Page 60

The Addisons’ drawing room was crowded with gentlewomen. Cleo sprang to her feet and walked to meet her after Yasmin was announced.

“Good morning,” Yasmin said. She dropped into a curtsy—and swayed.

“Darling, what is the matter?” Cleo hissed, catching her arm.

“I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Shall I send my guests home?”

Yasmin managed a faint smile. “Of course not. That would ensure a scandal.”

“Come sit beside me,” Cleo said, towing her across the room. Yasmin sank down on the settee, registering numbly that the worst possible pair—Mrs. Turing and Lady Dunlap—were seated opposite. United in their loathing of Yasmin, they dared not give her the cut direct in front of Cleo. Instead, they nodded frigidly.

For once in her life, Yasmin turned her head away and cut them.

Why should she be endlessly polite to poisonous women who were so eager to hurt her feelings?

“Have a scone and some tea,” Cleo said. “You look exquisite as always, but if you’ll forgive me, darling, you are not yourself. You are too thin.”

“I’d rather not have a scone, thank you. I feel nauseated this morning.”

“The last time I was queasy was when I was carrying my dear son Edwin,” Mrs. Turing muttered to her companion.

Yasmin’s head was spinning with sadness, but she was tired, bone-tired, of nasty whispers. She met the woman’s mean eyes and lost her head. “Are you insinuating that I might have conceived a child with your poetry-writing son, Mrs. Turing?”

“God forbid!”

“I have never encouraged his poetry, nor have I ever found myself alone in a room with him, no matter how much he attempted to inveigle me.”

“Thank goodness,” Mrs. Turing said, her sour smile growing larger.

“You and I both know that I wouldn’t be the bride in that scenario!” Yasmin flashed back.

Too late, she heard indrawn breaths around them.

And: “I knew it!”

Yasmin turned her head slowly and realized for the first time that Lydia was in the room. Not only that, but she had leaped from her chair.

“I told my brother that you could not keep a secret. I told him that you were a liar!”

Yasmin sucked in a breath, not sure what to say. Mrs. Turing seemed equally frozen. The matron definitely didn’t want Edwin to be forced to marry Lydia—which he would be if people realized they had been alone together.

Cleo frowned at Lydia. “My dear friend Yasmin is no liar. I must ask that you apologize, Lady Lydia. I am sure that you did not mean what you just said.”

Lydia’s mouth clamped shut, and her eyes showed bleak horror. She had realized, Yasmin thought dully, that she was the only one who would suffer if the righteous ladies of London society realized that Edwin Turing had played the voluptuary with her, and that even his own mother knew of it.

“You don’t understand,” Lydia said with a gasp.

“Lady Lydia has no reason to apologize,” Yasmin said, intervening. “The truth is that I entered a drawing room to find Mr. Turing proposing marriage to Lady Lydia on his knees, in the most romantic fashion, as one would expect from him. I hasten to add that they were properly chaperoned. The young lady refused him.”

Lydia swallowed hard. Her cheeks had turned purple.

“He wept,” Yasmin continued with a touch of disdain. “Cried with all the fervor of his poetic temperament. I did promise that I would never reveal the event, and I apologize for blurting out the truth. I am particularly sorry to mention your son’s disappointment in such a public setting,” Yasmin said, looking at Mrs. Turing. “I hope that he has recovered his former good spirits.”

“You know young men!” Mrs. Turing tittered. “He was saddened . . . but . . .” Her voice ran out.

“I’m sure he will find a bride in time,” Cleo put in.