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Chapter Forty-Seven
“My Lady! My Lady…!” Matilda called after Evelina as she hurried through the crowded ballroom. She had to leave. She had to leave, immediately, before Father began his toast and she was trapped here.
Thomas had to know the truth.
Lovely women in beautiful dresses spun and giggled all around her. Handsome gentlemen laughed and joked with one another over their champagne flutes. It all felt very dreamlike, as though she was running in circles. This was her own home, but why couldn’t she navigate her way out of this crowd?
“My Lady,” Matilda hissed, finally reaching her and crossing every line imaginable by grabbing a fistful of her dress, “stop.”
“Unhand me,” said Evelina, affronted and panicked at once. But from the shock and hurt that crossed Matilda’s face, she immediately regretted her harshness. Matilda had done nothing but stand by her side through all of this, after all.
“Your Father is about to make his toast,” Matilda hissed lowly, when it was at least apparent she had Evelina’s attention. “You are not seriously attempting to flee from your own engagement ball?”
It was a ludicrous notion, to be sure. Evelina had thought the very same thing less than an hour before.
But…now that she had overheard Jerome, and knew what had actually gone bad in the business deal…that her own father was not at fault, and there was proof of that…
Well, she and Thomas would still have some trust issues to work out. But she could not go forward with marrying Jerome now. She did not care about the damage leaving would do to her reputation. She did not care about anything at all. If Thomas loved her as he said—and this afternoon in the shed, he’d implied with his words and actions that he would take her regardless of any social disgrace that would arise from breaking her engagement—then Evelina would steel herself to handle it all.
“I do believe I am,” Evelina admitted, both to Matilda and to her own self.
Matilda did not hide her exasperation well. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked as though she was fighting every instinct imaginable not to turn her eyes skyward and plea for some sort of miraculous intervention.
Evelina hovered on the balls of her feet, biting her lip. Was this it? Was this the instance in which she crossed the line, when Matilda would abandon her or give up Evelina’s secrets to her parents?
On the distant side of the room, one of the servants rang a bell. They rang it again. “May I present the host of this evening’s event, his Grace, Lord Leonard Talbot, Duke of Alderleaf.”
“Oh, no,” Evelina said, her stomach sinking as Father stood up in front of the crowd. He was about to make the toast.
“Blast it all,” Matilda muttered, now actually turning her eyes skyward. Before Evelina could ask after her, Matilda leveled her with a look of extreme, unprecedented determination. “I’ll enlist Diana to help; after this afternoon, I am confident she will do so. Now,go.”
And Matilda fainted.
Or…pretended to faint. One minute she’d been upright, the next, she was sliding to the ground and collapsing in a flopping sprawl in the most dramatic way possible.
“Oh!” exclaimed Lady Leticia from a few feet away. “Oh, a woman has fainted! Is there a physician present? Does anyone have smelling salts? How terrifying, she nearly fell on top ofme!”
Evelina took a shaky step back as the crowd parted to give the fallen Matilda space. She was too stunned to move. Was this really happening?
It seemed so—across the room, the toast had stopped, with Father looking concerned and Mother hustling through the crowd, attended by her own lady’s maid, to see to the situation spoiling her party.
Mother.
That thought was enough to break Evelina out of her stupor. She would not waste Matilda’s gift.
She turned from the scene and pressed her way back through the crowd. She made it to the foyer. She made it out the front door, brushing past the servants who had been assigned to take outerwear in a flurry.
“My Lady…?” one of them called after her, confused.
Evelina did not stop. She ran up to the first carriage she saw, huffing and puffing, her breath a white cloud in the first truly chilly night of the season. “Please, good sir. I must enlist your services—I am bound for Elvington Manor. It is an emergency.”
The coachman looked more than a little stunned. He had been leaning against the carriage, covertly preparing a pipe to smoke while he awaited whoever his employer was to return from the ball, but upon Evelina’s approach, he’d nearly spilled the tobacco atop the cobblestone circular drive.
“I…I’m sorry, I’m afraid I cannot—” His eyes darted this way and that, as though looking for Evelina’s escort or handler.
Enough of this, Evelina thought, glancing over her shoulder. The longer she dawdled, the more likely someone would come out looking for her, and then all would truly be lost.
“Never mind,” she said brusquely. “I shall handle it all myself.”
