Page 35 of Heiress Gone Wild

“Quite right, ma’am,” she said, trying not to clench her jaw. “I do beg your pardon.”

Lady Stansbury inclined her head and returned her attention to the basket in her lap. “Heavens, I bought all those lovely new embroidery threads when I was in New York. What has Bates done with them?”

“Are you certain they aren’t there, Abigail?” asked the countess’s friend, Mrs. Anstruthur, pausing in her needlepoint to peer shortsightedly into her friend’s sewing basket. “Give it a good stir and look again.”

“Ooh, there’s Lady Mary Pomeroy walking with her father,” murmured Mrs. Fulton-Smythe, her dentures clacking along with her knitting needles. “They must be on their way home at last.”

“Twenty-three,” said Mrs. Anstruthur with a meaningful cough. “And still not married. Poor thing.”

“One could hardly expect otherwise,” Lady Stansbury put in. “After the scandal.”

Here we go again, Marjorie thought and returned her attention determinedly to her task, thanking heaven they were to dock at Southampton tomorrow.One more day, she reminded as she pulled blue embroidery floss through the tea cloth with her needle.Just twenty-four more hours, and I’ll never have to sew another thing or listen to these scandalmongers.

“Sir Henry was beside himself,” said Lady Osgoode. “He took her to stay with her grandparents in New York right after, but something like that can’t be hushed up just by leaving town.”

Not when gossiping cats insist on talking about it all the time, thought Marjorie.

“Still,” said Lady Anstruthur, “it’s been three years. You’d think they’d have found someone to marry her by now. Even an American would have been better than no one.”

Exercising considerable willpower, Marjorie pressed her tongue hard against her teeth and kept stitching.

“Even Americans have some standards, I suppose,” Mrs. Fulton-Smythe put in. “A clerk in her father’s law offices—what was the girl thinking? Sir Henry put a stop to it, naturally, but I’m afraid it was too late by then. Now, she’s damaged goods.”

Goaded beyond bearing, Marjorie paused and looked up. “But if they wanted to marry, and her father stopped it, isn’t he the one to blame for the resulting scandal?”

Five faces turned in her direction, and there was a long silence as five pairs of eyes stared at her. Clearly, this particular point of view was a new one to the ladies present.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, dear,” Lady Stansbury said and patted her arm. “And one can’t blame Sir Henry. After all, the young man was aclerk.”

As if that explained everything, she resumed rummaging in her basket while Marjorie’s bourgeois American mind tried to make sense of the idea that the ruination of all a young woman’s marriage prospects was less undesirable than marriage to a clerk.

“I cannot understand what Bates has done with those threads.” Lady Stansbury gave a sigh as if sorely put upon. “And I can’t even ask her, for she’s gone to speak with the chef about his dinner preparations. Though why she must do thatagain, I cannot understand. Six times she’s tried to explain how to make a proper boiled pudding, and the chef still can’t seem to manage it.”

There was a chorus of sympathy from all the other ladies of the sewing circle, save one. It was Marjorie’s opinion that an experiencedchef de cuisinemight be a teeny bit resentful of being told how to cook, particularly by a lady’s maid, but it wouldn’t do to say so. No, she needed to be scrupulous in her conduct and trust the judgement of those who knew more about British society than she did.

As she repeated Jonathan’s words from five days ago, Marjorie could only hope his sisters had a less rigid view of the world than Lady Stansbury and her friends. If not, her life in British society was going to be far less exciting than she’d imagined.

“No, they are simply not here,” Lady Stansbury declared at last. “She must have put them in my other sewing basket.”

Appreciating the chance to get away, Marjorie was on her feet in an instant. “Shall I go and fetch them?”

Lady Stansbury nodded agreement, and Marjorie tossed down her embroidery hoop and was off like a shot.

“Don’t run, dear,” the countess called after her as she raced along the promenade deck. “And bring my other shawl. The mohair one, not the silk. It’s in the—”

The location of the shawl was lost in the wind as Marjorie vanished around the stern of the ship, making her reprieve all the better. A search for the shawl would mean several extra minutes of freedom.

When she entered the suite, she found the other sewing basket almost at once, reposing on the floor of the sitting room beside Lady Stansbury’s chair. The mohair shawl, however, proved elusive. She looked through every trunk, suitcase, and drawer she could find, to no avail. Deciding at last that she’d milked her precious freedom as long as possible, she picked up the basket and started out of the suite, but she’d barely opened the door into the corridor before realizing she hadn’t looked in the trunk under the countess’s bed, and as she stepped over the threshold, she glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she ought to go back.

She had no time to decide, however. Still moving forward, still looking behind her, she ran straight into someone passing along the corridor.

“Oh!” she cried as the force of the impact sent her stumbling backward through the doorway. A strong pair of hands gripped her wrists to keep her from falling as the door of the suite banged against the wall behind her and the basket dropped from her fingers, spilling its contents at her feet.

“I beg your pardon,” the man cried, his hands still clasping her wrists. “How clumsy of me.”

She looked up into the handsome face of the Count de la Rosa. “Why, hullo!” she said in agreeable surprise.

“Miss McGann,” he greeted as he let go of her and bowed. “What a pleasure it is to see you again. You have come to no harm because of our collision?”

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