Page 33 of The Dangerous Lord

He wouldn’t get such from her, the scoundrel! She didn’t regret a single word she’d written! Truly, she didn’t!

Well, perhaps that last little bit was excessive. She probably shouldn’t have asserted her doubts so boldly. But she’d been angry, after all, and with good reason. He’d humiliated her as publicly as she had him. No, she didn’t regret what she’d written. He deserved everything she could throw at him.

“What I don’t understand,” Emily put in, “is how Lord X knew what you’d told us about your friend, Ian. I swear I never said a word to anyone outside this room.”

“Nor did I,” Sara chimed in.

Felicity listened in disbelief. What? It couldn’t be. The two countesses must have told others. Sara had told her. And surely Ian’s reason for lying to them in the first place had been to make sure they cleared his name among the gossips.

Ian flashed Felicity the barest taunting smile. “It’s all right, Sara. I know you probably told quite a few people in my defense. I don’t blame you for that.”

“But I didn’t!” Sara protested. “You asked us not to say anything, and I upheld your wish!” Her gaze turned to Felicity, confused, upset.

The roiling in Felicity’s stomach now threatened to make her faint. He’d asked them not to say anything? Good Lord. How had he known that Sara had told her and only her? What sort of devil was he, anyway?

“You or Emily must have said something,” Ian replied in apparent innocence. “You couldn’t have known it would be passed on. Pilkington himself told me that Lord X has a woman helping him gather information. No doubt she heard the truth from one of you at the ball.”

Felicity tensed. What a liar! Mr. Pilkington told him no such thing!

He added slyly, “It’s probably Lady Brumley with her penchant for gossip.”

“No!” Sara exclaimed. “I didn’t say a word to her! The only person I told was⁠—”

She broke off at exactly the same moment Felicity felt the trap spring upon her. Why, that manipulative, lying son of a bachelor!

He leaned back with an utterly cocksure expression, basking in the success of his machinations. This ambush had been his plan—he thought to ruin her with his friends, prevent her from discovering anything else from them. To defend herself, she’d have to admit she was Lord X. He didn’t want that, oh, no, because revealing her identity to his friends would prompt her to tell the whole truth, even the parts he hid from them!

So instead he made her out to be a sneak who passed on gossip for her own enjoyment. At least Lord X had a noble purpose. But Lord X’s assistant could only be a pawn at best, a conniving witch at worst! They would all despise her now!

She glanced at Sara, wincing to see her wounded expression. They already despised her. She scrambled for a defense, pretending not to realize the conclusion Sara had clearly drawn already. “You did tell me, Sara, so you surely told someone else.”

Sara wore a heart-wrenching look of betrayal. “No. No one but you.”

Felicity wanted to protest, to act insulted, anything to wipe that horrible look from Sara’s face. But protest would only make her look more guilty. Never had she guessed she would care so much about what some countess thought of her. She’d had few close friends in her life, thanks to her father’s odd position, and she’d foolishly thought Sara might become one. How dared Ian take that from her?

Now they would all unite against her, and it would only be worse if she revealed she was Lord X. Either way, she was the outsider. They wouldn’t believe her when she said Ian’s “secret” was a blatant lie. And there would be no one else to support her tale. Except for Miss Greenaway, the only other person who knew the truth, whatever it was.

Hope filled her. Of course! Miss Greenaway! Striving for calmness, she said to Ian, “You know, it might not have been one of us at all who spoke to Lord X. Your friend—the one on this Waltham Street—might have gone to the newspaper herself to explain. I know if I had been the subject of unfair gossip, I would have done so.”

There was a long pause as everyone digested this new possibility. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Ian’s self-assured stance altered a fraction. “I assure you, Miss Taylor, that Miss G— That my friend would never do such a foolish thing. She would uphold my desire for privacy.”

Sara seemed more than willing, however, to grasp at Felicity’s hypothesis. “Yes, but would she have risked her own reputation just to please you? I doubt it. And even if she would have, perhaps she couldn’t bear to see your character falsely maligned after you’d been so generous. Think how it would have weighed on her conscience.”

“Sara’s right,” Felicity added as relief surged through her. “I’m sure the woman would have found it most distressing.”

Let him wriggle out of this tale, she thought fiercely. He couldn’t refute her hypothesis without telling the truth, and he wouldn’t tell the truth to his friends after presenting them with such an outrageous lie.

Gone was his smug demeanor. Like two flints newly struck, his eyes glittered at her. He jumped to his feet and strode to where Jordan had thrown down the paper. “The lady in question did not go to the paper.” He picked up the Gazette, scanned it, then stabbed one long finger at the column. “It says here, ‘The good viscount would have us believe,’ etcetera. That implies that Lord X thinks I am the one making false claims.”

“Not necessarily,” Jordan put in. “If he’s determined to skewer you on his pen, he might not want his readers to know your lady friend is his source, for that would weigh in your favor. Thus he couches his assertion more vaguely. After all, he didn’t come right out and say he got his information from you or one of your friends, did he?”

Sara threw Felicity an apologetic glance. “You see, Ian? It probably wasn’t one of us at all.”

Sara’s dear defense ruined Felicity’s triumph. Sara didn’t deserve to be a pawn in this battle. It was Felicity’s fault that Sara had been drawn into it in the first place. Nor did Ian’s glance of scathing contempt make her feel any better. He was right to despise her. She should never have allowed Sara to believe he’d taken liberties with her on the balcony. Until then, the war had remained between the two of them. But now it seemed to be spiraling out of control and involving half his friends.

“It doesn’t matter how Lord X found out,” Jordan said. “What right does he have to assume you lied about fighting in the war? He gives no proof. For that alone, you should sue the paper. If I were you, I’d make the government set the Gazette straight.”

“The government wouldn’t bother.” Ian shifted his gaze from Felicity to Jordan. “What I did on the continent was unofficial. I doubt anybody even remembers my role.”