Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“And then, would you believe it, he had the gall to—George, are you even listening to me?”
The gentleman walking alongside her jerked his head up, looking around wildly as though he had somehow been tricked into something. His eyes widened as he took in the scene around them.
“How—how did we get here?”
Betsy sighed. She should have known better than to ask a gentleman his advice on love.
Not that she had called it love, of course, when she had tried to describe the situation to her friend.
No, she had sense to describe it a little vaguer than that…
and as the situation a friend of hers had found her in, naturally.
Even with George, she was not about to completely ruin herself.
“By here, do you mean Hyde Park?” Betsy said stiffly, gesturing to the grassy lawn around them where several people were similarly walking. “Or do you mean, here, a friendship in which one person studiously ignores the other?”
Lord George Northmere at least had the good grace to look bashful. “I was trying to listen.”
“Well you weren’t doing a very good job of it,” she pointed out.
Anger, however, could not have been further from her heart.
How could it be, when it was so broken? When a gentleman—no, she would not pay him the compliment, however silent, of calling him a gentleman—when that man had touched her like that, kissed her like that, told her just how wonderful she was, how beautiful…
When he then clearly had no plan to make good on any of his…well, not promises.
Betsy bit her lip. That was the trouble, wasn’t it? Rupert had made her no promises, had intended nothing clearly ad had therefore said nothing of the sort.
Words of love, yes, but those were easy.
Nothing on the subject of matrimony had been uttered by him.
“Betsy, I have to ask you something…”
Betsy tightened her jaw. “What is the last thing you remember me telling you?”
There was a strange, rather distant look in George’s eye that she had not noticed at the beginning of their walk.
She had been too wrapt up in her frustrations with Rupert, she supposed, but now she came to look at him, a slight breeze ruffling his hair under the tall top hat, she had to admit that he looked rather…
Well. Distracted. Worried. Mind entirely on other things.
The cheek of it! She was bearing her soul here, and—
Well. Betsy swallowed. not her soul.
“Your friend was locked in a library,” said George with a self-conscious smile. “With a gentleman.”
Betsy snorted. “Some gentleman!”
“You really have taken this to heart, you know,” her friend pointed out as they turned a corner and passed some magnificent oaks. “Your friend must have been sorely wounded by him.”
A shiver of pain rushed through Betsy’s chest. Sorely wounded. Was that how she could describe the agony in her chest, the sense that nothing would ever be the same again?
How could she walk through the world not knowing, not acknowledging what they shared together?
“He was a blaggard.”
“He can’t have been all bad.”
Betsy glared at her friend, and George took a noticeable step backwards.
“I just meant—”
“You would not do such a thing,” she said coldly, shivering slightly at the very thought of how Rupert had treated her. “You would not bed a woman and then immediately decide to abandon her.”
For an inexplicable reason, George’s face coloured. No, it was more than that; his entire face blossomed with heat, his nose and cheeks absolutely scarlet, and he stammered some sort of nonsense that Betsy could not decipher.
“I-I mean to s-say—never been ever—hardly a fair thing to—really!”
Betsy sighed. Perhaps that had been a little too harsh. She had known George for years after all; there was no sign from him, in all the time she had known him, that he would even think of abandoning a woman.
Or bedding her, now she came to think about it. he was rather priggish in that way, she had always thought that.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Betsy would have liked to have spoken, but it appeared her companion was still attempting to get his breath back from the mere suggestion she had made, and she had no wish to completely upset him.
She knew better than most how awful it was to be so upset…
“If your friend is determined to have reparations, however,” said George delicately said in an undertone as a gaggle of gentlemen passed them, “surely the best thing to do would be to approach him.”
Betsy swallowed. approach him. Approach a Crown Prince of Austria.
Of course, she had left out that particular detail. It would not do for George to hear that; how many Crown Princes of Austria were there?
No, then he would know precisely who the gentleman—the cad—in her tail was, and then he may do something reckless. She could not imagine George rushing at someone in a duel, but there was no knowing with some people.
“I do not think I—my friend, that is,” Betsy added hastily, cursing her lack of attention to the conversation. She must keep her identity secret! “I do not believe my friend is able to approach him. He is…distant.”
