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Mama’s eyes closed, and she looked to be searching for patience. “We cannot track him down if we do not know who he is.”
“If Mrs. Hutton is to be believed, our names will be irrevocably connected by morning. I am certain you will not struggle to learn it then.”
Her eyes snapped to me. “True.”
“But I will not marry him, and we cannot expect him to agree to marry me. It was only a dance, Mama. We were each escaping the ballroom. That one foolish choice should not force us to spend the remainder of our lives together, surely.”
She opened the door and took the awaiting footman’s hand before stepping out onto the street. I followed her up the steps and waited when she paused at the door to our townhouse. She turned to me. “You have placed us in a very uncomfortable position, Felicity. Whatever your father says, you must agree to it. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, doing my best to keep the shame and regret from my voice. We were in a mess of my own doing, and I would find a way to crawl out of it and restore our good name. Short of marrying a stranger. “I will do whatever it takes.”
* * *
My father was a soft-spoken man. He enjoyed quiet outdoor pursuits like hunting and riding, and he never raised his voice. Typically, I appreciated his calm nature. But the quiet, thoughtful way he watched me this morning, his eyes cast away and sorrow seeping over his brow, nearly destroyed me. I had disappointed him, and that hurt far worse than any anger he could throw at me. I wished he would rant and rave and yell.
He stood by the fireplace, fingering his pocket watch. “We cannot rely on this man’s good character, Cynthia. He has so far proven that it is anything but good.”
Mama’s lips pinched, and her shadowed eyes looked to the morning light filtering through the drawing room window. She paced behind the sofa. “Perhaps an extended holiday would be best.”
Papa nodded, moving to sit on the sofa opposite me. I was present, but neither of my parents were really speaking to me. “Surely your sister would be glad to receive Felicity at Arden Castle,” Papa said. “She must be lonely now that Jane has married.”
Mama looked less convinced, continuing her pacing. “Or perhaps a visit to Jane and her new husband would be the thing. It would only need to be a year or so.”
“Visit Jane and Ewan in Scotland?” I questioned, gathering the attention of both my parents. I adored my cousin, but I was unsure if I could bear to live apart from my family for an entire year—and so far away. “You wish to send me away to Scotland for a year?”
Mama crossed to where my father sat on the sofa opposite me and lowered herself beside him. He took her hand and held it in his lap. They had always appeared a united front, their relationship strong and healthy and exactly what I had wanted to emulate in my own marriage one day. But now I felt the sting of separation wrought by my thoughtlessness and presented by the space between us. A chasm had opened, and my parents were completely out of reach.
“It will only be until the gossip has settled,” Papa said. “Then you can return, and we will rejoin Society and prove—”
“No. That will not work.” Mama frowned. It lifted a burden from me to hear her objection. Might I be allowed to stay with them? “If we send Felicity away for a year and then have her return, it will only confirm the rumors. The entire ton will believe she left to deliver a baby. If she remains in Town, at least her waistline can prove her innocence.”
My relief was short-lived. If I remained in Town, I would be subjected to the ton’s censure. I took a little relief in the simple fact that my parents believed me to be innocent, but there was no course of action available to me that was not entirely distasteful.
“If Felicity was to marry,” Mama said quietly, “at least she could go away and not bear the slights or the cuts from her friends in Town.”
Slights? Cuts? My own friends—few as they were—would stoop so low over a rumor?
“Do you not believe we are perhaps worrying for nothing?” I asked lightly. I could not imagine Marianne Hutton or Eliza Gould giving me the cut direct.
“No,” Mama said without hesitation.
“But the Pickering ball is this evening. What if we were to attend, and—”
A knock at the drawing room door cut my words to the hilt, and I clamped my mouth shut. My parents looked at the door as though it held their reckoning.
“Enter,” Papa called.
A footman let himself into the room and crossed to Papa, bearing a silver tray with a card. Papa lifted the card, and Mama read the name over his shoulder. She looked to me. “You mentioned last night that his name was James?”
I nodded.
“Then he has come to pay a visit.”
My lungs squeezed, unable to draw a full breath.
Papa stood at once. “I shall meet with him in the study.” My parents shared a glance, and Papa nodded in an unspoken code. Whatever they had agreed on, I did not believe I would find it very pleasant.
My father’s click-clack of shoes across the wood-planked floor set the beat to my racing pulse. I could not believe James was now in my home, that he awaited a meeting with Papa in the entryway two floors below us. The silence was thick in the room, and I could not bear to sit still a moment longer.
