Page 13 of His Haunted Duchess
“When is gossip ever fully true?” She shot what would have been a withering glance, had it contained anything but tired ire, in the direction of the vestiges of the ball crowd. Winifred paled. She looked at Caroline with growing alarm, put out her hand to touch her, and withdrew it.
“I think we’ve had enough socializing for one night, Winifred,” Aunt Olivia continued. Her voice drooped like a weary horse. “I, for one, would like to depart.”
Caroline sniffed, choking back more tears. Her skin prickled and shivered, more with horror than with cold. Winifred took her hand, lacing it through her arm.
“Shall we make our goodbyes, then? I—” She cleared her throat. “I for one don’t mind an early bedtime. It’ll make breakfast all the more pleasant.”
Her enthusiasm fell between them like an apple from a cart. Caroline leaned on her, grateful, at least, for some support. Her eyes swam, blurring hedge, headdresses, and stars.
What a terrible, horrible… Her eyes swirled like a leaf caught in a whirlpool. She covered them with her hand.
Wounded, her heart moaned. Her conscience cringed with chagrin. And her body, woefully overwhelmed by their cries, crumpled and broke. She tried to take a step forward but stumbled against Winifred, who steadied her. Her lady’s maid looked pale and wan, as if the spark of her energy had drained into the cold, indifferent earth.
Aunt Olivia looked back at the house like an orphan through a Christmas window.
“It won’t?—”
She closed her eyes and turned away.
“It won’t do to go back to the main house,” she said. “Not when we—we are so weary.”
Caroline lowered her head. Winifred, for once, made no comment and led Caroline, silently and sadly, back to the carriage.
CHAPTER 5
“The two of them alone, you see?—”
“Quite shocking?—”
Frederic spent only another hour or so at the ball, more to prove a point to himself than anyone else. There had been no scandal, and he wouldn’t retreat from it like a cur from the scene of a crime.
It would have been helpful, perhaps, if the rest of the patrons had shared his opinion.
Everywhere he went, furtive glances and whispered asides followed. Even Felicity, effervescent normally in her conversation, looked as if she had swallowed a spoonful of vinegar. No one dared, of course, to speak of it to him directly or even within his earshot, but their persistent rustle disturbed him like termites in a post.
He hadn’t done anything improper. Rather, to the contrary, he had done something admirable and heroic, if he was to be any judge of the situation, in rescuing the lady from the savagery of small-mannered misery. But still the insinuations followed him like burs on a hound.
Lord Russell plowed nobly through a tete-a-tete about foreign investments, complementing also recent improvements to Highcastle Manor. Frederic attended him with increasing irritation as he ignored—with considerable effort—the sway of tittering ostrich feathers and the hum of lowered voices.
At last, his mother declared herself satisfied with the evening’s enjoyment, which he highly doubted but duly accepted as an invitation to depart. Only once safe in her own drawing room did his mother venture to speak again.
“Have you considered, Frederic, your next course of action?” She tossed her gloves on the table as if they had burned her.
Frederic raised his eyebrows.
“I suppose I shall give Carlyle directions as to breakfast and then retire for the evening.”
The Dowager Duchess of Blackmore gave him a look he hadn’t seen since his father’s death. It unsettled him far worse than any of the night’s gossip. It was the withering, disappointed face all too familiar when his father returned with excuses that his mother, broken-hearted, had continually accepted. She sighed and rubbed her temple.
“I speak, of course, about the scandal at the ball tonight.”
Frederic snorted. His mother plowed mercilessly on like a hammer to a nail.
“The lady’s reputation—or whatever reputation she had left—will be affected but not beyond repair.”
Frederic leaned back in his chair.
“You are referring, then, to the lady we met in the garden? Lady Caroline?”
