Chapter 16 #2
“The poor darling.” Miss Edwards sighed fondly.
“He was heartbroken over your engagement, Lady Wrenworth. For days on end he lamented that he should have been more outspoken with regard to his sentiments and that he should not have decided to wait until the end of the Season to propose to you. And that was when I became terribly ashamed of my behavior. Perhaps he would have had a better chance with you had I been more civil.”
Louisa was less shocked by the revelation of Lord Firth’s matrimonial intentions than by Miss Edwards’s regret that they never came to pass. She didn’t sound the least bit jealous that her brother was in love with someone else. “I’m…I’m afraid I had no idea.”
Miss Edwards shook her head. “He can be too taciturn at times, my brother.”
She was about to say something else when a tall, handsome man came up to her with a cup of tea.
“Oh, thank you, my dear.” Miss Edwards clasped his hand. “Lady Wrenworth, may I present my fiancé, Mr. Harlow.”
Miss Edwards, engaged? But of course, he was the man Louisa had seen with Miss Edwards earlier. Louisa coughed up a line of congratulations.
“My aunt lives not very far from Huntington,” Mr. Harlow said. “In fact, we were in the area recently, visiting her. Beautiful place, but alas, the rain never let up the entire time we were there.”
While he spoke, Miss Edwards gazed upon him with what could only be termed rapture—a sight that made Louisa queasy.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Edwards said with a broad smile after her fiancé retreated. “I must look so idiotic. I have been in love with Mr. Harlow since we were both toddlers. But it has taken him a while to realize I’m the right girl for him. We became engaged only last month.”
Louisa tried to remember the loverlike gestures on Miss Edwards’s part that had sealed her belief that the woman was indeed her brother’s mistress. Had there not been lips-to-ear whispers and other touches that had indicated a far greater intimacy than was normal between siblings?
To her horror, she realized that she had never actually seen Miss Edwards’s lips touch her brother’s ear: Miss Edwards had whispered to Lord Firth behind her fan, and Louisa, fresh from Felix’s shocking revelation, had convinced herself that there must be unseemly physical contact behind those ostrich plumes.
And as for Miss Edwards standing with her breasts pressed into Lord Firth’s arm—to Louisa yet another piece of evidence—dear God, but hadn’t there been a large party moving through the crush that was the Fielding ball?
It had been the crowd squashing Miss Edwards’s chest into her brother’s person, not a gesture on Miss Edwards’s part to exhibit ownership over the latter.
Louisa began to hurt between the eyes, a severe pain that radiated across her forehead and spiked deep into her cerebrum. She tried not to think, but the inevitable conclusions tumbled into place one after another, like a chain of dominoes.
If Miss Edwards was telling the truth…if Miss Edwards had been in love with Mr. Harlow her whole life…and she thought that her brother was the best man there was…and Lord Firth thoroughly regretted not having made Louisa his wife…
Many, many times she had told Felix she did not trust him. But never had she suspected him of such an egregious, utterly immoral fabrication that could have ruined the reputation of two innocent people, had Louisa been any kind of a tattletale.
And he had lied again the day they had seen Miss Edwards and Mr. Harlow together. He had once again slandered Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s good names—and she had believed him, because he had looked her in the eye while he lied.
She stared at Miss Edwards’s happy countenance, barely able to concentrate on her moving lips as the latter enthusiastically furnished Mr. Harlow’s myriad virtues and accomplishments.
So that was why Felix had ushered her away from Huntington.
How stupid of her not to understand it for the manipulation it had been.
How stupid of her to even think of doing away with her defenses.
And how stupid of her—even in her state of numbness she felt the pinch in her chest—to have begun to look forward to a future in which she never needed to doubt him again.
And there he was, being shown into the parlor, searching for her. He even smiled. The moment he realized to whom she was speaking, however, his expression turned into a rigid mask, as if he were a defendant facing an adverse verdict. Or a patient awaiting a fatal diagnosis.
He knew. And he was as guilty as the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
* * *
Everything outside was shrouded in fog, indistinct, chimerical forms. The only reality existed within the confines of the town coach, within its velvet-upholstered seats, mahogany panels, and suffocating silence.
Louisa sat opposite Felix, her face turned toward the window, her hands hidden in the folds of her short mantle; the opalescent beads that trimmed her skirts shimmered and shuddered with each sway and jostle of the vehicle.
“You told me they were an incestuous pair, Lord Firth and Miss Edwards,” she spoke at last, her jaw clenched. “Did you lie?”
“I did,” said Felix. His voice sounded as hollow as he felt.
He wanted to add, I’m sorry, but somehow he couldn’t. I’m sorry was what one said when one accidentally bumped into someone, or ran out of a guest’s favorite vintage. Before a disaster of this magnitude, I’m sorry was about as useful as a spoonful of water poured on a burning house.
“Care to give your reason? I can’t wait to hear it.”
He wished she’d screamed, or clawed at his face.
Her coldness made him quake inside. “There was nothing wrong with Lord Firth,” he said, keeping his voice free of inflection.
“Mr. Pitt disobeyed his parents by paying court to you, but Lord Firth was his own man. His finances were sound and his character was sterling. There was no chance of your becoming my mistress as long as Lord Firth remained a viable candidate for your hand.”
He never thought it would sound good, this explanation. But still, its egregiousness stunned him. He had never been uglier.
Her expression only turned tighter. “Did you not think of the possible consequences for them? I could have passed on this falsity. It could have spread beyond my immediate circle. In time it might have taken on a life of its own and made pariahs of Lord Firth and Miss Edwards.”
What could he say? There was no defense for his lies.
“I calculated that there was no one in whom you could confide, and not necessarily because of the salaciousness of the charge, but the source of it. You knew that no one would believe it of you were you to say that The Ideal Gentleman had told you such a thing—it was for the same reason I dared to propose that you become my mistress.”
His name and his persona carried power. She had been a nobody, and her sponsor only the wife of a baronet. Society would have chosen to question her sanity, rather than his character.
“How exceedingly clever you are. And how frightfully accurate your reasoning,” she said, her voice as flat as his. “I should be flattered that you would resort to such extraordinary tactics just to sleep with me. I wonder why I am not.”
“It was wrong of me.”
“Wrong of you? It was wrong of me the time I slapped Julia hard enough to loosen one of her teeth when I caught her deliberately trying to trigger a seizure on Matilda’s part. She was only six, with no real understanding of what she was doing. I should have explained, rather than hit her.
“What you did was hideous. Even if I were to accept that you were able to predict with perfect exactitude my silence concerning the matter, and that Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s reputations were never in any danger of besmirchment, do you think I can overlook what you did to me?”
How stupid he had been to think that he would prefer her openly furious. Her anger burned him like live coals shoved into his lungs.
“As much as it scandalized me, I did not scorn you for trying to make me your mistress. It was immoral and opportunistic, but I thought at least you were honest about what you wanted. I thought you meant to compete on an even playing field. And now I find out that the whole thing was rigged and The Ideal Gentleman had all the scruples of a common cardsharp.” She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I could live with a scoundrel, but I cannot stand a cheater.”
* * *