“Consider the silver lining,” Seline teased. “It’s difficult for you to argue in print.”
Sesily snorted a laugh. “If anyone can find a way to argue in print, it’s Seleste and Clare.” She looked to their sister. “Have you ever gone more than twenty-four hours without an argument?”
“Of course,” Seleste said. “This week.”
Seline smirked. “And there is the proof. Perhaps you ought to avoid each other as a matter of course.”
“We can’t all have Landry scaling our trellises like weeds,” Seleste retorted.
Seline laughed at the mention of her paramour. “That’s Mark being careful,” she explained to Sophie, pouring scotch from a bottle on a nearby sideboard and passing the glasses around. “He won’t use the front door.”
“Why does he care what people think?” Sophie asked. Mark Landry had more money than most of London combined, and not an ounce of interest in Society. She would never have imagined he’d worry about reputation.
“Haven has power,” Sesily said, accepting the drink from Seline. “More than we would have imagined. And he’s furious. The aristocracy is shunning Landry’s for Tattersall’s. They won’t buy horseflesh from anyone close to you. Presumably, Derek had similar threats, but unlike Landry, he’s a goddamn coward.”
“Sesily!” the countess barked.
“Well, he is,” Sesily said. “See if he gets back into my graces after this. What a betrayal.” She toasted Seline. “You should keep Mark, though. He’s a poppet.”
“I should like to,” Seline said before turning to Sophie, “but he’s waiting for you to fix it.”
“You must fix it!” their mother cried.
Sophie looked from one to the next. “How am I to do that?”
No one seemed to have an immediate answer.
“Who would have imagined that you would be the scandal?” Sesily opined, taking the chair by the fireplace, “Landing Haven in a fishpond and running off with Eversley?”
“I did not run off with Eversley,” Sophie said.
“You most certainly did,” their mother cried.
“It wasn’t running off! I landed myself in the wrong carriage!”
“Oh, well, let’s tell the scandal sheets. I’m sure they’ll scramble to get it right,” Sesily said. “They do work so terribly hard to check their facts.”
“You needn’t be unkind, Sesily,” Seraphina said.
“We’re all in a state,” Sesily replied. “None more so than you. Or must we remind you that you and your child are currently without a home?”
“Of course that’s not true,” Sophie interjected.
“No?” Seline asked, “Then you’ve a plan to marry the marquess and rescue us all?”
The casual question reminded Sophie of earlier in the afternoon, when she’d faced the truth about King—that he’d never love her. That he was never to be hers. That she was going to leave him, and spend the rest of her life wishing that their future would be different.
She shook her head, swallowing around the knot in her throat. “I’m not marrying him.”
“Then why are you here?” Seleste asked. “Are you taking up residence as his mistress?”
“That won’t help at all,” Seline pointed out.
“We need discretion!” the countess cried.
Sophie ignored the willingness that flared at the suggestion. If he’d offered her the role of mistress, she would take it. She would take whatever she could get of him. Whatever time he might give her.
She’d take him here or in London, forever or for an afternoon.
She loved him.
Surely, of all the emotions the human heart could explore, love was the worst.
She looked away from her family. “I was returning to Mossband when you arrived. He was returning me to the inn.”
Sesily groaned. “We’re ruined!”
The countess collapsed to her settee once more, dramatic as ever. “I knew all those books would eventually do you in!”
None of the other Talbot girls appeared to mind the accusation in the countess’s words, so Sophie did not linger on it, either. “To be fair, our reputations weren’t the most welcome to begin with.”
“At least we received invitations!” the countess protested. “Your sisters were all being courted!”
Seline’s brow furrowed for the first time since they arrived. “Mark won’t have me, will he?”
Sophie’s frustration could not be kept at bay. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “It’s not as though I did anything truly scandalous. The Duchess of Lamont faked her death and married the man thought to have killed her, and the ton can’t get enough of her.”
“She didn’t publicly malign the aristocracy!”
“Oh, yes. That’s quite worse than ruining a man’s life. Whatever will the rich and titled do now that I’ve insulted them?”
“They will ruin our lives!” Sesily said firmly, her trademark dry wit replaced with cool honesty. “Why do you think we’re here? Every one of us has lost our suitor! Because of you!”
“Every one of you has been mistreated by men who could not find their spine if they were kicked directly in it!”
“Those men were willing to have them!” her mother cried. “And they were willing to take you on, as well, Sophie, a welcome spinster!”
“That’s what I was? A future old aunt? Destined to rooms in the castle turret? Hidden away from life?”