Abandoned to the Prodigal by Mary Lancaster

Author:Mary Lancaster
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

FOR JULIET, THE following day was even more difficult.

Her father spent a good deal of time in serious conversation with Lord Alford, and they both rode out with Jeremy during the afternoon.

“Showing Alford and Jeremy what they’ve missed out on,” Ferdy said sardonically.

“Don’t be silly,” Juliet replied. “It’s not as if Jeremy would have inherited any of this if he’d married me.”

“No, but it’s all wealth and power, isn’t it? Wealth and power, they will no longer be connected to if they reject you.”

“They have rejected me,” Juliet said flatly.

“Perhaps not for good, Julie,” Kitty suggested.

Juliet shrugged. “It no longer matters. I can’t bear to be in the same room as Jeremy, which hardly bodes well for marriage.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ferdy said cynically. “Seems to be a requirement for some. I suppose we should go back down to Mama, do the pretty with Lady Alford.”

“I thought you would have gone riding with Papa,” Juliet observed.

“So did I, but apparently I’m too frivolous and am better employed entertaining the ladies.”

“Or he doesn’t want you telling me what they’re discussing,” Juliet said darkly.

“Now you are being silly,” Ferdy observed.

He was right of course, but Juliet could not help feeling tense and oppressed by the Alfords’ presence. Even walking into the room where her mother and Lady Alford sat at their needlework, making quiet and apparently companionable small talk. It infuriated Juliet, who, after the briefest of greetings, sat in the corner with her own embroidery. She could barely bring herself to speak to the woman who had once welcomed her as a daughter. And then turned on her in an hour of need, merely on the word of an unreliable scandal sheet she would never admit to reading.

Everyone makes mistakes. I have made many.

But she has never once apologized for what she did or even acknowledged it.

Juliet hated such bitter, unforgiving feelings, but she could not seem to shake them off. She wanted to see Dan, to laugh it all away, to feel like herself again.

“Oh, Juliet,” Lady Alford said suddenly, laying down her embroidery frame and fussing inside her work bag. “This arrived for you in a bundle of letters sent on to us from London.”

“That’s odd,” Juliet’s mother observed. “Who would be writing to you that didn’t know you had come home?”

Juliet walked across the room. “I have no idea. Thank you, ma’am,” she added, taking the letter. “I don’t believe I know the writing.”

“It looks like a lady’s hand,” her mother said. “Open it.”

Juliet broke the seal, retreating to her own chair while she unfolded it and glanced at the signature. “Why, it’s from Hazel.”

“Who is Hazel?” her mother asked, bewildered.

“Miss Curwen. She was one of the princess’s other ladies who was…” She paused, not so much at the difficulty of bringing up that night of shame at Connaught Place but because of what Hazel had written. “Dear God. It was malice. Hazel has discovered who tricked us that night.”

“Who?” her mother demanded with a mixture of hope and dread.

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