Or perhaps it only felt that way because her father spent the entire time lecturing her. Possibly without even taking a breath.
“Now,” he said, clapping his hands briskly together, ignoring the servants that milled around them entirely. This was,unfortunately, typical. “Hannah’s little rebellion is finally dealt with.” He had the audacity to sound irritated that his daughter had had questions about an impromptu engagement. “So, Phoebe…”
He said her name the way he’d always been saying it lately—like it was a stand-in for a much ruder word.
“As you know, were it my choice, you would never leave the house again.”
For a man who loathed dramatic displays, Phoebe thought, he really was prone to them himself. She had heard this particular declaration a dozen times or more in the past few weeks. It was starting to take on the intonation of an actor who had over-rehearsed his lines.
“But, fortunately for you, the Duke insisted that the whole family come to this parlay.”
She couldn’t resist. “‘Parlay?’ Father, have you been reading novels?”
He scowled as intensely as if she had accused him of kicking small dogs just to make babies cry.
“This is precisely the kind of nonsense I am trying to warn you about, Phoebe,” he said hotly. “I know that you seem to think that everything is one big lark. I know that you don’t care at allabout your family or our reputation. I know that you derive some sort of perverse pleasure from humiliating me.”
This was, as a point of fact, wrong on all three counts. The thing that Lord Turner did not know was that Phoebe had been extraordinarily cautious for the bulk of her, ahem, exploits.
She couldn’t help that he had wrongfully assumed that the time he had caught her had been the first time. She could have corrected that assumption, perhaps, but discretion had seemed, notably, to be the better part of valor in this case.
Phoebe bit her tongue now accordingly. She bit it so hard that her mouth started to taste metallic.
“Nevertheless, you willnotdo anything to compromise your sister’s betrothal,” he declared imperiously. “If you do, I shall ensure that you are so thoroughly confined to the house that you never see sunlight again.”
Hannah, despite her tumultuous emotions this evening, was not so absorbed in her own troubles that she did not protest this pronouncement.
“Father!” she cried. “You cannot.”
“I can,” he said smugly.
“You really can’t,” Phoebe said. “You could withdraw your financial support, but I would still have my inheritance from Grandfather.”
Their maternal grandfather had left each of the girls a small annuity. It wasn’t enough to live in high fashion, but it was enough that Phoebe had always maintained an element of security against her father’s machinations.
“Fine,” he said. “I would withdraw my financial support. You could no longer go out and about in Society without that.”
He sounded triumphant.
“I’ve never actually wanted to go to balls and events, you know,” she said. It was astonishing how easily he could forget the dozens of arguments they’d had in which he’d forced her to attend this soiree or that musicale on the basis that it waswhat young ladies did. “And, again, you really cannot stop me from seeing my friends.”
Her father blustered for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Your friends!” he said. “Do you really thinkyour friendswill still want to associate with you when you are without fortune? Some of them areduchesses, Phoebe.”
“And yet I remain confident in their friendship,” she said. She found herself looking longingly at the house out the window, for all that it had not grown any more cheerful in the intervening moments.
“We shall see about that,” her father said, though he did not sound quite as smug as he had before.
Phoebe stifled another sigh. She could feel a headache coming on, and they hadn’t even arrived at what promised to be the most trying portion of the evening. She was so very weary of having this argument over and over again.
The facts of the matter were that Phoebe was her own person, and her father loathed that, but his loathing was not enough to actually materially change her circumstances.
So, when he had discovered her doing the things she wanted to be doing, he had been unfortunately reminded of his relative powerlessness over her. And it had been driving him positively insane ever since.
“You will be polite,” he said, taking his usual tack, which was defaulting to orders that Phoebe couldn’t argue with, not even when she was feeling her most unreasonable. “You will not make reference to any of the sordid details of your reputation. You will not reference the war. You will not ask questions.”
“No questions? Well, Iwasgoing to open with ‘How do you do?’ but I suppose I can come up with another plan.”
Her father’s voice was distinctly unamused.
