Page 66 of How to Tempt a Duke

The color leached from the Countess’s face. Eleanor would be ruined no matter how the conversation turned. Too many had been witness to the accusation. Too many were still listening.

The Countess opened her mouth, but Eleanor stepped forward. “She didn’t know. I didn’t tell her as I feared it might give her an apoplexy. Look now at her face—at the shock you’ve given her.”

Eleanor’s mother shook her head, her face falling with disappointment, though only Eleanor knew the truth behind the breaking of the Countess’s composure.

“You told everyone how cold I was,” Eleanor said to Lord Ledsey. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to attract new suitors while saddled with the moniker Ice Queen? I wanted to learn how to be kinder, sweeter, more likeable—the way your lovely Lady Alice has always been.”

A sad, despairing part of Eleanor bade her skim the room for Charles once more. But truly she did not need to confirm what her heart already knew. He had not come. He had abandoned her to this fate.

It would appear she had been too aggressive in their conversation earlier that day. She had badgered him into agreeing to marry her.

The Earl of Devonington turned to Eleanor, the quizzing glass firmly lodged against his owlish eye. “Are you saying this is true, Lady Eleanor?”

How could she deny it?

The attention of all attendees fell on Eleanor. “It is true,” she whispered.

Hugh folded his arms over his chest, satisfied with her answer.

Lady Canterbury strode forward and placed herself between Eleanor and Devonington. “Your Ladyship, kindly escort your daughter from my home. She is no longer welcome here.”

Eleanor’s mother opened her mouth and shook her head. “It was—”

“Forgive me, Mother,” Eleanor rushed in. “I should have told you.”

Her mother gave a small nod and reached for her with a trembling hand. Eleanor took it and pulled her mother close. Together they slipped behind their societal shields, their faces devoid of all emotion despite the torrents driving through them.

The music had stopped and the silence of so many people lent a surreal presence to the room. A wall of jewel-toned gowns and waistcoats parted to make way for Eleanor and the Countess as they made their shameful departure from the rose-laden ball.

Their last ball. And not just for this Season.

Charles had not come and now even the possibility of wedding Devonington was gone. Eleanor had lost her prospects and damned them to a life of poverty, all in one awful evening.

The Murray women were completely and utterly ruined.

Charles’s head ached like the very devil himself. He groaned, and even the rasping growl in his throat set off a pain in his brain so deep the sound might as well be a sharpened weapon plunging through his skull.

Good God, what had he drunk to leave him so ill?

He hadn’t been this stale drunk since his university days. Well, aside from perhaps that one evening with the bottle of absinthe, after a French import had been impounded on the coast of Africa.

“Thomas...” The valet’s name came out in a slur.

Regardless, Thomas appeared beside the bed. “How are you feeling, Your Grace?”

“Like I’ve gone for a jaunt on the Thames and then been stampeded by a herd of elephants.”

Thomas tsked to himself and helped Charles sit upright.

The room spun and the sun streaming in through one window seared into Charles’s eyes.

Thomas pushed a glass of something murky and foul-smelling toward him. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

Charles grunted. “Isn’t it drinking which has got me to where I am presently?”

Thomas smirked in that obnoxiously optimistic, affable way of his. “One would assume so...though I find it odd that only one drink would cause you such misery.”

“Only one drink?” Charles slugged the bitter mixture down. It was thicker than he had expected and stuck in the back of his throat, no matter how many times he swallowed.