Page 33 of Courting Scandal With The Duke
Her aunt joined them. Her smile was tight and anxious.
Charles, likely sensing she wanted to speak to Barbara privately, muttered a few platitudes about seeing an old friend and left.
Barbara couldn’t help admiring his quick understanding, a sort of second sense of when to leave and when to stay. She had noticed before how attuned he was to the needs of others. In particular, her needs after she had married Helmut.
Perhaps she was wrong not to trust him with her worries.
Aunt Lenore watched him join a group of gentlemen. ‘What a nice young man the Count is.’
‘Yes, he is.’
Aunt Lenore glanced at the backs turned in their direction. ‘I fear—’ she glanced down at Barbara’s toes ‘—we have made a miscalculation regarding what is proper.’
‘We have?’ Barbara said, putting a good deal of surprise into her voice. ‘You did not think so when I showed you this gown.’
Her aunt plucked at her skirts in little nervous movements. ‘Not your gown. Your footwear.’ She moaned softly.
‘Sandals? I admit it is a little early in the year, but surely—’
‘Feet,’ Aunt Lenore gasped. ‘Toes to be exact.’
‘But one cannot wear sandals with stockings. It looks terrible.’ Her poor aunt looked so miserable she could not keep up the pretence of confusion any longer. ‘Oh! You mean the varnish.’ She glanced around her. ‘Is that why everyone is giving me the cold shoulder? It wasde rigueurin Paris, I assure you.’
‘I wish you had mentioned it before we left,’ her aunt said. ‘Paris is not London.’
‘Clearly.’ And Barbara did not mean it as a compliment. ‘So do we retreat in good order, or hold our ground?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t use such language. You are not a soldier.’
‘My husband was a soldier.’
‘But—oh, I do not know what to say. Your papa islike to murder me.’
‘Of course he won’t.’ She would make sure Papa understood it was none of her aunt’s fault.
Barbara’s gaze fell upon the dance floor, on Derbridge.
The Duke and his partner, a small blonde-haired miss, were traversing the centre of their set hand in hand. The Duke smiled down at his partner with a sort of condescension that caused Barbara to grit her teeth. The child gazed back at him in wide-eyed awe. Was that what he wanted?
That sort of naive, unthinking adoration? How…disappointing.
An odd sinking sensation surprised her.
She turned away. Who the Duke danced with was of no concern to her. None at all.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Aunt Lenore, fanning herself wildly. ‘Derbridge seems very taken with the Simon girl.’
Like a wolf would be taken with a rabbit. ‘Why does that warrant an “oh, dear,” Aunt?’
Aunt Lenore pulled at a stray curl and twitched her fichu. ‘I thought perhaps after Almack’s, when he was so generous as to ignore your faux pas… Well, it is of no consequence. Not now.’
It was what Barbara had wanted, but somehow, she felt strangely saddened. She moved closer to her aunt. How odd that she had no acquaintances or friends among the company. In Austria and Paris, she had known nearly everyone at any event she attended.
The country dance ended, and a few moments later the orchestra struck up a waltz.
She looked around for Charles, but he was nowhere to be seen. It seemed he had also decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
How could she blame him? She had no wish to see him ostracised.
