Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“If I may,” Lady Elsmere said with a delighted smile, “I have the joy of sharing a happy announcement.”
The lady had given her wineglass a gentle tap, drawing the attention of the garden party guests scattered among the rose-lined paths and shaded alcoves.
All heads turned as Lord Seymour stepped forward, his arm offered to the blushing Miss Cressida Fallowmere, who approached with quiet poise.
“They are officially engaged,” Lady Elsmere declared.
Applause followed, a ripple of sound rolling across the lawn.
Miss Cressida Fallowmere gave a small, self-conscious smile, fingers lightly brushing the new ring on her gloved hand. Lord Seymour, tall and beaming, looked at her as if no one else existed. Then he took her hand and kissed it reverently.
Ladies clapped behind their fans. A few murmurs of shock slipped through the crowd like wind through grass.
Elizabeth stood only a few feet away, struck silent. The sound of clapping felt distant. She could barely tear her gaze from the couple beneath the arch.
Miss Cressida Fallowmere—quiet, gentle, overlooked Cressida—had been proposed to by one of the handsomest young lords of the Season. It was like watching a fairytale unfold in real time, and Elizabeth didn’t know whether she wanted to weep or smile.
Then, sharp fingernails dug into her elbow.
She didn’t need to look to know who it was.
Lady Grisham’s breath was hot and bitter near her ear. “Do you see?” she hissed. “Do you understand what just happened?”
Elizabeth turned, but the look in her stepmother’s eyes made her flinch.
“Even plain Miss Fallowmere,” Lady Grisham went on, her voice low and slicing, “managed to ensnare a young, handsome lord. What about you?”
She paused, as if weighing her next words, before continuing in a voice sharpened by disdain, “You’ve been idling about, not making the slightest effort.
Your father paraded you around last Season, and now I’m the one bearing the burden of your failure, and you’re not even my blood.
All you do is bring shame to me and your sisters. ”
Elizabeth’s cheeks flamed, but she said nothing.
Wilhelmina opened her mouth, undoubtedly to protest, but Lady Grisham was quick to silence her with blazing eyes.
“Do not dare defend her,” she warned. “She had too many squandered opportunities. Now, go over there, Elizabeth. Socialize and smile. Be charming. And try to make it less awkward.”
Lady Grisham gave Elizabeth a little shove toward where she and Wilhelmina were socializing earlier. A group of young gentlemen were huddled together, smirking at each other as they idly watched the newly engaged couple smiling at the crowd.
Elizabeth knew that she should be thankful she was not being shoved at some ancient lord. Instead, she was being merely asked to engage in conversation with men about her age. However, she could find no joy in doing so.
Still, she stumbled forward, a roaring in her ears. She heard Wilhelmina protest in her defense only to be silenced again.
“She’s done nothing wrong,” Wilhelmina said sharply, her voice low but fierce.
A pause. Then came Lady Grisham’s voice, brittle and scathing. “Lower your tone.”
“I won’t,” Wilhelmina said, defiant. “You’re embarrassing her.”
“She embarrasses herself,” Lady Grisham hissed. “Always has. A pretty face wasted on nerves and silence. If she can’t even hold a conversation—”
“She can,” Wilhelmina snapped.
Another pause. Then, in a quieter, more dangerous tone: “You forget yourself, child of mine.”
Left to her own devices, Elizabeth squared her shoulders and made herself approach the group. A few men looked up to her, expressing some mild interest. She straightened herself further, as she got closer.
“D-do forgive the interruption. Uh, good d-day to you all, gentlemen,” she managed.
A few heads turned. One man blinked at her, confused. “Do you stammer, Lady Elizabeth?”
His companion gave a sharp laugh, loud enough to make her flinch. “God help the poor man who tries to get a full sentence out of her.”
Elizabeth braved the scattered chuckles and strode forward, her sights locked on the man who had mocked her speech.
If she could just reach him—stand before them and prove she wasn’t afraid—they might see her differently.
But her focus was so narrow, she didn’t see the uneven stone hidden in the grass.
Her slipper caught.
She stumbled forward with a sharp gasp, her fan slipping from her fingers and landing on the path.
Laughter erupted, louder now.
One man stifled it behind a gloved hand, but the smile he wore was worse than any cackle—smug and seared with mockery. She’d see his face again in her sleep, she was sure of it.
“Nervous, are you not, my lady?” he drawled, voice thick with scorn.
“I’d recommend more rehearsals,” another offered, red-faced from amusement. “Has your governess failed you entirely?”
Their words stung like nettles across her skin. And yet somehow, Elizabeth managed to smile. Barely. It was a tight, trembling sort of smile.
