So had Juliana.
“It is somewhat difficult to invite Lord and Lady Ralston without extending the invitation to Miss Fiori,” a new voice pointed out.
A snort of derision followed. “Not that they are much better . . . with the marquess’s scandalous past and the marchioness—so very uninteresting. I still wonder what she did to win him.”
“And let’s not even discuss Lord Nicholas, marrying a country bumpkin. Can you imagine!”
“Never doubt what poor stock can do to good English blood. It’s clear that the mother has . . . left her mark.”
The last came on a high-pitched cackle, and Juliana’s fury began to rise. It was one thing for the vicious harridans to insult her, but it was an entirely different thing for them to go after her family. Those she loved.
“I do not understand why Ralston doesn’t just give the sister a settlement and send her back to Italy.”
Neither did Juliana.
She’d expected that to happen any number of times since she arrived, unbidden, on the steps of Ralston House. Her brother had never once even suggested it.
But she still had trouble believing that he didn’t want her gone.
“Don’t listen to them,” Mariana whispered. “They’re horrible, hateful women who live to loathe.”
“All it will take is for one person of quality to find her doing something base, and she’ll be exiled from society forever.”
“That shouldn’t take long. Everyone knows Italians have loose morals.”
Juliana had had enough.
She pushed past Mariana and into the ladies’ salon, where the threesome were retouching their maquillage at the large mirror on one wall of the room. Tossing a broad smile in the direction of the women, she took perverse pleasure in their stillness—a combination of shock and chagrin.
Still laughing at her own joke was the coolly beautiful and utterly malicious Lady Sparrow, who had married a viscount, rich as Croesus and twice as old, three months before the man had died, leaving her with a fortune to do with as she wished. The viscountess was joined by Lady Davis, who apparently had not had her fill of the legendary orange extravaganza, as she was wearing an atrocious gown that accentuated her waist in such a way as to turn the woman into a perfect, round gourd.
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.