How to Romance a Rake (30 page)

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” she told Alec, with a wry smile. “Honestly, I do not think we could inspire more talk if we stripped naked and played piquet in the middle of the ballroom.”

“It’s a good thing I brought this, then,” Cecily said with a grin, removing Amelia Snowe’s pilfered dance card from where it hung around her wrist, and slipping it over Juliet’s hand. “You left it that night. Let us think of it as a Duckling good-luck charm.”

“Speak of the devil,” Winterson said in a low voice, as Amelia and her boon companion, Felicia, came toward them.

“Let the games begin,” Alec said, tightening his hold around Juliet’s waist.

The blond beauty was, as always, exquisitely attired, this time in a pale blue satin gown that brought out the blue of her eyes, which were narrowed in speculation for a flicker of a moment before she switched to her normal, deceptively friendly smile.

“My dear Lady Deveril,” she said with a catlike smile, “how lovely to see you now that you are returned from Gretna. I hope you found the blacksmith to be worthy of officiating at the marriage of a couple of your station?”

“I’m afraid our wedding was performed by a rather prosaic minister, Miss Snowe,” Alec informed her, lying through his teeth. “I could not, in good conscience, allow my impetuosity in spiriting Juliet, that is Lady Deveril, off to Gretna to rob her of the respectable marriage she deserved.”

“It was really quite a lovely ceremony,” Juliet added, enjoying the way Amelia’s eyes narrowed at their show of solidarity. “Of course, now my parents wish they had given their consent, but at the time they were quite adamant that Deveril wait the requisite period for the banns to be called.”

“And I simply could not wait that long,” Alec said with a rueful grin.

Like Lady Wallingford had done, Amelia allowed her gaze to rest on Juliet’s midsection a bit longer than was polite. Part of Juliet resented the notion that they’d married because they had to. But another, more selfish part, loved that people actually thought someone like Alec would be so overcome by passion for her to anticipate their vows.

“Well, I certainly hope you will not regret your impulsiveness,” Felicia said with a solicitous smile that was counteracted by the hard glint in her eyes. “The
ton
can be very unforgiving about such things.”

“I thank you for your concern, Lady Felicia,” Juliet said with an equally false smile. “Though I do not see how you would be in any position to know.”

“I hope you will excuse us,” Alec said cheerfully, “but I would like to dance with my bride now.”

“Cecily,” Juliet said, turning to her cousin who had been watching their exchange with Amelia and Felicia with undisguised interest. “Will you and Winterson take my walking stick, please?”

“Of course, my lady,” Winterson said with a grin.

“With pleasure,” Cecily said, taking the ebony stick from her. “Enjoy your dance.”

When Deveril and Juliet moved out onto the ballroom floor to take their places in the set that was forming, Amelia and Felicia stared after them, stunned.

“Juliet cannot dance!” Amelia said, her mouth hanging open in shock.

“She is cri—” Felicia began, then upon Winterson’s clearing his throat, continued, “that is, she is … er … injured.”

“I think you’ll find, ladies,” Cecily said with satisfaction at seeing the gossips, who had made hers and Juliet’s and Madeline’s social lives unbearable for the past few years, so taken aback, “that when my cousin is determined to do something there is very little that can stop her.”

“She’s going to make a fool of herself,” Amelia said harshly, her eyes never leaving Juliet as she and Deveril stood waiting for the dance to begin. “More than she already has after that silly elopement.”

“I will thank you to keep your opinions about my daughter to yourself, Miss Snowe,” Lady Shelby said as she stepped up to the group. “How is your mama? Still keeping company with Bertie Knighton?”

It was well known in the
ton
that Mrs. Snowe was engaged in a torrid affair with the much younger Bertie Knighton. And that Amelia disapproved, heartily.

As Lady Shelby had intended, Amelia held her tongue about Juliet and Deveril. “I believe we should go have some lemonade, Felicia,” she said, pulling her friend along behind her as they left the small group

“Malicious cat,” Lady Shelby said with a scowl. “Her family might be rich as Croesus but they are only two generations from the shop.”

That she herself was only one generation from the shop didn’t seem to bother Lady Shelby.