She bent to retrieve her fan with careful grace, willing herself to carry on bravely.
Then—shove.
Someone’s hand struck her back, hard enough to send her forward again.
She landed in a patch of slick earth hidden beneath the neat green lawn. Her hands sank into the mud, her gloves ruined. Worse, when she pushed herself up, her skirt came with her, streaked with brown and grass-stained like a servant’s apron.
More laughter.
Gasps.
And then, a whisper, loud enough to carry: “Poor Lady Elizabeth.”
She looked up. A young lady stood a few feet away, half hidden behind a group of simpering debutantes, her expression bright with delight. Elizabeth met her eyes and knew.
She had done it. She had shoved her.
Elizabeth rose, slowly and without help, though her knees trembled. Her pale blue silk clung in muddy folds around her ankles, and she could feel every eye trained on her like darts.
She was humiliated. That much was true.
But worse still was the fear of what Lady Grisham would say.
Her heart pounded as the snickers grew louder, hissing like snakes. All she wanted was to disappear, to tear through the garden hedges and not stop running until the city vanished behind her.
But she stood instead. Still trembling. Still quiet.
Still there.
Lady Grisham found her with swift, predatory precision. Her eyes swept over Elizabeth’s mud-streaked gown, the torn lace, the ruined gloves. The disgust in her expression was immediate—and unrestrained.
“Clumsy little fool,” she hissed, her voice so low Elizabeth could barely hear her, but still venomous.
“You are an embarrassment, Elizabeth. A walking calamity. Do you know what you’ve done?
You’ve made a spectacle of yourself. Again.
You’ve wasted a perfectly good dress, and for what?
Because you couldn’t even manage to stand? ”
Elizabeth looked down at the mud on her skirt, shame creeping like frost through her limbs.
“I tried,” she whispered, though it barely left her lips.
“Move, now.” Lady Grisham pulled her close, donning a false, caring smile, playing the role of the doting stepmother, but her grip on Elizabeth’s arm was so tight that Elizabeth felt like she’d squeeze through her skin and find bone.
“Who shoved her?” Wilhelmina stomped into the scene as Elizabeth straightened herself and Lady Grisham released her.
Her half-sister’s jaw was tight, her hands balled at her sides.
“I saw you,” Wilhelmina turned her glare toward a flushed debutante, who now shrank behind a parasol. “How very brave, to push a woman who couldn’t see you coming.”
Several people turned to look. Murmurs rose. A young gentleman coughed into his gloved hand, uncertain whether to intervene.
“That’s enough,” Lady Grisham said quickly, grabbing Wilhelmina’s wrist in a vice-like grip. Her smile returned, brittle and bright. “We will not cause a scene at our host’s home.”
“I think the scene’s already been caused,” Wilhelmina shot back.
“Mina, you don’t need to—” Elizabeth began to say, but the debutante who had shoved her shrank back into her group, pink with embarrassment.
Some nearby ladies turned away awkwardly, but Wilhelmina’s voice rose again before Elizabeth could finish.
“I saw you, Miss Hartley. Don’t hide behind your friends,” Wilhelmina warned, her eyes so fierce it made Elizabeth’s heart sing for her half-sister.
Yet people were starting to stare. And that was Lady Grisham’s nightmare.
“That is quite enough, dear daughter,” Lady Grisham intoned softly, pulling Wilhelmina by her side, then whispering in the young woman’s ear. “You will not disgrace me by shrieking like a fishwife in the middle of a garden party.”
“Someone already has,” Wilhelmina muttered darkly.
“Mina, it is quite all right,” Elizabeth croaked. But Wilhelmina’s frown told her that her sister did not fall for her lie.
“Come,” Lady Grisham snapped, dragging her away. “You may act like a servant if you wish, but I’ll not have you look like one.”
Elizabeth couldn’t take it anymore.
She took two steps away from Lady Grisham, and then…
She fled.
She fled, looking for a room to clean her dress. She knew it would be futile, but what could go even more wrong?
She entered a side door, heart pounding from the humiliation and from fear that she might be discovered by someone else.
Finally, when alone, she dabbed at the mud with her lace handkerchief. As expected, the stains merely spread. She was at her wits’ end, and her tears felt hot and about to escape.
She knew Lady Grisham would remain furious.
That was a given. But what about Wilhelmina?
Would she be ruined? Surely, after this display, gentlemen would steer clear of her.
Yes, her outspoken younger sister was not a simpering debutante by any means, but Elizabeth had no right destroying her debut like this—
Creak.
Elizabeth’s ears perked up at the sound.
“Are ye all right, lass?”
That voice.