A frown appeared on her friend’s face. “Abroad, you mean?”
Before long, Betsy thought miserably, he would be.
After all, Rupert was visiting London, wasn’t he? Going to Brighton to see Prinny, yes, but that visit would not be of long duration. Everyone knew how easily Prinny became bored, and there was no knowing how swiftly Rupert himself would find the British royal dull.
So before long, before she would be able to do anything about it, the rake would be gone. Out of London, out of England, back to Austria.
She would never see him again.
“There must be a way to reach him,” George was saying eagerly, and Betsy wondered why on earth he was so eager to do something about the wretched thing. “A letter perhaps could reach him, even if you cannot. You could write on behalf of your friend, and—”
“No,” she said firmly. “No letters.”
What would she write? How could she put into words just how swiftly she had been betrayed, how outraged she was with him?
It was not as though he could do anything now to rectify the mistake he had made. No, it was completely at an end, whatever it was between them. she would not call it love…
Betsy’s heart skipped a beat. It could have been love, she supposed. It was possible that given time, given the chance to spend more time together…
But there was no possibility now.
“Well if your friend will not see him, nor write to him, I am not entirely sure what is to be done,” said George with a sigh.
Betsy smiled ruefully. “I know. ‘Tis an absolute disaster.”
“But your friend will not have…well. Ruined herself.” George’s ears went a little pink, as she had known they would. “She would not have been so foolhardy as to let a rake as you have described take her innocence. She can at least console herself there.”
She opened her mouth to reply, could not think of a single thing to say, then closed it again.
Foolhardy. Yes, that was a good description of her behaviour last night. And the worst of it was, the news had not got out. Lady Jarrold’s servants must be very discreet, as there was nothing in the papers, no whispers that she had heard at all.
She had not needed to give herself up to the temptation of Rupert’s kisses after all.
Stomach twisting most painfully, Betsy blinked back tears. She was not going to allow herself to cry, not over a man like that. She was going to force back these tears, and—
“Betsy!” George had halted in his tracks, staring at her as though she had grown another head.
Betsy immediately raised her hands to her hair, assuming that her bonnet had become dislodged. “What—what is it?”
“You…you’re crying,” he said in wonder.
She half laughed, half hiccupped, a tear falling down her cheek. Well, there was nothing for it now. “I am. I am indeed.”
How could this have happened to her? After being so careful about who she spoke to, who she spent time with…now she had managed to avoid a scandal with a sovereign, yes, but at the cost of her heart.
George reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. “Betsy. I am not a fool, you know.”
Betsy blinked through her tears at him. “Y-You’re not?”
He shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. “It was you, wasn’t it. not the friend.”
She had no words, could only nod as her breath was overtaken by repressing sobs.
“It was you that found yourself stuck in a library wasn’t it? Lady Jarrold’s library, last night.”
Betsy tried to smile. “I have fallen in love with an idiot.”
At the word idiot, George’s eyes widened. “I…well. Goodness. I hope he has a title!”
The joke was well-intentioned, and Betsy could not laugh at his expression when she said with just a hint of wry despair, “Would you consider Crown Prince impressive enough?”
Rupert shifted slightly on the uncomfortable seat.
He should have brought a cushion. It was what he had always done when a child, when he knew even at that young age that there would be far more waiting than actually speaking when it came to seeing his parents.
He had got into the habit of it when younger; a cushions hidden somewhere in almost every corridor of the palace.
That way, whenever he was told by an uncomfortable looking footman that his parents were not quite finished yet—as was always the case, there was always more to do, it seemed, than anyone anticipated—he could simply retrieve his cushion, and sit, and wait.
Rupert cleared his throat and the noise echoed down the corridor. The long corridor.
It wasn’t one he recognised. That was to be expected, here in London. The trouble was, he had not thought to bring a cushion, and this damned wooden chair he had been given by a footman in a completely different livery to the one he recognised had not provided one.
His buttocks were going to be sore after this.
A door opened. Rupert stood up hastily, pulling down his frock coat and pushing back his hair, but the figures he had expected did not appear.