Elizabeth was immediately conscious of her half-buttoned gown under her pelisse and her disheveled hair under her bonnet.
“Then it would appear the viscount and I are acquainted,” her mother’s voice had iced over.
Derek acknowledged the fact with a terse nod.
“Elizabeth, remove your things and let us all adjourn to the drawing room where we can speak in private. If Lord Creswell has no objections,” her mother added.
There was no way she could remove either the bonnet or the pelisse. And she was certain her sharp-eyed mother was aware of it.
“Mrs. Smi—Lady Bartlett, I’d prefer to speak with you in private.”
Relief made Elizabeth almost light-headed. Before her mother could form a response, Elizabeth turned and fled up the stairs and straight into the privacy of her bedchamber.
Lady Bartlett was exactly as Derek remembered her. A petite thing who carried herself with a regal grace that suggested her origins had not been working class or even gentry. Six years ago, he’d thought she’d been simply putting on airs. He wasn’t so certain of it now.
Upon entering the drawing room, she dismissed the maid dusting around the fireplace. She settled herself on the sofa and then motioned for him to take a seat.
Derek obliged her, ready for charges that he’d compromised her daughter and demands for a marriage. Six years later, the players were different, but the scenario unchanged.
“Lord Creswell, have you compromised my daughter?” she asked in a most civilized tone.
Derek was taken aback by the question, so very pointed and without the hysterics that had followed the accusation when she’d launched it at his brother. “Is that not a question you should ask your daughter, my lady?”
“I would rather ask you directly. Lizzie has a soft heart and mightn’t tell me the truth.”
It would appear the daughters had learned deception at the feet of their mother. She would now act as if they—the whole lot of them—hadn’t planned all this down to the smallest detail.
“Your daughter is no worse off than when I first met her.”
Her back snapped straighter and her regard narrowed. Anger pursed her mouth. “I want you to stay away from my daughter,” she said in excruciatingly crisp tones.
Stay away from my daughter.
It should have brought him relief because it sounded all very good. Seconds elapsed before he concluded the notion settled as well as an overcooked soufflé.
This he hadn’t expected. Either the warning or his reaction to it. Indeed, it should be he who should be angry for it was he who had been duped.
“You want me to keep away from her? Me?” As if they need worry about him dogging her, unable to stay away for the want of her. Lady Bartlett couldn’t possibly mean it. This had to be part of their ploy.
“I certainly am not about to make the same mistake my husband and I made with Maddie when your brother treated her so shamefully.”
Derek stiffened in affront. “Your daughter—”
A slender hand shot up to halt his speech. “My daughter,” the baroness said, her lips bitterly tight, “was all of seventeen years to your brother’s nineteen. Despite claims to the contrary, he was the one who seduced her with promises of a future together and marriage.”
“My brother would not lie to me.”
“And if you believe that, you’re not nearly as bright as you appear.”
“I would certainly believe my brother over your daughter.”
Lady Bartlett opened her mouth and then abruptly closed it and drew in a breath. “My lord, have you never been wrong about anything or anyone? I shall be the first to admit that I have. I was wrong about you. We met under the most difficult of circumstances and while you struck me as fiercely loyal and protective of your family, you also appeared to be the kind of man who wouldn’t make an innocent pay. I know something has occurred between you and my daughter, and I can see she’s hurting. But know this, Elizabeth is the innocent in all of this. She was fifteen years when this occurred and should not be held accountable.”
When the baroness finished, Derek felt all of two feet tall. And he didn’t like being brought down so low. Which was probably why, he found himself saying, “Since you have essentially warned me away from your daughter, shall I have a bank dr—”
“I don’t want your damn money.” She wasn’t quite so ladylike now, her eyes flashing in fury, her face shades pinker.
“You demanded it once.” That she could not deny.
“It would behoove you to get your facts straight. Neither my husband nor I demanded money. The money was offered.”
Derek wasn’t accustomed to anyone speaking to him as if he were a child. At least not since he had been one.
The baroness was not yet finished with him. “What would you have done in our place with little money and my daughter’s reputation in tatters because of your brother? We lived in a small town, which as you can imagine, made my daughter’s marital prospects all but nonexistent. We were forced to settle most of the money on her to ensure a good marriage.”
“My brother was the injured party. Your daughter knew exactly what she was doing.”
They’d been embroiled in the same bitter argument six years ago. Nothing good would come of dredging up the past.
Something fierce flashed in the baroness’s eyes. A lioness ready to destroy anything or anyone in order to protect her young. She arose abruptly, her burgundy skirts whirling at her feet. “I will see you out.”
Derek didn’t know why he was surprised, but he was. No one had ever dismissed him. Ever.
Derek rose. “Elizabeth—”
“Do not concern yourself with my daughter,” she snapped.
It was clear she suspected he had compromised her daughter and she was…letting him go. No demands for marriage and she’d even turned down his offer of money before he’d even managed to make it.
As if she read the confusion in his face, she relented. “I saw my daughter unhappily married to a man she did not love and did not love her. I won’t visit the same misery upon another. I want my girls to be loved and cherished, no matter the cost. If doing so requires that we never again step foot in London, so be it.”
Derek digested the news but that was not to say it went down easy. He followed the baroness from the room. He’d never thought about what had happened to Madeline Smith, his anger toward her had been too blind for that.
They arrived in the foyer. A footman stood posted at the front door, which surprised him as Derek hadn’t noticed him when they’d arrived.
He turned to the baroness. “Lady Bartlett—”
“Good evening, Lord Creswell,” she said with withering finality. She spun on her heel, crossed the foyer and ascended the stairs.
Just as he’d once thought to wash his hands of the whole Smith family, the baroness had obviously washed her hands of him.
This should have relieved him.
It did not.
~*~*~
A knock sounded on Elizabeth’s bedroom door ten minutes later.
It was her mother. She had a distinctive rat-a-tat-tat knock.
When her mother stepped into the room, Elizabeth knew she knew. But during the next hour in which they spoke, her mother never asked her directly, Are you still a virgin? It was as if she didn’t want to know. She also said nothing about the conversation she’d had with the viscount and Elizabeth didn’t ask. Instead, she shared everything she believed her mother should know: the incident in the garden and Lady Danvers.
Her mother didn’t scold her or promise to make things alright, she just opened her arms to her, held her close and whispered, “If you do nothing else in this life, my dear, marry for love and you’ll have no regrets.”
She then asked Elizabeth if she wished to go home with her when she left. But Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to abandon what would undoubtedly be her first and last London Season. And it wasn’t because she so adored the social whirl—although it was exciting. No, as much as it pained her to admit it even to herself, especially given his treachery, when she departed London, she would never see him again.