Page 5

Lady Wharton drew in an unsteady breath. “At least the Tulip family will live in comfort from now on.”

Daisy nodded. Her mother had forced her unrepentant brother to give the Tulips a large sum of money before he died. “Every family has a black sheep, Mother, and my uncle is ours. After a few months, no one will chatter about the murder, any more than they talk of Lord Byron’s affaire with his half-sister.”

Her mother gasped, and her mouth fell open.

Oops.

Daisy had a tendency to speak—and act—before thinking.

“Daisy!” Lady Wharton dropped her handkerchief to the floor and clutched her bosom like an actress at Drury Lane. “I cannot believe my ears! That my own daughter should allow such odious words to cross her lips! I am shocked … scandalized … disgusted!”

“I apologize,” Daisy said, arranging her features to look as penitent as she could. It wasn’t one of her skills; she should probably practice that expression before the mirror. She could employ it when people asked about her uncle.

“How do you even know of that blackguard, let alone his brazen-faced sister? Who would tell an innocent young lady about such a disgusting a personage as Lord Byron?”

Daisy sighed. “Everyone knows. Miss Augusta Leigh bore him a daughter, after all.”

“But you are a young, untouched, innocent—”

“My point is that scandals come and go,” Daisy said, before her mother could start thinking too hard about her supposed innocence.

She wasn’t dissolute, though she knew more about the world than Lady Wharton would imagine. Most young ladies hadn’t read a useful book called City of Eros, for example.

Daisy had read it twice.

“If you are tarred with the brush of hedony,” her mother gasped, getting up a new head of steam, “if society decides that you are a debauched coquette, that will be the end of this family. The end! I shall live out my final days in sackcloth in a darkened room! Brown sackcloth!”

“I don’t think ‘hedony’ is a word,” Daisy observed.

“Stop smirking and listen to me! This family’s reputation will recover far faster from my brother’s misconduct than it would from a scandal of yours along the lines of Lord Byron’s.”

“That’s so unfair. Murder is far more indicative of a corrupt soul than wanton behavior.”

“Not in the civilized world,” Lady Wharton declared. “If a woman is not chaste, she is nothing. If the subject ever rises again, you must pretend that you have no idea how babies are made.” She narrowed her eyes. “Which I gather you do. Somehow. I have certainly never mentioned the subject.”

“It’s absurd that women have to pretend to be ignorant of basic facts about their own physiology,” Daisy said, beginning to feel heated. “What’s more, everyone knows that gentlemen have fancies outside marriage. Of course, it would have been far better of Byron to seduce someone other than his half-sister—”

“Daisy!”

“It was terrible, most improper,” Daisy added hastily. “He is a dissolute rake—”

“Never let his name pass your lips again!” her mother cried wildly.

“But a good poet,” Daisy finished.

“The verse of an incestuous devil!” Lady Wharton gasped. “Surely you have not read that execrable nonsense.”

Daisy wouldn’t say that she had a penchant for fibbing, but quite often one had to find one’s way around the truth. For example, Captain Sir Tyron wouldn’t allow his daughter to read anything but the most “deserving” texts, so Daisy had read many books aloud when her cousin Livie happened to be in the room.

City of Eros, for example.

And Byron’s Fugitive Pieces, which had been remarkably instructive, as when Byron vowed to enter his lady’s chamber and “love for hours together.”

Obviously, she and Livie had needed to understand what “love” meant when used as a verb in the context of a bedroom. Their maid, Ada, had been most enlightening.

“I don’t believe most of Byron’s works are in print,” Daisy said now, dodging the question.

“You must never read them,” her mother demanded, her eyes bulging slightly. “This family stands on the very edge, the precipice of ruin, and your behavior must be impeccable. Tomorrow, you will look like a subdued angel, your eyes cast to the floor, modesty and remorse on full display.”