A Good Debutante's Guide to Ruin by Sophie Jordan

Author:Sophie Jordan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

After three nights of dozing in and out of sleep in front of her bedchamber door, Rosalie was an exhausted wreck. Horley had made no attempt to return, but she was unwilling to lower her guard and go back to her bed. She continued her vigil, wrapped up in the counterpane in front of the trunk each night, telling herself that it wouldn’t be forever.

In addition to these restless nights, her evenings were a whirlwind. She was led about Town by her mother and Horley. He never strayed far, of course.

She’d met the Marquis of Hildebrand at the opera, and he was just as senile as Horley claimed. And as lecherous. He actually invited her to sit upon his lap, leering at her newly altered neckline. Melisande merely smiled in encouragement. As though he had invited Rosalie to tea and not to a seat on his lap. And then Melisande invited him to tea. And dinner. Rosalie quickly realized that her mother accepted invitations, almost exclusively, to events she knew the marquis would be attending.

Rosalie was having none of it. Her mother could throw them together all she liked, but she would not marry Hildebrand. Instead of allowing the old man to paw at her, she spent the evenings making herself amenable to other gentlemen who were present whom her mother did not recommend. Odds were, any of them would be an improvement. At least they wouldn’t bow to her mother’s whims. If they would, Melisande wouldn’t scowl when she spotted Rosalie in their company. That soon became Rosalie’s criteria. If her mother glared when she spoke to a particular gentleman, Rosalie made a point to continue conversing with him.

It did not take long for her mother to catch on to her game. “You’re simply trying to vex me, Rosalie,” she complained the evening they spent at a dinner party hosted by Lady Stanley, the marquis’s goddaughter. Though her mother wished that she favor the marquis’s attentions, Rosalie had instead taken an interest in Lady Stanley’s nephew, a barrister from Bedfordshire. “Truly, Rosalie, a barrister?” Melisande demanded. “What could you be thinking?”

“I was thinking that he was very kind and an excellent conversationalist.” And he did not make her skin crawl with a mere look. He was very circumspect, his gaze politely trained on her face and not her décolletage as he addressed her.

“Conversationalist? You have friends for that. Or you will. You need not rely on your husband for conversation. With any luck, he’ll expect very little from you after he gets an heir or two off you. Then you can take a lover. With discretion, of course.”

Such a future sounded bleak to her. She lifted her chin. “I’m thinking I shall have whatever husband I choose to have.”

Melisande shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. You never used to be such a rotten, willful girl. That school ruined you.”

Horley had watched her through the entire exchange, his gaze narrowing as though he wasn’t thinking particularly kind thoughts of her.

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