Their parents materialized a moment later. Lady Brimsey clutched Lord Brimsey’s arm, her cheeks flushed, her gaze darting. Lord Brimsey’s expression was measured, but the muscle in his jaw worked steadily, betraying the calm he fought to project.
“Lily.” Sophia’s grip on her elbow tightened. “We need to speak with you. Now.”
Lily glanced back at Lord Wilfrey. A gentleman she did not recognize had pressed one of the papers into his hand and was scanning Lily from head to hem with an expression that made her feel as if she had been stripped bare in the middle of the dance floor. Wilfrey unfolded the paper. His eyes moved across the words.
The change was immediate. The softness that had come over his features during their waltz vanished. His mouth flattened. He folded the paper with precise, deliberate movements and tucked it under his arm.
“If you will excuse me, Lady Lily.” He said coldly. “I believe I am expected elsewhere.”
He bowed, turned on his heel, and walked away without looking back.
Lily stared after him. Something cold settled in the pit of her stomach.
“Lily.” Sophia tugged her arm. “Come with me. Please.”
They moved through the crowd, and the throng parted for them, though not out of courtesy. The guests stepped aside the way one might clear a path for a carriage accident, eager to watch the wreckage pass. Lily kept her chin level and her shoulders straight and pretended she could not feel every pair of eyes in the room boring into her back.
Sophia led them through a side corridor and into a small parlor that smelled of beeswax and old flowers. Edward closed the door behind them and positioned himself beside it, arms crossed, a sentry against whatever was coming.
Lady Brimsey sank into the nearest chair. Lord Brimsey remained standing, his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
Sophia reached into the folds of her skirt and produced one of the papers. She held it out to Lily.
“Someone has impersonated Lady Fairhart.”
Lily took the paper. The print was bold, the ink slightly smudged, and the layout mimicked the familiar gossip sheet she had seen on her sister’s writing desk a hundred times.
But the paper stock was cheaper, the font slightly off, and the masthead, though it bore Lady Fairhart’s name in flourishing script, lacked the small rosette that Sophia’s publisher always stamped beneath the title.
Her eyes found the relevant passage.
It is this author’s delight to confirm what the sharp-eyed among us have long suspected. Lady L. R., youngest daughter of the Earl of B., has been observed in clandestine meetings with none other than the Duke of T., the most notorious of London’s rakes.
One can only wonder what business a young lady of good breeding might conduct under cover of darkness with a gentleman whose reputation precedes him into every bedchamber in Mayfair.
Lady Fairhart declares them a match. The ton would do well to prepare its congratulations.
Lily read it twice. The words refused to arrange themselves into anything that made sense.
“The Duke of Thornwaite.” She looked up. “Edward’s friend? The one who flirts with anything in a skirt and thinks it constitutes a personality?”
Edward’s mouth twitched despite the gravity of the situation.
“Hugo Beaumont, yes.” Sophia’s voice was careful. “Someone has published this undermypen name, and they have connected you to him.”
“But I have barely spoken to the man.” Lily held up the paper as if the force of her bewilderment might rearrange the print. “We have exchanged perhaps a dozen words in two years, and half of those were him asking me to pass the salt at your dinner table.”
Lady Brimsey rose from her chair. “Lily, darling, you must tell us if there is something you have not shared previously. If you have been meeting with the Duke in any capacity, we need to know now, before this announcement spreads further.”
The question landed like a slap.
“You think I have been sneaking out at night to meet a man I barely know?” Lily’s voice sharpened before she could rein it in. “You think I would lie to you? To all of you? After everything this family has been through, after everything Sophia and Edward did to pull us out of debt and disgrace, you think I would risk it all for a man whose greatest accomplishment is bedding half the widows in London?”
“Lily.” Lord Brimsey’s tone was gentle but firm. “Your mother is frightened. She is not accusing you.”
Lady Brimsey’s eyes glistened. Lily’s chest ached with the immediate, fierce guilt of having raised her voice at the woman who had never been anything but loving, even in the worst of their years.
“I am sorry, Mama.” She softened her grip on the paper. “But I have done nothing wrong. I swear it.”
