too good for them, but it was in fact because so many people toadied to her so shamelessly that Lizzie tended to avoid their dinners and balls. That, and the fact that Sir Montague neglected his role of guardian so thoroughly and did not give a damn about what she did or did not do.
Lizzie had not in fact had any intention of accompanying her brothers to Lady Wheeler’s dinner that night. She barely spoke to Tom these days, despising him for his treatment of Lydia, and she found Monty little better since all he seemed to do was drink like a fish and plan his next assault on the finances of his villagers. But when Lady Wheeler had called to deliver the invitation in person, her daughter, Mary, had grabbed Lizzie’s arm and dragged her into a side room and begged her to attend.
“You know how much Mama and Papa despise me since Lord Armitage jilted me,” Mary had said, her brown eyes pleading. “They are ready to countenance any suitor now and I cannot bear it. I am sure they will force me to marry Tom or even Sir Montague himself if he makes an offer. I feel like a prize heifer—or perhaps not even the prize one but the one left over at the end of the market that no one wants to buy.”
Lizzie had privately thought that Mary looked rather like a heifer as well, with her big brown cow eyes, but for once she had been kind enough not to make the comparison aloud. “Well, I doubt that you need to worry about Monty,” she had said, trying to sound comforting. “He never had much desire to wed once he had realized he could fleece everyone of their fortunes in other ways. Tom, though—” She had sighed, for it was quite true that Tom would probably marry anything rich in a skirt. He had already called on Flora Minchin as soon as he had heard she was free.
“Please come on Tuesday night,” Mary had pleaded again. “I need you to protect me, Lizzie!”
Lizzie had grudgingly agreed. She had felt sorry for Mary, who had lost her fiancé somewhat abruptly when he had run off with a courtesan. Mary had been hopelessly in love with the worthless Stephen Armitage and his defection had hit her terribly hard. In Lizzie’s opinion Armitage had been a scoundrel and Mary was a fool for languishing with love for him, but that did not make Mary’s pain any the less. With the insight that her feelings for Nat had given her Lizzie could see how much Mary was suffering.
At least she was unlikely to meet Nat at the Wheelers’s house, she thought, as she followed Lady Wheeler into the salon. The Wheelers did not tend to socialize with her set so neither Nat nor any of her other close friends were likely to be present, which was a blessing because it gave her the breathing space she needed. It enabled her to develop the pretense that she was heart whole, helped her to build a new carapace, little by little, step by step, so that she could forget what had happened with Nat and reinvent Lizzie Scarlet, who looked the same on the outside but felt so vulnerable on the inside because she had made a terrible mistake that had rocked the foundations of her world.
Lizzie had not seen Nat for over a week. After she had run away from him that day in Fortune’s Folly, he had called at the Hall every day for five days. Lizzie had pleaded indisposition twice, lied and said that she was not at home a third time and had hidden on the fourth and fifth occasions. Finally Nat had ceased to call and Lizzie had heard from the servants’ gossip that he had been summoned to Water House for a few days because his father was ill. She had felt hugely relieved. She was still quite unable to face him with any composure, her feelings raw, the hurt of loving him and mistaking his feelings for her so painful that it was barely beginning to ease.
She had been less happy to refuse to see her friend Alice Vickery. Alice, too, had called on her several times and Lizzie had wondered if Nat had asked her to visit. She doubted it; Nat would not have told anyone what had happened, of that she was sure. Lizzie missed her friends and hated denying them but all she wanted to do was curl up and hide from anyone who knew her. Alice knew her so well. She would instantly be able to tell that there was something wrong, no matter how much Lizzie pretended. She could not let her friends get close, for it was not in her nature to confide. She had always nursed her grief alone because for most of her life there had been no one to help her bear it. Nat, whom she would once have turned to in her misery and loneliness, was forbidden to her now.
How accommodating Lady Wheeler was, Lizzie thought now, as her hostess led her, along with Monty and Tom, into the salon. Lady Wheeler had disapproved violently of her the week before and called her a hoyden, yet now it seemed she had quite forgotten her censure because Lizzie was still an earl’s daughter, very rich, beautiful and a valued addition to any dinner party. The Wheelers had a debauched son—George—who was hanging out for a rich wife. Lizzie knew that such considerations would far outweigh any criticisms of her behavior. Indeed if she decided to bestow her fortune on George Wheeler her conduct would be applauded as spirited rather than condemned as wild. And sure enough Lizzie could see George waiting to greet her, with his friend Stephen Beynon at his side, and there was Mary, looking rabbit-scared, and a few other of Fortune’s Folly’s gentry and…
Nat Waterhouse.
The Earl of Waterhouse, who, as far as Lizzie knew, had never set foot in Sir James Wheeler’s house before, was standing by the long terrace windows. He looked darkly elegant and austere in his evening clothes and the look he turned on her was cool, with a dangerous edge to it. Lizzie realized suddenly that if she had thought everything over between them she had made a very big mistake. Nat’s look said that they had unfinished business.
Not, Lizzie thought, that Nat had been eschewing female companionship in the meantime. He was making conversation with a willowy blond woman who looked divinely beautiful in an evening gown of soft turquoise adorned with some truly dazzling sapphires. Jealousy hit Lizzie like a thump in the stomach, driving the breath from her body and leaving her sick and dizzy. She vaguely heard Tom make some lewd and appreciative remark to Monty as his gaze took in the Beauty. Sir Montague’s gaze in turn took in the Beauty’s sapphire necklace and a small, gratified smile curled his lips, too.
The jealousy churned in Lizzie’s stomach like poison. Her love for Nat still felt as raw as it had done the previous week. The edges were not even slightly blunted. And seeing him with another woman felt like running a file over that raw emotion, rubbing it to an excruciating pain.
Once before, she remembered, she had been jealous of a woman who had Nat’s attention and she had set herself to eclipse her. That had been poor Flora Minchin, whom she had outshone on the very night Nat and Flora’s betrothal had been announced. Nat had accused her of it that night in the folly and it had been true. It had not been difficult to take the attention from Flora. Flora was quiet and quite plain, a couple of years Lizzie’s senior but in no way Lizzie’s equal except in fortune. But this woman…Fair of hair and brilliant of complexion, with sapphire-blue eyes that perfectly matched her jewels, and a long, sinuous figure swathed in that sensuous, almost transparent fabric, and such town bronze…
If Lizzie had felt jealous of Flora, whom she had always known was no real threat, the pale moon to her own dazzling sun, it was nothing compared to the vicious flare of fury and resentment she felt now. For this woman was not her equal. She was so far out of reach that Lizzie felt smaller than she had done since she was a child, down from the nursery and paraded before the grown-ups for a few brief moments of approval. Her fingers tightened nervously on her fan. Suddenly she felt as though she was in a complicated game she was too young to play. She felt insignificant and anxious but there was no one to bolster her, for Tom had already drifted away to speak to an unwilling Mary Wheeler and Sir Montague was halfway down his first glass of wine and looking around for more. Lizzie wished, oh how she wished, that she had taken out her mother’s jewels that night—the famous Scarlet Diamonds—and flaunted them on her own rather less opulent cleavage.
Lady Wheeler was urging her forward. “Might I introduce my cousin, Lady Priscilla Willoughby? She was widowed last year and is staying with us for a space.”
Lizzie’s feet moved forward automatically. Beneath her jealousy was a cold, empty feeling. She had thought that not having Nat’s love was the worst thing in the world. Now she realized that she had got that wrong. Seeing Nat bestow his love on another woman would be a great deal more painful.
She looked at Nat and saw that he was watching her, his gaze as dark and direct as ever, and she