A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(36)

Lily came to a stop just inside the room, stunned into panicked stillness. What was to come next? She was at a ball, dressed thoroughly inappropriately, angry and frustrated and hurt and desperate for some exit from this current, disastrous situation.

She could feel London’s eyes upon her, hot and scathing, chatter becoming silence as she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, willing herself to remain strong. As she looked out at the assembly, she saw the gazes slide away, like silk on fur, unable to stick. Fans raised, heads turned, and whispers began.

Shame surged, and Lily took a deep breath. She was here now. In the middle of a ball with no choice but to find her way.

No sooner had the decision been made than someone arrived to help.

Several someones.





CHAPTER 8



LONESOME LILY SNATCHED UP BY SCANDALOUS SISTERS;

BOLD BEAUTIES BEFRIEND WARNICK’S WARD

“Dear Heaven. That dress should be immediately burned.”

“Shush!” another voice admonished. “Perhaps she likes it!”

“Nonsense. No one could possibly like it.” Lily turned to face the quartet bearing down upon her. The leader met her eyes without hesitation. “You don’t like it, do you?”

Lily was so surprised by the direct question that she replied without hesitation, “No.”

The dark-haired quartet, each pretty and perfectly turned out, smiled en masse. They were quite striking as a group, if Lily were honest, each in a different brilliant silk, yellow and green and blue and the leader, in red, who said, “That means you’re wearing it for a particular effect.”

“For a man, if I had to guess,” Blue said, investigating the line of the bodice, which Lily had lowered and refitted that afternoon. “Amazing,” she whispered before leaning in. “Is it for a man?”

“Why would she wear it for a man?” Green asked. “To scare him off?”

Yellow spoke this time. “To prove that she doesn’t care for his opinion.”

“She shouldn’t,” Red replied as she stopped directly in front of Lily. “Men rarely understand their own opinions. And if you’re brave enough to wear this monstrosity, you are smart enough to know that his opinions matter very little in the long run.”

Lily shook her head. “He isn’t a him. That is, I don’t care what he thinks.”

Yellow smiled softly, and Lily realized that under other circumstances, she would think that the woman was plain. She wasn’t, however. Not when she smiled. “That means there’s absolutely a him.”

“Not in the way you mean it,” Lily replied.

“What way is that?” Green asked.

“She says him in such a lovely tone,” Lily pointed out, feeling rather dizzy speaking to this group. “As though there’s some emotion aside from loathing in my feelings for him.”

“Loathing isn’t the opposite of love, you know,” Yellow said.

“Ugh.” Red echoed Lily’s thoughts. “Don’t listen to her. We all rue the day Sophie married for love.”

Sophie.

Like that, Lily identified the quartet.

“You’re the Dangerous Daughters!” she blurted out before clapping one hand over her mouth, as though she could have kept the observation from flying loose.

Smiles turned to grins. “The very same,” Sophie said.

Sophie was Lady Eversley, nee Sophie Talbot, now Marchioness of Eversley and future Duchess of Lyne, married in an utter scandal, six months prior. Which meant . . . Lily turned to Green, the most petite of the three, draped in green. “You’re Lady Seleste, soon to be Countess Clare and . . .” She turned to Blue, fairest of the group. “That makes you Mrs. Mark Landry.” Rich as a queen, married to a man who, by all accounts, was loud and crass and would be thoroughly unwelcome in the aristocracy if not for his outrageous sums of money.

Mrs. Landry inclined her head. “You may call me Lady Seline.”

They were four of the five daughters of the Earl of Wight, a coal miner with a skill for finding valuable stores of the fuel—skill enough to have bought himself, and his daughters, a title. Renowned social climbers, the women had been labeled The Dangerous Daughters by London’s scandal sheets. Lily had always thought that much better than the other, less kind name—The Soiled S’s.

Of course, now that three of the four had been identified, Lily knew who the fourth was. Her gaze slid to the exceedingly tall woman, beautiful and buxom in her form-fitting red gown, one that would have been utterly scandalous on anyone else if not on Lady Sesily Talbot. On her, it simply looked gorgeous. Beautiful enough to remind Lily that she paled horribly in comparison to the woman.

The woman who had been, only a year prior, linked to Derek Hawkins.

Suddenly, Lily was not so comforted by the appearance and the tacit acceptance of this group of women.

“You know us,” Lady Sesily said, “and the rest of the room seems to know you, so who are you?”

“Sesily,” Lady Eversley cautioned. “Don’t be so rude.”

She didn’t want to tell them. She didn’t want them to dislike her for her past with Derek. She’d heard about what women did to those with whom they felt they competed. And she rather liked this group.

Not that she knew them, really. But she liked them from the scandal sheets. And from the fact that they were speaking to her instead of whispering about her behind their fans.