A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)(86)

“Oh, we shall,” Lady Violet said. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world, Lady Aldridge. Friday promises the best amusement of the season.”

It is not meant for your amusement, Bel longed to retort. It is for your edification, you silly, thoughtless wench.

Oh, heavens. Had that thought truly originated in her brain? She felt so queer, so out of sorts. She would have liked to blame her odd behavior on fatigue from the night before, but she suspected the lingering passion had more to do with it. Even staring at the illustration of poor, maltreated climbing boys, she could not muster her usual zeal. Instead, as she surveyed the assortment of wan ladies decorating the richly hued salon, all she could think was that she wanted to return home, return to bed. Return to Toby.

And worse, it was as though everyone in the room could sense it. Lady Violet’s comments were only the beginning. From every corner of the room, the ladies stared at her, whispering to one another across the card table and laughing into their tea.

“Bel.” Sophia touched her elbow. “The air in here is so close, and with the baby”—she laid a hand over her abdomen in a universal gesture of incipient motherhood—“Will you take a turn with me, outside?”

Bel nodded and followed her sister-in-law out the door and into the garden. The moment they rounded the corner of a hedge, Sophia turned to her. “You haven’t seen it?”

“Seen what?”

“This morning’s Prattler.”

Bel shook her head. She avoided the rancid tabloid on principle, only bothering to glance at it when Toby needed soothing over another assault on his character. Why that paper had such a vendetta against her husband, she could not comprehend.

Sophia withdrew a scrap of rolled newsprint from her reticule and extended it to Bel with one hand, taking the stack of leaflets in her other. “I am so sorry to be the one to show you this. But after Lady Violet’s comments inside … I really thought you must be made aware. People will be talking.”

Bel’s stomach plummeted as she took the bit of paper and unrolled it cautiously. Had they linked Toby with another woman? She knew now that The Prattler grossly overstated his rakish exploits, and she believed that no rumor of infidelity would have a mite of truth. But still

—it wounded her, to hear the gossip suggest he had already strayed. And as she took her first glance at the caricature, she thought indeed that was what the illustration implied. It depicted Toby with a loose woman on his arm, her clothing agape and one sleeve sliding from her shoulder. Her exaggerated br**sts squeezed to the top of her bodice, overflowing her gown as she leaned against Toby’s frame. The two figures were depicted in the dark of night, tripping down the stairs of a grand stone edifice. Bel peered closer. Why, it was the opera house!

She read the caption aloud. “The Rake Unrepentant. Is Sir Toby London’s own Don Giovanni?”

“Oh, Bel,” Sophia said. “I’m so sorry.”

Dread stirred in Bel’s chest as she looked again at the loose woman draped over Toby’s dashing form. For the first time she examined the face, instead of the voluptuous figure indecently spilling across the page. Black hair. Wide, dark eyes.

“Oh, dear Lord.”

It was her. She was the woman on Toby’s arm, slavering over her own husband like a glassyeyed prostitute. Now Bel noticed the ribbons of speech attributed to these disgusting renditions of her and Toby. From his mouth: “Did you really think to reform me?” From her: “La! I never knew ruin was so sweet.”

Behind them, in the shadows of the opera house, Mr. Hollyhurst had drawn a pair of underfed children, their hands out in an attitude of begging. Their pleas went unheeded.

“Thank you,” Bel said numbly, rolling the paper again. “Thank you for showing me. It explains a great deal.” No wonder the ladies inside had greeted her overtures with amusement, doubted her charitable intentions, taken all of her words as innuendo. This was their opinion of her: a lust-mad female, incited to depravity by her husband’s rakish charm and dissolute example. And the worst of it was—Bel worried that they were right. Mr. Hollyhurst, Lady Violet, Mrs. Breckinridge. Why would anyone draw such an image, or give credit to its implications, if it did not contain truth at its core? She thought of leaving the opera house last night, flushed and frenzied with desire—too desperate even to wait until they returned home. Good heavens, she’d thrown herself on him in the carriage! A respectable lady of influence didn’t behave in such a manner. And had there truly been hungry children, huddling in the shadows in need of help, whom she had ignored in her passion-blinded state?

There could have been.

Who would look to such a woman for their moral direction? How could such a woman be the wife of an influential MP?

“Don’t make overmuch of it,” Sophia said. “As scandals go, desire for one’s own husband is not much of one. Never mind Lady Violet—she’s just an old, embittered dragon. She can’t help but breathe fire. She’ll tire of teasing you quickly enough, if you refuse to give her the satisfaction of showing distress.”

“It’s not just Lady Violet. All London reads The Prattler.”

“Yes, and there is a new issue printed each morning. Within a few days, people will find a new topic of gossip, and this will all have been forgotten.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” But in a few days, the election would be over—the demonstration, as well. And all of it could be ruined, because of her. Because she had allowed passion to overrule her principles. “I…” She choked back a wave of bile. “I feel suddenly ill. I think I’ll slip out by the garden path and make my way home. Please make my excuses to our aunt.”