Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart (Love By Numbers #3)(13)

There was a young woman with them whom Juliana did not know. Petite and blond, with a plain round face and wide, surprised eyes, Juliana fleetingly wondered how this little thing had found herself in with the vipers. She would either be killed, or be transformed.

Not that it mattered to Juliana.

“My ladies,” she said, keeping her voice light, “a wiser group might have made certain they were alone before indulging in a conversation that eviscerates so many.”

Lady Davis’s mouth opened and closed in an approximation of a trout before she looked away. The plain woman blushed, clasping her hands tightly in front of her in a gesture easily identified as regret.

Not so Lady Sparrow. “Perhaps we were perfectly aware of our company,” she sneered. “We simply were not in fear of offending it.”

With perfect timing, Mariana exited the antechamber, and there was a collective intake of breath as the other ladies registered the presence of the Duchess of Rivington. “Well, that is a pity,” she said, her tone clear and imperious, entirely befitting of her title. “As I find myself much offended.”

Mariana swept from the room, and Juliana swallowed a smile at her friend’s impeccable performance, rife with entitlement. Returning her attention to the group of women, she moved closer, enjoying the way they shifted their discomfort. When she was close enough to smell their cloying perfume, she said, “Do not fret, ladies. Unlike my sister-in-law, I take no offense.”

She paused, turning her head to each side, making a show of inspecting herself before tucking an errant curl back into her coiffure. When she was certain that she held their collective attention, she said, “You have issued your challenge. I shall meet it with pleasure.”

She did not breathe until she exited the ladies’ salon, anger and frustration and hurt rushing through her to dizzying effect.

It should not have surprised her that they gossiped about her. They’d gossiped about her since the day she’d arrived in London.

She’d simply thought they would have stopped by now.

But they had not. They would not.

This was her life.

She bore the mark of her mother, who remained a scandal even now, twenty-five years after she had deserted her husband, the Marquess of Ralston, and her twin sons, fleeing this glittering, aristocratic life for the Continent. She’d landed in Italy, where she’d bewitched Juliana’s father, a hardworking merchant who swore he had never wanted anything in his life more than he wanted her—the raven-haired Englishwoman with bright eyes and a brilliant smile.

She’d married him, in a decision that Juliana had come to identify as precisely the kind of reckless, impulsive behavior that her mother had been known for.

Behavior that threatened to surge in her.

Juliana grimaced at the thought.

When she behaved impulsively, it was to protect herself. Her mother had been an entitled aristocrat with a childish penchant for drama. Even as she’d aged, she had not matured.

Juliana supposed she should have been grateful that the marchioness deserted them when she had, or think of the scars they would all have borne.

Juliana’s father had done his best to raise a daughter. He had taught her to tie an excellent knot, to spot a bad shipment of goods, and to haggle with the best and worst of merchants . . . but he’d never shared his most important bit of knowledge.

He’d never told her that she had a family.

She’d only learned about her half brothers, born of the mother she’d barely known, after her father had died—when she’d discovered that her funds had been placed in a trust, and that an unknown British marquess was to be her guardian.

Within weeks, everything had changed.

She had been dropped, summarily, on the doorstep of Ralston House, with three trunks of possessions and her maid.

All thanks to a mother without a thimbleful of maternal instinct.

Was it any surprise that people questioned the character of her daughter?

That the daughter questioned it, as well?

No.

She was nothing like her mother.

She’d never given them a reason to think she was.

Not on purpose, at least.

But it didn’t seem to matter. These aristocrats drew strength from insulting her, from looking down their long, straight noses at her and seeing nothing but her mother’s face, her mother’s scandal, her mother’s reputation.

They did not care who she was.

They cared only that she was not like them.

And how tempted she was to show them how very unlike them she really was . . . these unmoving, uninteresting, passionless creatures.

She took a deep, stabilizing breath, looking over the ballroom to the faraway doors leading to the gardens beyond. Even as she began to move, she knew that she should not head for them.

But in all the emotions flooding her, she could not find the room to care about what she should not do.

Mariana came from nowhere, placing a delicate gloved hand on Juliana’s elbow. “Are you all right?”

“I am fine.” She did not look at her friend. Could not face her.

“They’re horrid.”

“They’re also right.”

Mariana pulled up short at the words, but Juliana kept moving, focused singularly on the open French doors . . . on the salvation they promised. The young duchess caught up quickly. “They are not right.”