Page 17 of A Much Maligned Miss

“I hesitate to contradict you again so soon, but Lord and Lady Faris do not believe it, and neither does my godson.”

Caroline sat up in her seat. She knew about Teddy, of course, but the Farises? “They don’t?” She faltered.

“No. It seems young Teddy has always harbored an instinctive aversion to your mama. As for Emmeline, she took an unaccountable disliking to her on sight.”

Caroline reeled. “I can scarcely believe it. After all this time. Finally…” A single tear tracked down her cheek and she groped at her cuff for her handkerchief to wipe it away.

Lord Atherton had the good manners to pretend he had not noticed her embarrassing reaction. “It is true Jeremy was oblivious at first, but he has the good sense to be led in all things by his wife these days so…” He shrugged a shoulder. “As a result, he too stands firmly in your camp.”

“And what about you, my lord?” she asked.

“Me?”

“But perhaps your friends convinced you of my innocence.”

“Certainly not!” He sounded offended by the implication. “I knew nothing about your scurrilous reputation until the mutilation of your mother’s shawl that day.”

Caroline could not hold back her wince. Ah, that. Hot shame and embarrassment returned in full force. “Yet you did not believe me the guilty party at the time? Even before Teddy took the blame?”

“Of course not,” he answered contemptuously. “Your innocence was almost distressingly palpable. Besides, it was much more diverting to think of your mother’s twistedly setting you up to take the blame. She carries a sharp instrument in her reticule, I take it?”

“She did that day,” she replied, turning her head to look out of the window. For some reason she felt a stab of disappointment that he should have considered such a painful scene amusing. But after all, why should he not? Her situation was absurdly grotesque.

“It was not so much your innocence that I recognized,” he continued, “as her guilt. I know a liar when I see one. After all,” he concluded, “it takes one to know one.” Seeing her startled reaction, he waved a hand. “Oh, I have no pretentions to your mother’s excesses, but I am something of an adept should the occasion arise.”

“Such as when you need to invent a new cousin for traveling purposes?” she suggested.

“Precisely. Now, why do you look like that, I wonder?” he mused. “I tell you that you have no less than four people who believe in you and yet you sit there looking like Mariana in the Moated Grange.”

“Tennyson?” she queried uncertainly, for her schooling had been decidedly second rate.

He nodded, quoting, “‘She only said, “My life is dreary, He cometh not,” she said.’”

She smiled wanly. “It’s only that having finally found true friends, I find it is now necessary for me to leave them behind.”

“Not all of them,” he replied in a bored voice. “You still have me.”

Caroline stared at him. If you ignored his rude tone, then he had just called himself her true friend. Could she believe such a thing? She wanted to, so very, very badly.

He cleared his throat and abruptly changed the subject. “We have some nine stops to make today to change our horses.”

“Nine?” Caroline repeated in surprise. “I had not realized it was so many. And will we reach Exeter by nightfall?” He nodded. “It has been many years since I last made the journey,” she observed quietly.

“How long?”

“It must be some ten years. Not since I was at boarding school there.”

“You were sent by stagecoach?” He shot her a quizzical look.

“Yes, I rather enjoyed the adventure of it.”

“You went unattended?”

“Only until Edgar started at a school there too. Then we would travel together. Mother’s old footman used to accompany us, Lake. He retired a few years ago now.”

“And did Lake treat you as a coiled snake ready to strike at any moment?” he enquired lazily.

She considered this. “No, he treated both Edgar and I the same. Mind you, he was not particularly interested in either of us, so long as we sat in our seats and behaved ourselves.”