“Or no uniform at all,” Mari murmured without looking up.
“How did you know I was with Mr Deverell?” Lottie hissed.
“I did not know,” Mari returned, “but now you have confirmed it.”
“Must you all conspire against my nerves?” Lady Tolliver wailed, falling upon the settee beside Marianne. “I have not slept a wink. My pulse is irregular, my digestion is in ruins, and I distinctly felt aflutteringin my left eye this morning!”
“That is what happens when you squint at the scandal sheets before breakfast, Mama,” said Lottie. “Agree with me, Ben.”
“Keep me out of this, sister,” mumbled Benedict, rubbing a hand over his face. “I have scandals enough of my own.”
“Oh, my heart,” groaned her mother. “A libertine for a son. How many wild oats did you sow last night? No, I have no wish to know! And certainly a libertine with a death wish for a daughter.”
“That seems a touch dramatic,” Lottie said mildly, now peeling off her gloves one finger at a time. “I hardly think a morning ride qualifies as libertinism.”
“It is not the ride, Charlotte,” Lady Tolliver shrieked, “but the company! Mr Deverell! Good heavens above!”
Mari turned a page of her book. “We may be reasonably assured she did not elope this time, Mama. She would have required a change of clothes, at least.”
“And a special licence,” Benedict added, eyes still closed. “Which would necessitate rising even earlier than she did. Frankly, I doubt she possesses the organisation for a second coup.”
Lottie’s smile faltered, but only for the smallest instant. She recovered it almost at once, which was to say she made it sharper.
“Did you imagine we had all forgotten?” her mother demanded, growing more shrill with every word. “That you absconded with that dreadful man—who sought nothing but your dowry, mark you—and had to be dragged back from the very edge of scandal by the combined force of your sisters’ reputations and the duke’s purse? Do you think any of that was in the least bit entertaining?”
“Georgie being the only one not to know was rather amusing,” Mari observed from behind her book.
Lady Tolliver ignored her. “Do you comprehend the coin, the favours, the humiliations endured to see that sordid affair quietly laid to rest? The sleepless nights! The correspondence! The mortification at Almack’s, where Lady Greystone took one look at me and near fainted with the scandal of it all! If you are quite determined to gamble away your future, Charlotte, I beg you—do not drag the rest of us into the gutter with you!”
Lottie said nothing, which was so rare an occurrence that even Mari lowered her book.
“I am going upstairs to apply tincture of valerian and lie down with a cold cloth,” Lady Tolliver announced to the hall at large. “If I should expire before luncheon, you may inform the coroner it was a collapse of the nerves, and a most preventable tragedy.” With a final sniff and a dramatic swish of shawls, she ascended the stairs, pausing only once to add in her sweetest voice, “And do consider Lord Marston this evening, Charlotte.”
Lottie waited until her mother’s slippers had disappeared around the turn of the staircase before she slipped her riding jacket from her shoulders. Damn her for bringing up Marchmont, that fiend. What did any of them know about him, and what had truly occurred that night?
Mari made a noise from behind her book, but Lottie ignored it. She had no intention of remaining in the hall to be stared at, pitied, or instructed, particularly without first being permitted hot water and privacy.
She turned toward the stairs.
“She is right, you know,” Benedict rasped from his chair.
Lottie turned sharply. “I beg your pardon?”
Benedict had the audacity to look as though speaking had pained him physically. “Mama,” he said. “She is right.”
Mari sank beneath her book, as though afraid of Lottie’s wrath.
“Not about Marston or the ball tonight,” Benedict added, lifting one hand. “No one with a functioning soul could be right about Marston. The man makes boiled mutton seem interesting.”
“Then by all means,” Lottie said, her voice dangerously pleasant, “clarify the exact manner in which our mother is right, before I decide whether to murder you with the umbrella stand.”
Benedict glanced at the umbrella stand. “A poor weapon. Too many curved handles.”
“Ben.”
He sighed and dragged a hand over his face. “About Marchmont.”
“Oh, well! How fortunate that I can always count on my family to drag that corpse back into the parlour whenever it suits them.”
