A Fallen Woman (7 page)

‘It is far more interesting than the stuff I
am
supposed to read,’
Liza returned promptly. ‘Are you really all right?’

‘
I am indeed. Do not take it into your head that I have a
problem. I am perfectly content.’

Liza gave
her a look, blue eyes holding an expression that was startlingly
like Charlotte’s. How tiresome it was, having a pair of sisters
that were so protective and far too perceptive. At nine (almost
ten, it must be admitted), Liza had all the observational skills of
a female twice her age, even if she did lack the decorum not to
give voice to what she saw. The next few days would become even
more fraught if the youngest of the Sheridan children took it into
her head to become Rachel’s protector. Chaos was likely to
ensue.

‘
Do you like the earl?’ Liza demanded abruptly, seguing in an
unexpected direction.

The
abruptness of the question made Rachel glance towards Worsley who
happened to be looking at her. Their eyes met before he turned
abruptly back to her father, with whom he had been engaged in
conversation.

‘
He appears perfectly amiable,’ Rachel said, slightly shaken by
the expression she had seen in those dark grey eyes. She wasn’t
sure what his look had actually held. She wasn’t sure that she
wanted to know, either.

‘
Have you met him before?’

Rachel glanced
at her sister. ‘We met in London some years ago,’ she admitted
cautiously. As young as she was, Liza had not been privy to the
story that lay behind Rachel’s disgrace, although the entire
household suspected she knew more than she should. Sometimes it was
best not to ask.

‘
I thought he had met you,’ her sister’s tone suggested one
mystery had been solved.

‘
Why?’ Rachel asked uneasily. ‘Why should you think
so?’

‘
The way he looks at you.’

The way he looks at me? I had not thought that he had
looked at me at a
ll. With that one glance I surprised out of him, he has
been entirely fixed on anything other than this part of the
room.

‘
I am sure that you are imagining it,’ she said, having decided
not to get Liza to interpret what she had thought she’d seen.
Instinct told Rachel it was better she did not know. ‘We did not
know each other very well at all.’

For a
moment it seemed that Liza might respond but instead she was
distracted by the arrival of their brother George and his wife,
Lydia. ‘George!’ she said, jumping to her feet and surging
forward.

Rachel
was grateful for the reprieve. She had not cared for the turn the
conversation had taken and could only hope that Liza would be too
distracted by the events of the coming days to revisit a subject
that should definitely not be explored further. Rachel had no idea
how Worsley looked at her – although she’d had a hint of it when
their eyes had so briefly locked together – and was eager to have
it remain so. She must have hurt him deeply when she had rejected
him, if he still carried the scar so transparently. She would
attempt an apology if the right opportunity presented itself. That
was all she could do.

Happily
the arrival of George, the second eldest of the Sheridan
children, proved a pleasant diversion and any dark undertones
Rachel had thought she detected entirely vanished. Adam and
Charlotte’s infectious good mood kept the conversation fizzing
along nicely, while Liza buzzed between people, delighted by to be
reunited with George. He and Lydia only lived ten miles away and
were frequent visitors but their arrival – and discussion of the
forthcoming wedding – made for a merry gathering.

The final guests,
James and Charity, arrived an hour before dinner
and the party was complete. Charity swept into the parlor, her pale
blue eyes moving from one person to the next as if trying to access
what she might have missed.

‘
James!’ Lady Sheridan said warmly, rising to her feet and
coming forward. ‘And Charity. How lovely that you are here before
dinner. We did not know how the roads would be.’

‘
Dreadful,’ Charity said, leaning forward to kiss the air next
to her mother-in-law’s cheek. James more than compensated by
enfolding Lady Sheridan in a warm embrace. ‘They were a
disgrace.’

‘
The roads?’ Lord Sheridan inquired mildly, coming forward to
shake his son’s hand. ‘What have they done now?’

Charity
gave him a cool look. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you are looking very
well.’

Rachel
hid a grin. Charity made it sound like an accusation. No doubt she
was hoping that her father-in-law’s excellent health would have
begun to fail. Charity might try to disguise her eagerness, but she
longed for the day when she would be mistress of Thorncroft.
Everybody else had good reason to be delighted by Lord Sheridan’s
continuing robust constitution. She and James lived in Kent, in the
small, elegant manor house that had come to Margaret Sheridan upon
the death of her aunt. The place needed a steward and when James
had married Charity, his parents had offered the use of the estate
so that they could start their married life in their own
household.

The offer
might have been refused, for Thorncroft was far grander, but the
general, unspoken consensus was that Charity would not enjoy being
powerless to order things to her liking and so James and Charity
started their married life at some distance from Northumberland.
Much as they would miss James, everybody at Thorncroft had given a
sigh of relief. Nobody had wished to be under the same roof as the
new addition.

Charity’s
gaze had come to rest on Worsley and she pursed her lips, trying to
place him. She was unsuccessful – the earl had been absent for too
long, it seemed. Instead, Charity’s eyes moved on to Rachel and her
expression hardened imperceptibly.

‘
Rachel,’ her sister-in-law greeted her coolly.

‘Charity,’ Rachel returned politely. ‘How are
you?’

‘
Cold. I wished to stop at an inn for the night but your
brother was eager to arrive. I cannot imagine that one more night
would have mattered.’

Rachel glanced
at her brother, full of admiration that he had withstood his wife’s
demands. James was a sweet natured fellow who usually succumbed to
Charity’s stronger will. He met her eyes and smiled.

‘I
thought it best to push on. I was eager to see you all. You’re
looking in top condition, my dear.’

