Page 35 of Not Just Any Earl
“I beg your pardon, my lady.” Watkins, Lady Fosberry’s butler, came into the drawing room. “Lady Dingley and Lady Christine are here, and they’re quite anxious to speak to you.”
Lady Fosberry’s eyes shot into her hairline. “Are they, indeed? Well, by all means, Watkins, show them in. My goodness,” Lady Fosberry whispered after Watkins left the room. “What do you suppose they want?”
Juliet rolled her eyes. “I don’t dare speculate.”
A moment later Lady Dingley and Lady Christine swept into the drawing room and crowded onto the settee across from Lady Fosberry, neither of them offering so much as a nod to either Emmeline or Juliet. They may as well not have been in the room, for all the notice Lady Dingley and her daughter took of them.
Lady Fosberry frowned, but she greeted Lady Dingley with forced cordiality. “My dear Lady Dingley, how do you do?”
“Why, we’re perfectly awful, Lady Fosberry! My palpitations are so dreadful I could hardly drag myself out of bed this morning, and only look at my poor, dear Christine! Lord Melrose has broken her heart. He’s a scoundrel, make no mistake.”
If Lady Christine had looked the least bit heartbroken, Emmeline would have felt quite guilty, indeed, but there was no sorrow in those pretty blue eyes, no grief in the sullen pinch of her rosebud lips.
Lady Christine wasn’t heartbroken. She was furious.
“Naturally, we came directly to you, my lady. I daresay I shouldn’t be abroad at all in my sad condition, but I told Christine we simply must come to see you. ‘Christine,’ I said to her this morning, ‘We must go and see Lady Fosberry.’ The ton is laughing at us, but I knew you would never abandon us in our hour of need.”
Lady Fosberry blinked, taken aback by this sudden display of tender affection from Lady Dingley. “Er, yes, of course. I’m happy to help, Lady Dingley, only I don’t know what I can do.”
“Why, you can tell me the name of every young lady who attended your ball the other night,” Lady Dingley exclaimed, as if it were all perfectly obvious.
“I beg your pardon,” Lady Fosberry said coolly. “But I don’t see how that will improve matters.”
“You don’t suppose we’re going to allow this so-called Lady in Lavender, or Lady in Periwinkle, or whatever godforsaken color Cudworth has decided upon today to destroy my poor Christine’s happiness, do you? We mean to see her brought to account! Christine would be the Countess of Melrose by now if it weren’t for that harlot!”
Emmeline gasped, appalled. Lord Cross had warned them it would come to this, but to hear such venom spewing directly from Lady Dingley’s lips was distressing, indeed.
“Forgive me, Lady Dingley, but Lord Melrose has had the entire season to offer for your daughter. If he intended to do so, surely he’d have done it by now.” Juliet appeared calm, but Emmeline recognized the flush on her sister’s cheeks for the fury it was.
Lady Christine didn’t deign to reply, but her cold blue gaze shot to Juliet’s face, her eyes narrowing to slits.
“I’m afraid it’s out of the question, Lady Dingley.” Lady Fosberry’s had gone from cool to icy.
Lady Dingley had been dabbing a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, but her tears dried on her cheeks in a burst of hot anger at Lady Fosberry’s refusal. “I can’t imagine what reason you’d have to refuse us, unless…”
For the first time since she’d sailed through the door, Lady Dingley seemed to become aware that Emmeline and Juliet were in the room. Her livid gaze went from one to the other of them, then back again. “Unless you already know the lady’s name, and wish to keep it a secret?”
Lady Fosberry’s face went so red Emmeline actually leapt to her feet. “My lady—”
“I beg your pardon, Lady Fosberry.” Watkins entered, his face remaining as blank as any well-trained servant’s did when he came upon his mistress in a towering fury. “Lord Melrose and Lord Cross are here.”
Everyone in Lady Fosberry’s drawing room froze with their faces turned toward the door in a freakish tableau that might have made Emmeline laugh, if she hadn’t been on the verge of casting up her accounts.
Neither Lord Melrose nor Lord Cross were as circumspect as Watkins. Both gentlemen were smiling when they entered the room, but their smiles vanished the moment they caught sight of Lady Dingley and Lady Christine.
No one said anything for some moments, but then Lady Dingley fixed a watery blue eye on Lord Melrose, and drew herself up with all the offended dignity of a lady who thought herself deeply wronged. “How wonderful to see you looking so very hale and hearty, Lord Melrose. If only I could say the same for my poor, dear Christine.”
If Lady Dingley expected Lord Melrose to display any consciousness of guilt, she was disappointed. He merely offered Lady Christine a perfunctory bow. “I’m sorry to hear Lady Christine is unwell, madam.”
“Well, I don’t see how she could be otherwise, my lord, given the mortifying incidents of the past few days.”
Lord Melrose raised an eyebrow at this, but otherwise his face remained blank. “Mortifying, my lady? I don’t see how.”
“Do you not?” Lady Dingley let out a shrill laugh. “My dear Lord Melrose, there has always been an understanding between our families—”
“Forgive me, madam, but there is no understanding beyond a hope expressed by my mother when I was no more than a child. I have never offered for Lady Christine. We are not now, nor have we ever been betrothed.”
A shocked silence followed this bald statement. Lady Dingley was speechless, but her cheeks flushed an ominous red.
