Page 24

“Ahh,” Lady Calbraith said before latching onto Mathias’s arm. She gave a coy shake of her head. “But that’s not where I know the name from.” She tapped her chin with her scarlet gloved fingertip, and angling her head in a coquettish manner, gazed up at Mathias. “It will come to me. Let me think.”

Mathias appeared more peeved and discomfited than Nicolette had ever seen him.

She finished her champagne and was about to excuse herself to use the lady’s retiring room and escape the viscountess’s company when Lady Calbraith gave a little artificial laugh. “I have it.”

His eyebrows forming a severe line, Mathias scowled at her silvery head, his displeasure tangible.

“You’re the chit Kilbourne jilted for the American heiress.” She turned her big-eyed, falsely innocent gaze to Nicolette. “The one they call the…Spiteful Spinster, yes?”

An outraged gasp escaped Megan, and she promptly wrapped an arm around Nicolette’s waist. “What a vicious bitch,” she whispered in Nicolette’s ear. “Don’t mind her.”

Nicolette liked Megan all the more for her direct speech.

Mama made a strangled sound, clutching a trembling hand to her throat while sending Nicolette an aghast look. “How dare you?” she seethed, the angriest she’d seen her mother since Kilbourne had callously cast Nicolette aside.

“Now, see here, my lady.” Crawley scowled, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That was poorly done of you.”

“What?” Lady Calbraith innocently batted her darkened eyelashes again, affecting a guileless countenance. “I only spoke the truth. She is called the Spiteful Spinster.”

No, she’d meant to sink her talons and draw blood.

Nicolette itched to slap the smugly satisfied look off her painted face.

“Better to be unwed than a whore,” Megan whispered in Nicolette’s ear.

Nicolette could’ve hugged her.

Mathias very slowly and very deliberately removed Lady Calbraith’s claws from his arm and stepped away from her. He skimmed his contemptuous gaze over her, dismissively, his face hardened into granite planes.

In a voice smooth as silk, but rapier-sharp, he said, “You go too far, Lady Calbraith. But then again, I’m not at all surprised. After all, you and Kilbourne are kindred spirits, are you not?”

Her cherry mouth went slack, and her pansy eyes creased at the corners as she flexed her eyelids in anger.

He faced the other women and made a half-bow. “Please do excuse me. I’ll return before the second act. I find I need a bit of fresh air.”

Without another word or a backward glance, Mathias strode from the box

“Mathias. Please, wait. You misunderstood.” Apparently, realizing she’d overplayed her hand, Lady Calbraith rushed after him, abandoning Lord Crawley altogether.

Mathias?

Oh, Lady Calbraith knew Westfall very well, indeed. What precisely, had he meant that she and Kilbourne were kindred spirits?

Nicolette dropped her focus to the floor as her stomach turned over sickeningly, and she swallowed against the weirdest urge to sob. She did not cry in public, and she assuredly did not weep over men anymore. Because they weren’t worth it, and she’d learned that only she was responsible for her happiness and contentment.

Relying on others to fulfill those needs led to disappointment and regrets. And eventually, resentment and bitterness. Which was why Nicolette wasn’t entirely undeserving of the unflattering moniker, Spiteful Spinster. She had become spiteful and vindictive, punishing other men for the Duke of Kilbourne’s actions.

Shame and remorse bubbled behind her ribs, expanding ever wider and wider.

“Do excuse me, ladies.” His face smattered with red blotches, Lord Crawley pulled at his neckcloth. He sketched a bow and, with great alacrity, scuttled from the box, reminding Nicolette very much of a giant beetle.

Acutely aware this whole debacle might’ve been witnessed, Nicolette perused the theater. Thank goodness for the intermission for though a few people remained in their boxes and milled about below, Mathias’s box wasn’t under the scrutiny it had been earlier.

That, however, didn’t mean the scene that had just played out hadn’t been witnessed or wouldn’t be discussed and speculated upon in London’s upper salons tomorrow.

Releasing a long breath through her nose, she pressed a surprisingly cold and unsteady hand to her forehead. And despite her determination otherwise, those old feelings of inadequacy and humiliation assailed her, twisting through her veins.

That…that…woman. Oh, Lady Calbraith was simply too odious for words.