A Rogue of One's Own

She slowed.

The hall was quiet as a tomb. And just as frosty.

Reflexively, her hand rose to her hair. The flowers were still firmly in place. It couldn’t possibly be her gown. . . .

Annabelle was watching her from her seat at the head of the table, wearing a pleasant little smile. Formally pleasant.

Her stomach sank. Something had happened, between the early-morning hours and now, and whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant at all.

The crowd found its bearing, people moved, and chatter swelled again.

Her thoughts racing, Lucie turned to the breakfast buffet, reached blindly for a plate, and began selecting fruits from the tiered platters. Whatever it was, she wasn’t guilty of it.

The scent of lavender wrapped around her. Lady Salisbury had appeared by her side and pretended an interest in the oranges in the large silver bowl.

“Some of us found something strewn along the corridors this morning,” she murmured without preamble.

“Found what?” Lucie said quietly.

Now Lady Salisbury looked at her. Her usually watery blue eyes were piercing. “Pamphlets.”

A shiver of alarm ran down her back.

Pamphlets of any kind had no place in a ducal corridor. Certainly not when the Prince of Wales was in attendance. Not when Montgomery was trying to restore his reputation. . . .

“It was The Female Citizen,” Lady Salisbury said tightly. “The prince found one, too.”

Her palms turned damp. Apples and oranges began to blur.

She could see the pamphlets on the cherrywood surface of the vanity table before her mind’s eye, placed there carelessly when she had spread out the Discerning Ladies’ Magazines, because who would come to her room and see them, and take offense?

Lady Salisbury had probably seen them there yesterday morning. Did she believe Lucie had done it? Of course. Everyone here believed she had done it.

She turned to the crowd, her plate forgotten.

No one was facing her directly now; they were looking past her, through her. She might as well not exist at all. Wrong—one man was staring right into her. The Duke of Montgomery. His pale eyes were assessing her from his place at the head of the long table, his face as still and cold as if carved in ice. The prince sat next to him, champagne flute in hand, looking deceptively bored.

Her gaze began darting around the room. Every face in her field of vision closed up like a fist.

She did catch Lord Melvin’s eyes.

He glanced away.

“Excuse me,” she said to Lady Salisbury, and made for the exit.

She kept her pace measured in the Great Hall; still, the clicks of her heels were echoing like gunshots off the walls. She overtook a group of chattering guests and they fell silent. Their stares bore into her back until she reached the bottom of the grand staircase. The narrow new skirts forced her to take the stairs one dainty step at a time, step step step. She turned right on the landing, toward the corridor to the east wing.

Two women were ahead of her.

Hazel ringlets, and her mother’s unmistakable slim frame. Lady Wycliffe crept down the hallway like an old woman, slightly lopsided and leaning on Cecily’s arm. Oddly, the sight stung, right into the depths of her chest.

When they vanished into an antechamber, she quickened her stride to follow them and entered without knocking.

“Mother?”

They stood with their backs to her, facing the tall windows. Her cousin glanced over her shoulder and gasped, her eyes widening with—fear?

Lady Wycliffe kept her back turned, her thin frame stiff like a frozen reed. “Leave now, Lucinda.”

The cold contempt in her mother’s voice stopped her hesitant advance like a wall.

Cecily’s gaze had dropped to the tips of her shoes.

“Now.”

Lucie nodded. “As you wish.”

She was at the door when the cold voice came again. “You just had to do this, didn’t you? You simply could not help yourself.”

She stood facing the winter blue of the doorjamb, uncertain what to say.

“You always had a desire to spurn me. So disobedient, so difficult, since you were a girl. I really should not find myself surprised today. But that you would go to such extremes as to humiliate the duke and his wife in front of the Prince of Wales to indulge your politics . . .”

A roar starting up in her ears, she turned back. “It wasn’t me.”

The countess wheeled round to face her, the glitter in her eyes as sharp as broken glass.

“You are selfish,” she said. “You always were.”

Cecily was hiding behind her hands like a child.