“What brings you to Juliet’s defense, Aunt Rose?” Cecily asked cynically. “Are you the only one allowed to speak ill of your daughter?”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Cecily.” Lady Shelby waved away her niece’s remark. “I am trying to ensure that the talk caused by their elopement is not compounded by spiteful cats like Amelia and Felicia.

“And make no mistake, I blame you for this dancing nonsense,” she continued, her accusing gaze firmly on Cecily. “If you hadn’t married Winterson so precipitately, Juliet wouldn’t have become so determined to remove herself from the ranks of the wallflowers. I have worked so hard to ensure that she blends in to society without drawing attention to her deformity, but you had to ruin things by compromising yourself with Winterson.”

Cecily was all too grateful that Winterson had stepped away to chat with Monteith. “My actions aside, aunt, I should think that you would wish for your daughter to find happiness. Which she clearly has.”

“I wished for my daughter to do her duty and marry as her father and I saw fit. Since she chose to defy me and elope with Devil Deveril’s son, then I am forced to ensure that she does not embarrass herself further. Though it would appear that I am too late for that.”

She gazed grimly at the dance floor where Juliet and Deveril went through the motions of the set, Juliet perhaps more careful about her movements than the other dancers, but acquitting herself better than some without her handicap.

“What is so terrible about Juliet dancing?” Cecily asked, truly puzzled. “I do not understand why it threatens you so much. There are any number of dancers who are clumsy and lack all coordination. Which she certainly does not. She might have been dancing all this time, but was not allowed to do so simply because you feared her inability to perform some of the steps would embarrass you.”

“Don’t be a widgeon, Cecily!” Lady Shelby said hotly. “I do not wish for her to dance because there is a danger that she will reveal the true extent of her injury in doing so. I was doing it to save her embarrassment as much as for myself.”

“If it is a matter of her tripping…” Cecily said.

“It is a matter of her false foot falling off,” Lady Shelby said in a low voice. “She is missing her right foot. That is her injury.”

The words were no sooner out of Lady Shelby’s mouth, than Cecily heard a gasp from behind them. Her mouth agape, her eyes wide, Lady Felicia stood stock still, as if Lady Shelby’s words had paralyzed her. Then, realizing what she’d just heard, her paralysis turned to glee. Cecily could all but hear Felicia’s thoughts.
Wait until I tell Amelia,
foremost among them.

“Felicia, I beg you will not…” She had barely spoken the words before Felicia was pushing away from them, through the crowds, no doubt to where Amelia waited.

“Dash it,” Cecily said as Felicia disappeared into the crowd. “I do not know which to be angrier about,” she told her aunt, whose complexion had turned pale, “the fact that you made Juliet keep her true infirmity a secret for all these years, or that you were so rash as to announce it in the middle of a crowded ballroom.”

“Oh, stubble it, Cecily,” Lady Shelby said with an unusual burst of vulgarity. “I certainly did not mean to tell you in the hearing of that ill-tempered harpy.”

“And the secrecy?” Cecily demanded, thinking back to all of the times that she had sat alongside Juliet with the other wallflowers, never knowing what kind of ordeals she must have endured every day since she’d returned from that fateful trip where she’d lost her foot. Her heart ached for her cousin.

“Look around you, niece.” Lady Shelby gestured to a cluster of dowagers glancing back at them and out toward the set where Juliet and Deveril danced on, unaware that Juliet’s secret was out. “Do you really believe that the
ton
would embrace Juliet knowing how deformed she is? How she must have a false foot fashioned for her out of wood? She is hardly a war hero who can blame her problem on the French. I made her keep her injury a secret for her own good.”

“Somehow, I doubt that, aunt,” Cecily returned. Knowing that Juliet and Deveril would be deluged by curiosity seekers as soon as their dance ended, she turned and went to find Winterson and Maddie in hopes that they could offset some of the more insistent gossips.

*   *   *

It wasn’t long into the set that Juliet began to feel the eyes of many of her fellow ballgoers on her. She knew that her dancing was not as energetic or proficient as some other dancers, but she was hardly the worst on the floor.

“What is going on?” she asked Alec as the figure brought them together. “Am I really that awful?”

