Lady Varney's Risque Business by Cerise DeLand

Author:Cerise DeLand
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: 0
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Three weeks later on a Wednesday afternoon at two, she sat down in the drawing room of the Lord and Lady Winston Martindale upon the occasion of their annual At Home. Parliament had dismissed two days’ earlier and the Martindales’ afternoon reception was one of the three closing highlights of the late Season. Few festivities remained which drew the Set before all dispersed to the countryside for the summer months.

“I shall be happy as a bee to leave town,” Maggie confided as she sat next to Kitty and fluttered her Chinese fan in the uncommon June heat.

“You are quite flushed, Maggie. You are very sure you are not….hmmm?” Kitty had asked this question twice this past week of her sister. “I recall being very hot when I was…well, you know.”

“I might be.” Her sister flashed her a brilliant smile. “But I am not yet positive.”

“Just wanted to be certain.” Glancing into the hall where others arrived for this party, Kitty flicked open her own fan and gave herself a nervous cooling off. God, if she could only be certain Justin would not attend, she could proceed to enjoy herself tremendously.

“Certain, eh?” Maggie eyed Kitty’s fan. “Considering the attentions you received from a certain gentleman, I could ask you the same question.”

“No.” No. Kitty knew she was not pregnant. She’d had the proof last week, much to her immense relief. Maggie had been nearly as wild as she to learn if she were enceinte. Her sister had known of her rendezvous with Justin—and if Maggie still had few facts about their affaire, they were enough for her younger, newly wedded sister to conclude that scandal and ruin might not be the only result of Kitty’s interlude at Belmont Manor.

“I still think you owe him an explanation for leaving,” Maggie ventured, her eyes straight ahead.

“I gave him one.”

“Did you?” Maggie drilled into her. “Your marriage is a long tale that—”

Kitty drew back. It was not like her dear sister to pick an argument with her.

Maggie sniffed and fluttered. Sniffed and fluttered. “I doubt you told him all.”

“I have not even told you all.”

“And it took you over a year to reveal what you did!”

“It took me a year to even speak the words, let alone—”

“There he is.”

“What?” Kitty sat straighter, her gaze darting to the foyer. And the dark, imposing handsomeness of Lord Justin Belmont. “Oh, no.”

“Do not leave, Puss,” Maggie breathed. “You’ll be so obvious.”

“I’ll be so trapped.”

“Good afternoon, Lady Carruthers,” Maggie cooed over an elderly matron who was passing them, intent on the buffet tables. She rose to take the lady’s hand. “So delightful to see you out.”

The lady lifted her lorgnette to her rheumy eyes. “And you, too, my dear. Margaret Downey, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my lady. Except I am now married. Lady Donaldson.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Fine gel. Fine. And this is your younger sister, eh?”

Out of courtesy, Kitty was on her feet. “Older.”

“Kit? Kat? What is your name, pet? Help an old woman, will you, like a good girl?”

“Katherine Varney, Lady Carruthers.

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