Page 8 of The Season of Lady Chastity

Lord Mansfield remained close to the moat, staring after her, partially obscured by foliage that’d grown over the path. She quickly turned back around, begging her cheeks and neck to cool.

Bastian.

A strong name.

A peculiar man.

Not something she’d thought to find amongst Luci and Montrose’s country party guests.

Handsome, seemingly without knowledge of it. Intelligent, yet not boastful. Reserved, with a healthy dose of mystery.

While Chastity’s hair was of the lightest shade of brown, Bastian’s was the darkest, with hints of ebony.

Though he was not the type of lord she’d hoped to meet, perhaps he was exactly what she needed. She could shed her wallflower ways with a gentleman certain to never overstep his bounds. Dashing and handsome, with the sense Prudence said Chastity lacked.

Safe.

Non-threatening.

She clenched her hands inside her muff, crumpling the letter addressed to her mother’s lover.

Chastity had sought out the moat with the express purpose of doing away with the damning evidence of her mother’s true heart. She’d been prepared to throw the missive into the murky water and watch the ink bleed, the paper dissolving and disappearing forever. When she returned to the manor, Chastity planned to tell Prudence of her actions and assumed it would all be behind them, never to be spoken of again.

But Chastity had been unable—or unwilling—to follow through with her plan and be rid of the new, and startling, connection to her mother.

Finding the letter had not only brought up questions about her mother but also who Chastity truly was. She’d idolized her mother—or at least what she’d been told about her—for all these years. To discover that she, and many close to Clara, had never truly known the woman was disheartening—and terrifying.

Not only had she come face-to-face with the fact of not knowing her mother, but the distance her father had put between himself and his children meant both her parents were little more than strangers to her.

Was she anything like her mother?

Did they both seek a future denied to them? Did they both long to be someone different…something different? It had been with startling clarity that Chastity realized that she and her mother had more in common than Chastity shared with anyone else in her family.

Even now it was clear Chastity might not know her real family.

Due to that fact, and because she’d quickly discovered that the moat was more of a stagnant mudhole than a body of water she could trust to do away with the letter, Chastity had held tight to the missive. Worse than holding onto it was for another to find the note floating on the surface of the moat then retrieve it and discern who’d written it.

Or, worse yet, know who the object of her mother’s affection was.

Cam. Was he a noble lord? A man of the lower class? Perhaps a family friend?

Images of the dearest Cam who’d captured Lady Clara Downshire’s affection sprang to mind, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar face. No, it was Lord Mansfield who popped into Chastity’s mind’s eye.

Why had she been so honest with Bastian about the letter?

He’d jokingly asked if it was a love note, and she’d responded honestly.

In her own coy, innocent way, Chastity had been flirtatious with the earl. Had she wanted him to think the letter had been written to her? For all Chastity knew, he thought she’d been waiting to meet a lover for an evening tryst by the water. She’d witnessed many coquettish debutantes during her Season, each mastering the reserved upturn of the lips, the lowered eyelids masking their stare, and the way they held their fans high to hide both—unsuccessfully, as was likely their intention.

Chastity had limited knowledge of such coquettish behavior.

Yet…

“Where have you been?” Prudence’s critical tone halted Chastity at the bottom of the terrace steps. “You missed our meal, and now you appear peckish.”

Chastity hadn’t realized that she’d already progressed all the way to the steps below where her sister and Edith stood. “I was enjoying a spot of quiet near the moat”—she lifted the blanket for the women to see, making certain to keep her mother’s note hidden in her muff—“and I lost track of time. Oxburgh is very serene.”

Edith gave Prudence a knowing look. It was the same one her brother’s wife shared with her friends, Luci and Ophelia, when they all knew something but refused to speak of it. Chastity had never shared a conspiratorial glance with anyone.