“I have no idea,” Alec whispered back. “I think you’re doing wonderfully well. But something has certainly set them agog, and I somehow doubt it’s the brilliance of my Mathematical. Do you wish to sit down? I will take the blame if you wish to save your pride.”

“No,” she said as they promenaded down the row of dancers. “I won’t let them shame me.”

“Good girl.” His smile sent a little thrill through her. He really was a handsome man, her husband.

But by the time the dance was concluded, the whispers in the ballroom were almost as loud as the orchestra.

“What’s happened?” Juliet asked Cecily, who waited with Winterson, Maddie, and Monteith by the side of the dance floor. Though she had tried to tell herself that it was foolish to think that the talk could have been caused by her dancing alone, she secretly feared that her opinion of her dancing abilities was overly inflated. Perhaps she’d wished so hard to be a proficient dancer that she’d fooled herself into thinking she was better than she actually was. And she so disliked the idea of bringing shame upon Alec in such a way. Perhaps she should not have allowed him to talk her into the marriage after all. He deserved a wife who would make him proud, not cause talk everywhere she ventured.

But Cecily’s words told her that the situation was much direr than she could possibly have imagined.

“They know about your foot,” Cecily said, her lips pressed together in anger. “Your mother was haranguing me about our dance lessons and she let the truth slip out.”

“Which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing,” Maddie added, “but Felicia overheard her.”

Oh.

Juliet closed her eyes, and heard bits and pieces of the chatter around her.

“… in a carriage accident…”

“… can’t imagine what possessed Lady Shelby…”

“… Deveril got himself a pig in a poke…”

“There’s a servants’ hall just off the card room,” Winterson said in a low voice. “No one will think less of you for leaving before they begin approaching you with questions.”

Juliet bit her lip. She did not wish to give them, or her mother, the satisfaction of knowing she was bothered by their talk, but she also knew that sometimes it was best to retrench and rally one’s forces for the next battle.

Thinking back to all the work she’d done over the years to bring herself back from her accident, how she’d struggled to regain her ability to walk, how she’d been kept from fully participating in the world around her by her mother, who feared just this kind of public shaming, Juliet felt something inside her snap.

She would not allow her peers to make her feel like some kind of undesirable because of an accident that had been no fault of her own.

“I’m glad the truth is finally out,” she said firmly, steeling her spine so that the gawking spectators would see that she was not intimidated by their talk. “I’ve been begging Mama to let me reveal the truth for years now. You can have no idea how awful it has been to keep such a secret from the world for all this time.”

“I wonder, Lady Deveril,” Amelia asked from her position next to Felicia as the two of them approached Juliet’s party. “Did your husband learn about your missing foot before or after the hasty wedding? What a surprise that must have been.”

Juliet felt Alec stiffen next to her, and realized that even if she did wish to stand her ground, it would perhaps be better for her husband’s safety if they took Winterson’s suggestion and left via the servants’ hall. All they needed to compound the revelation about her foot was for Alec to challenge some loose-tongued looby to a duel.

Before he could speak, she tugged on Alec’s arm and said, “Please, may we leave, my lord?”

His expression granite hard, Alec gave a brisk nod and hurried her through the still staring and whispering crowd to the long gallery off which the servants’ hall lay.

They had just entered the gallery when Juliet looked up at a row of paintings decorating the walls and stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” Alec demanded. “Is it your injury?”

Juliet shook her head, and lifted her gloved hand to point at the first painting. It was a depiction of Desdemona, dead from strangulation at Othello’s hands, lying on a mussed bed. It was a skillfully done work, with brush strokes so delicate that one could barely make them out on the canvas. But it wasn’t the technique of the artistry that made Juliet stop. It was instead Desdemona herself.

“Good God,” Alec exhaled.

“It’s the missing steamstress, Jane Pettigrew.” Juliet’s embarrassment at having her secret revealed was replaced by dread. “She had only met the young woman a couple of times, but there was no mistaking her in the painting before them. This must be the
Il Maestro
painting that Lady Wallingford boasted of.” And an inspection of the lower right-hand corner of the canvas revealed his telltale signature.

“I hope this doesn’t mean that
Il Maestro
has disposed of Miss Pettigrew,” Alec said grimly.