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Unable to restrain her curiosity, Livvie turned. A fist closed itself over her heart. The lady she had spied at Grangeville Park in the hallway of Tobias’s room was practically draped over him. Lady Arabella. His head was dipped low as he conversed with her. The picture was intimate, and Livvie’s heart broke. Had he taken back up with his mistress?
“I am sure it is quite innocent,” Adel murmured sympathetically.
Livvie’s throat worked but no sound issued forth. She silently urged her husband to look her way. Instead, he walked through the ballroom with his former—or his current—mistress strolling beside him. Arabella was smiling and nodding to varied ladies and gentleman while Tobias had his usual air of insouciance about him.
Unexpectedly, he glanced up toward her. For a moment, hunger flashed in his emerald depths and her heart seemed to stop. Then he lowered his eyes and bent his head to hear whatever Lady Arabella chose to lightly tip on her toes to whisper in that moment.
“I daresay, from the scandalously heated look your husband just gave you…Lady Arabella’s presence is a mere annoyance and nothing more,” the duchess said after touching Livvie’s arm gently.
Her throat tightened. “I must leave.”
“Surely—”
“I cannot stay. Do you see how everyone is staring at us?”
And they were. Some ogled discreetly behind their artful fans, while others stared blatantly. She hurriedly bid the duchess adieu, and with her head lifted high, she made her way to the entrance and ordered her carriage. Livvie waited in the foyer, her heart a beating mess. Should she have gone to Tobias? And what would she say if she did? Should she tell him her father had collapsed when he learned of William’s behavior, and that her stepbrother had been sent away to Scotland to revive a flagging estate there? Should she ask him when the tension between them would be solved, and when would they have a reasonable conversation? The most pressing question…should she ask him if he had taken back up with his mistress?
The questions burning through her, she turned, and with determined steps, reentered the ballroom. She scanned the crowd and spied her husband exiting the room, Lady Arabella following at a discreet distance. Livvie’s knees went weak and a blast of anger tore through her, leaving her hands trembling.
How dare he break his promises. A footman passed and she grabbed a glass of champagne from his tray and emptied it in one swallow. She took another, and followed the path her earl had taken. She went through the terrace door and allowed their voices to guide her steps.
She turned left at a column and froze. Lady Arabella was kissing her husband. The pain that tore through Livvie’s heart was like a poison-tipped knife.
Tobias pushed his mistress from him, a derisive smile tipping his lips, but Livvie was not mollified.
“How dare you,” she breathed out.
The lady spun, her eyes widening in genuine shock. So this was not staged as how Lady Wimple had done.
“Why am I always coming upon you with a trollop twined around you, my lord?” Livvie asked cuttingly.
A muscle jumped in Tobias’s jaw. “You will mind your tongue, countess, and we will have this discussion in private.” Keeping his gaze firmly on her, he spoke. “You will excuse us, Lady Arabella.”
“Darling, I—”
“Now.” His voice vibrated with cold warning, and Arabella flushed.
She hurried away, and when she passed by Livvie she murmured, “He was mine first and I will have him again, you upstart.”
Livvie swiveled and stepped in her path. “What did you say to me?”
Arabella faltered, no doubt not expecting Livvie to act with such bold impropriety. She was simply too out of sorts to be pretentious.
“I said nothing, Lady Blade,” she said demurely, but her eyes fired with spite and there was a mockingly cruel slant to her lips. Then she mouthed the word upstart.
Livvie did not pause to think, she simply lifted her hand and delivered a sound slap to Arabella’s cheek. The lady stumbled back and promptly burst into horrified tears.
“If the earl and I ever separate, you are welcome to him. Until then, if you dare try to disrespect me and dishonor my marriage, I will call you out and put a bullet in you,” Livvie snapped low and hard.
Lady Arabella whitened, shock glazing her eyes.
There was a gasp behind Livvie, and in her periphery, she spied two ladies. They hurried from the terrace back to the ballroom, surely to spread what they had just witnessed.
“Countess!”
She glared at her husband and her hands trembled in reaction. Within two strides, he was in front of her, staring down, his mien wintry. “We will leave this instant,” he said flatly. “Are you staying at your father’s town house?”
“Yes.”
