Page 36 of Miss Delancey’s Tragicomedy

Raw-voiced, he answered her. “I don’t know.”

He left her standing there, alone, with a puzzled look on her face. He didn’t take proper leave. He did not beg her to make his excuses to Dessie. He simply spun on his boot heel and left.

Left Miss Delancey. Left the conservatory. Left the ball.

Without a word to his hosts. Without a word to his soon-to-be-intended.

Maybe that would cock up the whole enterprise, but he could not have remained another moment. He would need to fix it somehow. Tomorrow. As for tonight, he would go home and wake Eli, who would have to keep him company while he attempted to polish off a bottle of gin.

Because the answer to her question was obvious: he was, inescapably, the Duke of Trentham. He had a legacy to uphold.

Chapter Thirteen

Three days after the ball, Ophelia was still bedeviled. Why had Trentham been deliberately offensive? And how was she supposed to recover her equilibrium without recourse to music? She couldn’t play the out-of-tune piano. And she would not play the harp. She couldn’t even bear to look at it.

If she could bring herself to hate Trentham, she would hate him for that. For robbing her of her best source of solace. But she couldn’t hate him. The pain in his voice when he’d admitted he didn’t know himself betrayed a hurt far worse than what she’d felt when he insulted her down to her bones.

There had been no cause for it! Their mutual flirtation, even adding in the library kiss that she would have missed if she’d blinked, had not amounted to much. They both could have stepped back and remained cordial. Remained friends, even. It would have made much more sense for him to allow her a little huff at the ball, absent himself for a week, and then return as jolly as ever but with a bit of distance. Distance, because now that he was courting Lady Elizabeth, it would no longer be seemly to engage in even a harmless bit of flirtation. She would have liked to remain friends with that Duke of Trentham.

But the duke who had leered at her bosom and implied a much more intimate association with her lips than he’d experienced, how was she to remain friendly with that?

He had meant to wound her. The question was why?

She couldn’t try to puzzle it out with Dessie. It would be difficult to complain of the explicit bosom leering without backing up to explain that there had previously been hand caressing and kiss stealing. She didn’t know why she had withheld those details from her sister when they’d occurred. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to hear Dessie’s warnings again. Or she was afraid Dessie might let slip to Lynch what had happened—and what a mess that would cause! Or, perhaps it was because she hadn’t wanted to treat this particular flirtation lightly. She had liked Trentham. Quite a bit, she had liked him.

The more fool she.

Fortunately, she needn’t dwell on the man. Distractions abounded. She’d been for carriage rides with two different gentlemen on sequential afternoons—though she’d already forgotten their names. She attended a play one evening with Dessie and Lynch, a comedy so poor it made Dessie cry. And Lady Melvin had just left, after paying a call to return Caldwell’s Secret and to lend Ophelia another book by the same author.

Ophelia hadn’t come across Trentham, thank goodness, on any of the outings, but Lady Melvin had been quick to share that His Grace’s carriage had been spotted in the Barringtons’ drive yesterday. “And isn’t that simply delightful? To see a wayward man reformed?” Dessie changed the subject abruptly, though whether that was to spare Ophelia the gushing gossip or to keep Lady Melvin from “stirring the pot,” she didn’t know.

Wayward man?

But that was something else to consider. If the Wormsley-Barrington courtship became the focal point of the Season, would talk of his scandalous past be revived? Would she learn his secret? Would it reinforce her conviction that keeping her distance from him was for the best? Intrigued though she was, she decided such curiosity should not be indulged. After all, it shouldn’t matter one whit to her what he had done.

Once Lady Melvin had departed, Ophelia and Dessie settled in the parlor with more tea. After agreeing how much they liked the woman, despite her gossipy nature, Dessie’s good humor slipped away. She began fidgeting cagily.

“Did I miss something?” Ophelia asked.

Dessie glanced at her, then quickly away. “No. No, but I have something awkward to tell you.”

“Go on.”

“I had a card this morning from Lady Elizabeth. She asks us to tea tomorrow.”

Ophelia stiffened, then said what she must. “We will go, naturally.”

“We don’t have to.”

“Of course, we have to.” She felt a catch in her throat. “Lady Elizabeth will likely be Trentham’s wife. I imagine you’ll be thrown into her company frequently. Besides, you can’t say ‘no’ to a Barrington.”

*

Ophelia had anticipated a staid but well-attended affair. Instead, she and Dessie were the only invitees. The ladies’ sitting room was large and ornate, with fleur-de-lis-papered walls dotted with gold-framed paintings, and shelves and tables containing so many figurines, statuettes, vases, and bowls, that Ophelia could not say what color or theme predominated.

Lady Elizabeth was the complete opposite. In a decidedly unfussy dark blue walking dress, her hair pulled back into a loose chignon, unselfconsciously bespectacled, the girl might not be pretty, but she looked perfectly self-composed.

They sipped their tea and ate teacakes while Lady Elizabeth asked questions about America, especially New York. After they had described the mansions, shops, theaters, green spaces, and museums, Lady Elizabeth sighed. “It sounds wonderful. Magical.”