The one that no more than a handful of people in London knew belonged to Sophia Gray, Duchess of Heatherwell.
He read the passage beneath the masthead, and the grin died on his face.
Lady L. R., youngest daughter of the Earl of B., has been observed in clandestine meetings with none other than the Duke of T…
Hugo read it twice. His fingers tightened on the paper.
Someone had used Sophia’s pen name. Someone had fabricated a connection between him and the woman standing in front of him, a woman he had spoken to perhaps a dozen times in two years, and only ever across a dinner table with Edward and Sophia between them. Someone had printed this and distributed it at a ball, which meant that by morning, every drawing room in London would hum with it.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was distributed at the Fenwick ball. Tonight.” Lady Lily folded her arms across her chest. “To every guest in attendance. Someone has forged my sister’s pen name and published a lieconnecting me to you. I came here to ask whether you had anything to do with it.”
The accusation landed with a precision that suggested she had been rehearsing it. Hugo looked up from the paper and studied her face. She was furious. Beneath the fury, she was frightened, but she was doing an admirable job of burying it beneath that rigid spine and those sharp green eyes.
“You think I arranged this?”
“I think someone did, and your name is on it.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Not because he was trying to intimidate her, though that might have been a useful side effect, but because something about her directness caught him off guard.
Most women who found themselves in his parlor at this hour wanted something from him, and they approached the wanting sideways, with flattery and suggestion and the careful deployment of décolletage. Lady Lily had marched into his house, handed him a paper, and not once fawned around him.
He found that unsettling in a way he could not immediately name.
“Give me a moment.”
He left the parlor and moved through the back corridor to ensure Delphine had departed without incident. The servants’ entrance was closed, the alley empty, and the faint trace of her perfume was already fading from the stairwell.
Good.
The last thing he needed was Edward’s sister-in-law encountering a disheveled widow in his back hallway.
When he returned, Lady Lily stood by the window, her posture stiff, and her expression several degrees colder than when he had left. She had seen something. He did not ask what.
“I had nothing to do with this.” He crossed to the mantel and picked up his brandy. “I have never spoken to a gossip columnist in my life, and I have no interest in manufacturing scandals. I generate enough of my own without assistance.”
“How reassuring.”
Hugo nearly smiled. Nearly. The situation did not warrant it, but the speed of her retort was something to admire.
“You are rather sharp for a woman standing uninvited in a bachelor’s parlor at midnight.”
“And you are rather calm for a man whose name was just printed alongside mine in a scandal sheet.”
“My name appears in scandal sheets with some regularity, Lady Lily. I have learned not to panic.” He took a sip and studied her over the rim. She held herself like a woman preparing for a blow, every muscle braced, every nerve drawn tight. “Yours, however, does not. Which means this was aimed at you, not at me.”
Something shifted in her expression. The fury dimmed, and what replaced it was a weariness that sat poorly on a face so young. She pressed her lips together and looked away.
“My sister believes the same. Someone wants to damage my reputation.”
“And they chose me as the weapon.” Hugo set the glass down. “Clever, actually. My reputation makes the accusation plausible without requiring a shred of evidence. Any woman linked to me is assumed to have been compromised.”
He paused. The truth of it tasted sour. He had built that reputation on purpose, had cultivated it like armor, and now someone was using it to hurt a woman who had done nothing to deserve it.
“The question is not whether this will damage you,” he continued. “It already has. The question is what you intend to do about it.”
“I intend to find out who printed it and make them answer for it.”