She should leave. It appeared her mother could still work herself into a passionate outburst after all, and they had had enough scandal for a day.

“Good day, Mother.”

“Of course. You have no scruples to just walk away from the chaos you create.” The blend of imperiousness and disappointment, so unique to her mother, erased years between them and made Lucie feel like an awkward girl in a woman’s body. Her hand had all but frozen on the door handle.

Her mother’s expression turned oddly triumphant. “There are other ladies who dabble in political activism,” she said. “Have you never wondered why they have not lost their family? Why they are still well-received?”

Beyond her shoulder, Cecily was still covering her face with her palms. Well, when one was not used to them, confrontations could be frightening. And presently, the Countess of Wycliffe very much wanted to confront. Her wrath was an old wrath, pulled from the very depths of her. She would not be appeased.

“If you must know,” she continued, “Wycliffe might have forgiven you, had you not embarrassed him in front of his peers. But you do not care whether you cross a line, do you, as long as it serves your immediate gratification. Indeed, I used to think how similar you and your father were in your selfishness. The difference is, of course, that Wycliffe is a man—he can’t help himself.”

Her gaze traveled over Lucie from the tips of her new slippers to the silk flower in her coiffure. “It was all a ploy, wasn’t it, the lovely gowns and polite conversation?”

Lucie’s skin crawled under her inspection. “Whatever do you mean?”

Her mother sneered. “Please. Do you truly believe that adorning your hair with flowers will disguise what you are?”

The snide words made her feel numb. She opened the door and escaped into the corridor.

“That is what you fail to understand.” Her mother was following her. “Your peculiarities are not skin-deep. They are at the very core of you—how could I possibly have corrected them? I tried. Oh, I tried.” She was right behind Lucie, close, breathing down her neck. “Know that any normal man and woman can sense your masculine nature from afar. Know that nothing will hide what you are, Lucinda—you cannot outrun the truth.”

She stopped abruptly and turned back.

“The truth?” Her tone was metallic, impersonal, the kind she used on heckling strangers. “The truth is that while you speak with great authority, your authority is a mirage, Mother. Wycliffe can take it away with a snap of his fingers, like this. You hold no rights, not even over your own body, because you are a married woman. Your pedestal stands on quicksand, and if you are satisfied with this fate, for yourself, for half the human race, we shall never agree. So forgive me if I would rather run than stay and let you berate me.”

Lady Wycliffe drew herself up to her full height. “There is dignity in quietly bearing a woman’s cross,” she said icily. “There is no dignity in your stubborn refusal to do so—only humiliation. Your shrieking, your marches, your pamphlets: humiliation.”

Lucie’s lip curled. Remember the morning in the library at Wycliffe Hall, Mother? There had been a world of humiliation in your shrieking and pleading for a scrap of your husband’s love while he flaunted his mistresses for all to see. Could there be a humiliation greater than begging for love?

“Do you think these activists you have chosen over your family have a care for you beyond what you can do for them?” Again her mother was rushing after her with quick, angry steps, hissing words under her breath. “They have not. Mark my words, you will be a bitter old spinster with not one child, not one friend to give you comfort in your twilight years.”

“I promise I shall not bother you if that comes to pass.”

“What if your trust fund runs out? You won’t be proud in the workhouse.”

Her foot nearly caught in her hem as the words slithered into her heart, beneath the doors she kept firmly shut between her and a secret world of dread. She could not afford fear. The only way for her was forward, always forward.

As the corridor split to a left and a right, she turned right the moment her mother tried to turn left, and they stood facing each other.

They were both breathing hard.

When she tried to step around her mother, her hand shot out and clasped her arm. “Lucinda.” Her voice was low. “No one can abide a selfish woman. You must know that.”

“Oh, I do. I do know.”

A damp sheen blurred the countess’s blue eyes. “You . . . you could have had everything. Everything.” Her little shrug was almost helpless. “And yet here you stand, wasting your life—and for what? For what?”

For something you will never understand.