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“Thank you.”
“I allowed the nature of your entrance into my family to taint the way I viewed you, and I have since learned the value of forgiveness and contrition. You’ve impressed me in the last week or so. I observed the way you managed things today with the maid and James’s injury, and it was precisely how I would have done myself.”
The compliment she spoke was overshadowed by the two words I could not remove from my mind. Forgiveness and contrition? On whose part? She had nothing to forgive me for, since I had done nothing wrong in marrying her son.
Unless she was under the impression that the wedding was a product of my design—that I had been after his money or position or some such thing.
“Forgive my confusion, Lady Edith, but do you mean to say that you believe I somehow convinced James to marry me?”
She blinked in surprise. “Well, of course.”
Shock rippled through me like the curl of a wave crashing over the shore. Lady Edith not only knew of the rumors surrounding our engagement, she believed them. My good character had not so far proved my innocence?
“I’ll let you take that to James,” she said, nodding to the patch clutched tightly in my hands.
“No.”
Lady Edith startled. “What do you mean?”
“I will not accept that slight against my character. I’ve done nothing to earn it, so it cannot go uncontested.”
She gave an uneasy laugh. “Surely you see that I am not as easily convinced as others.”
“Convinced of my good character?” She drove the knife deeper with each new revelation. My hands shook, but my voice remained steady, sustained no doubt by my righteous indignation. “I have not made any attempts to dupe anyone, least of all this family. I have been incredibly straightforward and sincere since the beginning.”
Her eyes were hard. “I might not have been in London, but I have known James for the entirety of his life. My son would not have rashly married anyone unless she convinced him to. He had no reason otherwise to agree to the union. He is a man of prestige, a good name, a fortune—what cause would he have to marry a penniless girl of no real social standing if not for some persuasion or coercion on her part?”
I froze, doing my best to keep from trembling in my anger. Her opinions and beliefs were made abundantly clear. “You believe I seduced your son.”
She did not grace my crudeness with a reply.
I scoffed, unable to believe what I was hearing. The nature of her disdain was now clear, but not the depth for which she held onto it. It was one thing for the whole of London—veritable strangers—to believe ill of me. But this woman? After I spent weeks living in her home and proving myself?
“It might interest you to know that our predicament was a product of your son’s attempts to help me to overcome the nerves which accompany all social functions for me. The kindness he showed me was entirely without blame and wholly misinterpreted by those who discovered us. It was not my design to entrap him.”
Her skepticism was nearly palpable in the wrinkling of her nose and the downturn of her lips, and it rose my hackles.
“If anyone is to blame, Lady Edith, it is yourself,” I said. “Your son persisted in his desire to marry me on his own accord, without any persuasion. When I asked him why he insisted on going through with it, he explained that he had made a promise to his mother long ago, and he could never live with himself now if he did not do his part to save our reputations.”
“Promise?” Her lips pinched. “That promise was derived in a moment of desperation, when Thea was turned away from her father’s brother and delivered to our doorstep, hungry and scared. I requested that none of my sons ever ill-treat a woman in need, and they swore they would not. This situation hardly compares.”
Never to ill-treat a woman in need. James must have believed that if he walked away from me and left me to the mercy of the ton, he would be abandoning me. I could not change that now, but I was glad to understand it. The root of his motivations were chivalrous, much as I’d suspected.
Lady Edith, however, did not seem to agree. She watched me with the displeasure one reserved for a particularly foul odor. I swallowed the hurt that spread through my chest. “While you have been busy looking for someone to blame, I have been making the best of this difficult situation. We cannot change it now, Lady Edith, so I suggest you find a way to come to terms with the way things have come about.”
I turned away before my tongue could escape me further, my heart beating out of my chest, but she did not allow me to leave yet.
“How can you expect me to believe that you are not overjoyed to find yourself the mistress of Chelton? That you did not know what you were marrying into?”
I would not pop her inflated opinion of her family name by explaining that I had never before heard of her grand estate before James spoke of it, or that I was unaware of his income. I faced her. “It should be extremely clear by now that I cannot manage easily in social situations. I did not leave in the middle of the dance at Lady Grenville’s ball because I am ill from a child. I left because the overwhelming attention in the room nearly caused me to faint.”
“Faint?”
“Yes. I am no more able to control my physical discomfort in situations where large groups of people are watching me than you are your uneasy stomach in a carriage. When you remove the prejudices you have so liberally placed upon me, you might see that I am anything but a fortune or husband hunter.”
“You cannot claim innocence when you admitted you were acquainted with Henry just last summer.”
My mouth fell open, and I shook my head. “Henry did not tell me the name of his estate or his brothers. He did not speak of his immense wealth, and I did not surmise its depth from the little time I spent in your hunting box. Good heavens, Lady Edith.” I laughed mirthlessly. “You may ask him yourself, for you clearly do not believe me, but surely you can trust that Henry’s nature is not a boastful one. I did not even learn James’s surname until after we were engaged.”
