caught Frederica looking surreptitiously at herself in the mirror hanging over the fireplace—when she’d studiously avoided any reflective surfaces for years upon years.

She was not the only one who noticed.

“Did you see that?” asked Cecilia, as soon as Frederica and Lord Wrenworth were both out of earshot.

“I saw that!” Mrs. Cantwell exclaimed. “Think of the wonderful match she can still make for herself, if only she would go out and let herself be seen. There is bound to be a rich widower somewhere who would be thrilled to marry her.”

“Now, why didn’t we talk to Frederica like that earlier?” said Cecilia.

“We did,” Matilda pointed out. “We talked ourselves blue in the face. We said everything Lord Wrenworth said—we just didn’t say it the way he did.”

Lady Balfour nodded authoritatively. “And the way he said it made all the difference.”

Mrs. Cantwell turned toward Louisa. “I hear they call you the luckiest lady in London, my dear. I think you must be the luckiest lady in all of Britain.”

That same general sentiment prevailed. Matilda, with whom Louisa shared a room at home, was the only one to say, before they went to sleep that night, “I know everyone else is saying how lucky you are, Louisa, but I think he is the lucky one. Just think how much Mr. Charles will envy him in having you for a wife.”

Louisa reached over and hugged this most beloved sister. “Thank you, my dear.”

“I hope you aren’t only marrying him because we need the money,” said Matilda. “You do like him, don’t you?”

Louisa had never asked herself that question before. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending how one looked at it—the answer was all too obvious. She did like him, his villainous ways included. In fact, his villainous ways might be the very reason she liked him so much, this darkly gleeful secret that he shared only with her.

“Not only do I like him,” she answered, “I would have volunteered to be his mistress if I couldn’t be his wife.”

That sent Matilda into a fit of giggling. She hugged Louisa back. “I’m so glad to hear that. I am sure you will make him very happy, and I hope he will do the same for you.”

Louisa had her doubts. She had no idea what made her fiancé happy or otherwise. Nor did she know how she would handle herself should the day come when he was no longer excited by the prospect of sleeping with her—when he would go on to bed the next woman who titillated him.

His heart in the palm of her hand might—might—act as insurance against this infelicitous eventuality. But where was the path to his heart? Did he have great trolls guarding it? Perhaps a fire-spewing dragon, chained before the castle gate?