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Chapter Twenty-Two
Perdie’s courses arrived the next day. She was always miserable on the first day of her courses, but as she finished dressing and let Hattie fashion her hair, she felt more so than usual. The doldrums licked at her heels, beckoning her back to bed. She dismissed Hattie as soon as her hair was tucked away from her face and sat staring into the reflection of her vanity mirror. She looked paler than usual, her eyes seeming darker against her wan flesh. Today, her reflection didn’t look like that of a confident woman, and it irked her.
She ought to be relieved. Relieved that she would not have to flounder to raise a child when she felt barely out of leading strings herself. But beneath that relief was something more heartbreaking.
Perdie missed Thaddeus with every emotion in her heart. She turned away from her reflection and stood. The chair screeched on the floor.
Her brother and his wife weren’t in the breakfast room, and for that she was glad. She didn’t have the fortitude for company just yet. She directed the footman for no more than a few slices of bread and a warm cup of chocolate. She barely nibbled at the bread. Although she’d slathered it with butter and her favorite marmalade, it still looked unappetizing. Perhaps she would return to bed.
She savored her second cup of chocolate, the cup warm between her palms. The heartbeat throbbing at her temples was matched down the corridor by brisk footsteps. Perdie held still, afraid to breathe too loudly, lest she draw unwanted attention from her family members.
Her mother marched nearly past the breakfast room. Dressed in a trim green riding habit, with her auburn hair piled neatly atop her head, she looked as though she was on her way out of the house. Yet, when she came abreast of the open doorway, she chanced a look inside. Her confident steps faltered when she saw Perdie.
Drat.
“Perdie, there you are. I’ve been looking for you all morning.”
Mama entered, removing her gloves one finger at a time and placing them neatly on the table as she sat. She asked for a cup of tea from the footman and received it.
Perdie mumbled, “I haven’t been feeling well.”
Mama’s brow wrinkled. “Oh dear.” She reached out to press her hand against Perdie’s forehead, then her cheek. She clucked under her tongue, mouth scrunching. “Shall I send for the physician?”
Perdie shook her head. “I have cramps, that’s all.”
Her mother plucked the half-consumed cup of chocolate from her hands and set it out of reach. “Then you ought to be drinking tea, not this. You know how chocolate gives you a stomach ache at this time of the month.”
Perdie made a face and reached ineffectually for the cup. “I’m a grown woman, Mama. I can make my own decisions.”
Mama took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re young, yet. Sometimes I wonder if you don’t know the consequences that some of your decisions will have.”
She wasn’t talking about the chocolate.
Perdie shut her eyes. “Mama, not today,” she pleaded.
Mama squeezed Perdie’s hand. “I understand that you’d rather avoid the entire situation, but you cannot. Whether or not it was a misunderstanding, your reputation is in tatters. I don’t know how long I can hold your brother off before he makes a decision about your future that you may not agree with.”
Perdie opened her eyes at once. He promised I could trust him. “He wouldn’t. He knows how I feel about marriage. He knows—”
A furrow formed between the dowager duchess’s eyebrows. She searched her daughter’s face but didn’t seem to find what she was looking for. “He thinks you will be happier if you keep your friends. To him, marrying you off is the only way to do that.”
Perdie yanked her hand away. “It isn’t. Theo ought to have dissuaded him of that notion. Our friendship is not conditional. It is not dependent on behaving in a certain way or having a certain status among the ton. We’re women who care for each other, who support each other unconditionally.”
Mama pressed her lips together. “Sebastian fears that support will last only so long. He knows the rumors. Right now, they assume when your earl returns that you will marry him. Sebastian told me differently.”
Perdie clasped her hands on her lap, knuckles white with the tension. At least they were out of sight, where Mama couldn’t see her comportment start to fail. “He is not my earl.”
He could be.
He had left London for his estate. She’d told him never to see her again, and he’d found that…acceptable. The last excuse she would have to see him—if she had been with child—was now resolved. They had no ties to one another. And she was dying inside. Unable to breathe around the very idea.
Even with her friends, she felt strangely lonely without him.
“We’ve been getting fewer invitations. You’ve gotten none.”
Perdie hated the burn of rejection in her chest. She thrust out her chin and said, “I don’t want to attend their events anyway. My friends will invite me, when they have events of their own.”
Mama looked ponderous. Even pitying. She said, “I remember when you first pleaded to marry Lord Owen. You vowed you were in love.”
