Page 10 of His Haunted Duchess
The lady turned her head, alert and listening. A moment later, he heard it, too—the determined hustle of maternal feet.
“Your Grace!”
He turned. His mother approached, bobbing through the hedges like a sloop in full sail, followed closely by the grey-haired woman he had seen before. Her curls bounced like an angry tit over its nest.
Behind them—and here, Frederic raised his eyebrows in astonishment—trailed an assemblage of ladies, speckled occasionally with the coats of gentlemen. The whispering dames and their daughters, whose voices had alerted him to their presence, created a marketplace of hubbub and information exchange.
Frederic was disgusted at the grossness of the spectacle, yet he also felt admiration at the endurance of the patrons in passing through the garden so quickly after consuming ample refreshment.
The first members of the group trickled into the space nearest the house, feigning fascination with whatever garden feature appeared nearest them. A few curtsied timidly to the dowager duchess. His mother’s eyes flashed from him to the lady behind him, and her mouth pinched into a thin line.
A hapless and oblivious dowager stumbled to the front, her dress snagging on the hedge.
“It’s quite cool out,” she breathed. Her cheeks were rosy with wine and good spirits. “Won’t we have some dancing?”
A lady near her elbow grabbed her like a fisherman after a catch and pulled her closer, whispering something in her ear. The dowager’s eyes widened.
“You don’t say!” She looked at him reproachfully. “And from such an excellent family!”
Mercifully, the dowager’s conversation partner heaved her around, complimenting something about the garden path behind them. The rest of the throng was coming now, like a stream engorged by a flood.
Frederic breathed once, long and slow, through his nose. Whatever was coming with the inexorable rustle of muslin and the babble of loosed lips almost certainly wasn’t something he’d find appealing.
The ladies stepped into the space behind the fountain, filling it in with their skirts like plums in a bowl.
“How scandalous!”
“Alone for all that time?—”
“Claimed he had been making love to her, I didn’t believe it, of course, but now?—”
“She said they’ve been paramours, you know, all this time?—”
The gentlemen spoke quietly behind long frowns. Frederic looked among them, challenging them with his eyes. None would meet his. Their lips, however, whispered along with their partners’.
Frederic set his jaw. He bowed, partly—it must be said honestly—in defiance. The ball, it seemed, had come to them.
CHAPTER 4
If Caroline could have, at that moment, burst into a puff of smoke and floated away to the safety of the moon and trees, she gladly would have. Aunt Olivia looked as if she was ready to burst herself—but more likely into flame than mere vapor. Her face trembled as she panted, hand on her hip, trying to catch her breath. The other ladies continued their whispers.
“Quite dreadful, the whole story.”
“It’s the scarred lady?—”
“Cursed, surely.”
Caroline felt herself turning colors like dye in a vat—pink with vexation, red with embarrassment, and dead pale with alarm. She had only wanted a little bit of peace—a bit of silence and an escape from the merciless stares. The garden had looked so cool,still, and inviting before she had been set upon by those three ladies. How hot and agitated she felt now!
One of the mumblers—a tall, narrow woman like the crack in a door—peered at her through a misty eyepiece then whispered loudly to her neighbor.
“They had an appointment, she told me, a secret rendezvous.”
The neighbor shook her head, wagging her double chin and her diamond necklace in the same movement.
“An understanding must surely exist between them.”
Caroline’s eyes widened. Aunt Olivia’s eyes popped out of her head like seeds on a ripe strawberry. The nostrils of the elegant lady next to her flared. With a shock, she realized the situation had escalated far beyond the events of her tragic past and the mark of her tremulous present.