Charity
turned her glacial blue stare on her husband. ‘She is not a horse,
James. And your family would still have been here tomorrow so
taking our rest at a suitable establishment would hardly have
signified.’

‘Of course they would have been here b
ut so are we now and it all
looks quite delightful.’ And he turned to greet his
father.

Rachel met Charity’s chilly
eyes and almost smiled at the chagrin in
them. ‘At least you have found a decent fire here,’ she said
quietly. ‘I daresay you will soon be warm.’

Charity made a small moue of discontent and turned away
abruptly. Rachel sighed inwardly, wishing her brother had chosen a
nicer woman to marry. A
kinder
woman. Charity always assumed a proprietary air
when she was at Thorncroft, looking around at her surroundings with
a calculating gaze, as if mentally evaluating the worth of the
furniture and the size of the rooms. It was true that she would one
day be mistress of the place – James was the eldest son and it
would come to him after his father died – but all the family found
her air of possessive assurance to be singularly irritating. If she
felt the rest of the family’s dislike she clearly did not care, for
her attitude of superiority never dimmed.

‘One would think she was the daughter of a duke!’ Charlotte
had sniffed one day, after a particularly irksome exchange.
‘Instead of star
ting life as plain Miss Fitzwilliam. Her father was only a
mister, after all.’

‘Ah, but her mother was a Talford and they are
practically
royalty
,’ Rachel had countered. ‘Haven’t you been listening, these
past four years?’

‘As if I could do anything else
,’ her sister had returned tartly.
‘And all I can say is that I’m ashamed of Mrs. Fitzwilliams, nee
Talford, for marrying so far beneath her. If she had set her sights
on a prince for her precious daughter, we would not have to deal
with the ghastly creature now.’

Lady
Sheridan might deplore these unkind sentiments although she did so
in such a mild manner that everybody knew she disliked Charity as
much as the rest of her family but was simply too good natured to
say so.

As Rachel
sat back in her chair and listened to Charity hold forth on the
travails of their journey, a soliloquy that could go on for some
time, she glanced towards Worsley once more, wondering what he made
of her sister-in-law, and received a shock when their eyes locked
together once again for a long, disconcerting moment. Grey eyes, as
chill as the bleak weather beyond the window, stared into her own
for what seemed to be an achingly long time. Rachel felt a slow
flush rise up, heating her face and she dropped her eyes hastily,
resisting the urge to push further back in her chair, the better to
escape that cold stare.

Dear heavens, he really does dislike me!
Could I have hurt
him so very much? I must have been very clumsy indeed in my
rejection if the winter in that chilly stare was any
indication
.

It confirmed her suspicion that an a
pology would not be welcome and her
decision to brave his displeasure and offer one wavered. Did
she
really
need to make her peace with this man? He was acting as if
she had scorned him but in truth, they had not been close. Yes, she
had enjoyed his undemanding company and she could recall that he
had a happy knack of making her laugh, even when she was painfully
preoccupied. But she had never given him any reason to think that
she carried a
tendre
for him. Had she? Rachel flicked through her cloudy
memories and concluded that no, she had not.

A sudden chill touched her and she stilled in the chair.
Perhaps… had Worsley heard about what had happened to her? Or a
version of it?
It struck her then that he must have done. She had no doubt
that it was still discussed and if he had been away there was sure
to have been a host of people eager to bring him up to date on what
had happened to the female he had once held in some esteem and she
winced at the idea of being the topic of conversation.

Taking in a deep breath, she raised her chin a little. She
had known that she must necessarily be judged harshly for her
behavior. Running away with a gentleman, even if she had thought
that she was to be married, was going beyond the pale. Society
would have forgiven her if she really
had
married, no doubt. The adventure would
even be given a romantic twist. She herself – in her naivety – had
thought the same thing. Her parents might be disappointed in her
behavior initially, but they would come about when she was a
married woman and they would have warmed to Salinger over
time.

Of
course, the reality had been entirely different. She might not have
known all the facts about Dorian Salinger’s life, but nobody had
pushed her out that door, bandbox in hand, to start a new life in a
manner that she must have known, deep down, would cause distress to
her family.

She might be
able to claim that Dorian Salinger had lied to her, but she had
been the one who had accepted his suggestion that they run away
together. In the end, her undoing was her own fault.

Which was all well and good but she could not help but be
relieved that she had not gone about in London, facing up to the
stares and the whispers. Her reception there would be frosty in the
extreme and, despite her determination to smile in the face of
adversity, she shuddered to think how she would have borne the
constant snubs. Did women recover from such an outrageous
faux
pas
? It did
not seem likely. A woman’s reputation was her most precious gift.
Giving it away was unforgivable.

She shook away these
unpleasant thoughts, knowing full well that she
was unlikely to be in London again, or on anybody’s social calendar
at any time in the future. There was no point in dwelling on it.
She would deal with Worsley as best as she could, just as she dealt
with Charity. If an opportunity to apologize for that uncomfortable
interview presented itself, she would find the courage to take it,
if only to relieve her own conscience.

And then she
would get on with her predictable, comfortable life, hovering in
the background when necessary to better spare her family
discomfort. She had given up on romantic dreams when she had
returned to Northumberland.

It was the
price one paid for being a fool.

When the party
prepared to go and change for dinner, Rachel rose
to her feet and moved towards the door. As Worsley had completely
rebuffed her during the conversation – apart from those
uncomfortable looks they had shared – she had not thought that he
would stray within ten feet of her and so was surprised when he
moved towards the door as well, falling into step beside
her.