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“He’d better treasure it.”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll take it away and send it to you. It’s just as well the piece is finished, given the wedding tomorrow.”

“I have to tell you something,” Clara said, her face suddenly pinched with worry.

“Is your family all right?”

Clara’s words tumbled out. “It’s Kelbourne, Torie. He took Gianna Peccati to Vauxhall last night. She was wearing a ravishing diamond necklace, and people say it was a gift to convince her to forgive his marriage.”

At first Torie couldn’t understand; Clara’s words had jumbled in her brain as if they were written down on paper. Then she turned away sharply, realizing her hands were shaking as she took off her pinafore and hung it on the wall.

“Did you know he still had a mistress?” Clara asked. “Because, of course, many women don’t care about such matters.”

Torie looked blindly out the window rather than at her friend’s face. “I didn’t.”

She hadn’t believed his dictum regarding his mistress pertained to her, to their marriage. Not given the way they were together. The things he said to her. Their kisses.

She had assumed . . . assumed! What an idiot she was. His life was continuing in its usual path, marriage or no. Obviously, that life included a mistress, just as Odysseus’s afterlife included a nymph—never mind the fact that Penelope had waited all those years for his return.

“Kelbourne wouldn’t have paraded that woman in front of all society if he were marrying Leonora!” Clara said, spitting with rage like a wet cat. “He wouldn’t have dared. He disrespected you, Torie. It wasn’t a masquerade night, and no one was wearing masks. He sat there beside her in the open, eating ham and drinking pink champagne.”

“Apparently her tastes haven’t changed,” Torie said, grimacing. She walked over to the sideboard and began to rub speckled paint from her fingertips with an oily rag. She felt sick with anger—at him and at herself. Leonora had clarified the question of faithfulness when she planned to marry him, so why hadn’t she?

She knew the answer. It was her own bravado. She had spent her time worrying about whether she would be enough for him—smart enough, interesting enough—but she assumed that she would be enough in bed, because she walked away from their kisses tingling all over, longing for their wedding night.

Now that emotion sickened her. Perhaps he had been kissing her and then taking his carriage over to Gianna’s house and—

Torie wrenched her mind away. She couldn’t bear to imagine him in bed with another woman. It wasn’t just that the Italian woman was reputedly so beautiful. Gianna was brilliant; she spoke three languages and could sing in several more. She was everything Torie wasn’t, except Torie was a lady. A possible viscountess.

Obviously, Dominic would have married Gianna, if his mistress had a claim to gentle blood.

“I’m so sorry,” Clara said miserably. “I hated to tell you, because I know you genuinely like Kelbourne. But I thought . . . it’s not too late to rethink this marriage, Torie.” She paused. “There’s a rumor going around that your father owes him ten thousand pounds, and you are being forced to marry him rather than the Duke of Queensberry as a result.”

Torie sank onto the sofa and put her face in her hands.

“It isn’t true, is it?” Clara asked. She plopped down beside her and started rubbing Torie’s back. And then, when Torie didn’t answer, she said dismally, “It is true. No wonder Leanora ran away! It’s so unfair, Torie. Why should you pay Sir William’s debts? It’s grotesque, like the old stories of wives sold at Bartholomew Fair to the highest bidders!”

Torie choked back tears until she trusted herself to lift her face. “That’s not true about my father’s debts.”

Clara pulled her into a hug. “Gentlemen aren’t supposed to behave like this, especially not when they’re about to be married. My father probably accompanies his mistress to Vauxhall, but only on a masquerade night when he couldn’t be recognized. Could you persuade Kelbourne to behave with more decorum after the wedding?”

“I doubt it,” Torie said, sitting upright again. “Remember, he told my sister that he would never be unfaithful with a lady, but that a mistress doesn’t count as adultery. Maybe he takes her to Vauxhall every week.”

“Poppycock!” Clara growled, her face as bulldoggish as was possible for someone often compared to a cherub. “What if you and I went to the gardens one evening, and there he was? Eating ham with her? Could there be a more humiliating moment in a woman’s life?”

Torie sighed. “Many men have mistresses. The practice is widespread, Clara. You know it.”

Sickeningly, this shame felt worse than being called addled. She was used to that. Starting in her second Season, she had stopped hiding her illiteracy, admitting her failures with a chuckle.

But this?

True, gentlemen had mistresses, but those men didn’t flaunt their coquettes before their wives—or almost-wives. How was she supposed to react? Was she supposed to chuckle when her husband strolled by, arm in arm with a diamond-clad woman?

He was the one who suggested they befuddle the ton by kissing in public, but how could she claim to be marrying him for any reason other than coercion when he paraded his mistress before Torie’s acquaintances two days before their wedding?

“Please rethink your betrothal. I have a terrible feeling about your marriage.” Clara clasped her hands together. “I know you didn’t read Castle Rackrent, but there’s a cruel husband named Sir Kit Rackrent who reminds me of Viscount Kelbourne.”

“Dominic is not cruel. He can be very kind.”