of the way for your party.”
“I would rather you were there,” Kitty said ruefully. “Besides, won’t people ask where you are?”
“They probably won’t dare, but if they do, I imagine Mama and Papa will have an answer ready.”
Kitty nodded sagely. “They may even change their minds. Papa is too angry at the moment. He feels this broken engagement as a slight to himself.”
Juliet glanced about the room to be sure there were no servants there. “Did you know Papa had a broken engagement of his own? Which may be one reason he is so angry about mine.”
Kitty’s eyes widened. “No!”
“Apparently, he was engaged to Lord Myerly’s daughter, who then ran away with an army officer. Which I suppose must have been quite humiliating for him. At any rate, he quarreled with Myerly, and that’s the real reason we don’t visit.”
“Well, no one else visits either,” Kitty pointed out. “But I suppose they could be following Papa’s lead. How do you know this?”
“From the son of the lady in question,” Juliet confided. “I met him on the stagecoach. He’d been summoned to the old gentleman’s death bed, though he doesn’t believe he’s really dying.”
“Oh, dear… What is he like?” Kitty asked curiously. “The grandson?”
“Not like anyone you’ve met before,” Juliet said with the glimmer of a laugh. “He’s very casual in his manners, doesn’t give two hoots that he’s poor and had to travel on the roof. But he’s very kind and funny.”
“You like him.”
“I do, and I hope he will call here because you will like him, too.”
“I’m sure I will,” Kitty agreed. “But if Mama won’t let you be with her to receive guests?”
“Oh, they must make an exception for Dan. He already knows everything.”
Kitty gazed at her, clearly troubled. “Was that wise, Julie?”
Away from him, it didn’t feel quite so wise, but Juliet merely shrugged, and they went to find their brother Ferdy, Viscount Albright, and go for a walk in the garden. However, before Ferdy had even come downstairs, their mother swept Kitty away to visit her betrothed’s family.
Kitty’s pleas for Juliet to come, too, fell on deaf ears.
Juliet understood. Although she would have liked to see Lawrence again and watch him closely with Kitty, just to be sure he loved her, she appreciated the difficulty. Kitty’s engagement stood on a knife edge because of Juliet.
But I am not responsible! she raged helplessly. What could I have done differently?
She asked the same question of her brother Ferdy when he ran her to earth in the formal gardens. Dressed for riding, he hugged her with careless, brotherly affection and asked what the devil she’d been about.
“Nothing! I simply sat there till they were all unconscious from drink and then left! I ask you, Ferdy, what else could I have done?”
Ferdy scratched his head. “Hard to see. Even if you’d discovered earlier that Her Highness was gone, the chances are you’d have been seen fleeing the scene. Which might have looked even worse.”
“Someone has thought this out very carefully,” Juliet said, glaring at a new rose bush. “Made sure we were doomed from the moment we stepped over the threshold.”
“Don’t see that,” Ferdy protested. “You could have stepped straight back out again. I wish you had, to be honest.”
Juliet sighed. “So do I. But I had no reason to. None of us did. You’re dressed for riding, Ferdy. Do you want to take a walk up to the river instead?”
“Can’t today,” he said apologetically. “Hunting with the Haretons. In fact, I’m late.”
“Hurry, then. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Clearly grateful not to be pinned down any longer, Ferdy strode off toward the stables, leaving Juliet to her restless pacing and brooding about the garden.
In the end, she went back inside and found a book to read.
Luncheon in only her father’s company was not a success either. He barely spoke, and his expression was far too forbidding for her to bring up anything to do with her ruin, or even about his own broken engagement to Daniel’s mother.
He left abruptly, and the afternoon stretched out endlessly before Juliet. She found her old watercolor things and eventually went outside with her easel to see what she could paint. But her heart was not in it, and she greeted the sound of her mother’s returning carriage with relief. Abandoning her unimpressive picture, she flew to meet them.
“How is Lawrence?” she demanded of Kitty.
“Well, of course!”
“And you are still engaged?”
Kitty laughed. “Of course I am.”
“Thank God. Do you suppose they know about me?”
Kitty met