Frances did not stop. “An orphan, by all accounts, whose circumstances have long made her dependent upon the charity, or perhaps the interest, of those far above her.”
Sophia’s expression faltered. “That is cruel.”
Frances could only nod. “Formerly in respectable employment, she appears to have exchanged security for a far more precarious position, one that relies entirely upon the continued favor of a nobleman whose attentions have, it seems, extended well beyond benevolence.”
Their mother shook her head. “They are leading everyone to guess.”
“They are ensuring it,” Frances replied.
Sophia looked troubled. “They have given just enough for the whole of London to imagine the rest.”
“Yes,” Frances confirmed. “That is precisely the point.”
Their mother set down her embroidery frame. “If there is truth in it, society will do so quickly enough.”
Frances looked up sharply. “That does not make it right.”
Her mother seemed taken aback by the force in her tone. Frances herself felt it only after the words had left her. She looked back at the page.
It grew crueler still.
The child was dismissed as the inevitable consequence of vice. The mother was painted as either foolish enough to invite disgrace or cunning enough to deserve it. The duke was condemned less for any possible harm done to either of them than for having so poorly concealed the affair. The whole piece delighted in the possibility of ruin.
Frances lowered the paper a fraction.
“This is not gossip,” she said. “This is the ruin of a life.”
Sophia’s face had lost its earlier animation. “Do you think it is true?”
Frances did not know.
She knew the Duke of Sinclair only in the way one knew the close friend of a brother-in-law: by dinners, conversations and chance observations. She only had the impression of a man gathered across rooms and through repeated meetings.
He had always struck her as self-contained, courteous, and faintly detached, as though some part of him stood apart from the world even while he moved easily within it. Not a saint,perhaps. She had no patience for saints. But neither did he seem like a man who would throw a helpless woman before the wolves of public opinion.
Yet men had deceived before. And scandal sheets lied before… sometimes both at once.
A dull heat of shame crept over her skin, for she knew this territory too intimately to feign innocence. She knew the temptation of it, the thrill of shaping rumor into something sharper, cleverer, more irresistible. She knew the dangerous pleasure of writing a line that would be repeated over breakfast tables and in ballrooms by luncheon. She knew what it was to hold another person’s reputation in one’s hand and mistake that power for wit.
She had done it, and once had been enough.
For a fleeting moment, memory rose sharp and unwelcome: Emma’s distress, the turmoil that followed, the dreadful realization that words set loose could not be gathered back again.
True, that chain of events had ended in happiness. Emma was loved, married and most importantly, safe. But the ending did not erase the harm of the beginning.
Frances had told herself since then that she understood the cost.
Now, with this vile sheet in her hands, she felt that understanding as something living and uncomfortable inside her.
Their mother reached toward the paper. “Let me see it.”
Frances passed it over, though unwillingly. Her mother skimmed through the paragraph with widening eyes, then clicked her tongue. “The language is vicious.”
“Yes.”
“Still,” their mother continued, with her gaze darting back to certain phrases, “one does wonder who the girl may be.”
Frances stared at her.
