Always the Rival (Never the Bride #7) - Emily E K Murdoch Page 0,62

depends on me to marry Miss Lloyd, and I –”

“No, your mother is depending on you to wed twenty thousand pounds!”

He looked away, frustration pouring from every pore. “You must not speak about my mother like that.”

There was no response from Priscilla, and when he turned around, he saw that she had finally succumbed to tears.

“Everything is broken, and I wish I had never agreed to walk with you.”

She grabbed her basket and moved away, but Charles held her arm.

“Have you noticed,” he said, trying to ignore the heat of her arm and the way it twisted his stomach, “that every time we meet, you storm off?”

“And whose fault is that?” Priscilla snapped. She pulled her arm away and strode down the street without looking back.

Charles leaned against the trunk of the conker tree and let out a long breath. He was alone.

Chapter Sixteen

Priscilla carefully placed the teacup on its saucer, gently balanced in her lap, and sighed. A month ago, she would have liked nothing more than tea with her friends and acquaintances, and this was a delicious tea blend.

“And then I said, surely not! And he said…”

And it was not as though her friends were not witty, clever, and knew how to laugh.

“No! He could not have done – it simply is not done! Did he…” Miss Worsley’s eyes were wide as she shared some gossip with Miss Lymington.

Priscilla smiled as she attempted to follow the conversation, a scandalous tale – it appeared – about a gentleman who simply refused to wipe his boots as he entered Almack’s.

“ – and a footman had to follow him around the room to clean up the mess he left behind!” Miss Worsley laughed as Miss Lymington’s eyes bulged.

“I cannot believe that they let him in at all,” said Miss Darby, a shyer girl whose acquaintance Priscilla had made most recently of the three. “I mean, I have not attended Almack’s, but really!”

“I swear, ’tis exactly how I described it,” Miss Worsley said impressively. “I heard it from the Duchess of Axwick herself, and you know Tabitha rarely exaggerates.”

Priscilla smiled but said nothing. It had been an excellent idea of her mother’s to accept Miss Worsley’s invitation to tea. Getting out of the house, that was the thing. Anything to be out of her own mind, and not think about Charles…

Her smile faltered. How long had she managed to go without thinking about him? A quick glance at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room told her it had only been eight minutes.

Eight minutes. Was that truly all she could manage?

“I did not know you were acquainted with the Duchess of Axwick,” said Miss Darby.

Miss Worsley sniffed. “Well, I knew her before she was the duchess, of course. I knew her as Miss Tabitha Chesworth, though I do not see her often now. And do not look so impressed, Miss Darby, are you not well-acquainted with her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Mercia?”

All these damned duchesses, Priscilla thought bitterly. If things had been different, would she herself be about to become a duchess? How would her friends be treating her, as a future noblewoman of the realm?

She glanced at Miss Lymington, leaning forward to help herself to more tea. Olivia Lymington, more money than she knew what to do with. They had first met at school, years ago now, when she had been little Livvy Lymington. Her father’s wealth had occurred years later.

“There do seem to be more duchesses than anything else in London these days,” Miss Worsley said dismissively. “You won’t see me throwing myself at a duke.”

“I might,” Miss Lymington said pensively. “I mean, with my fortune, I could try for a duke. Or an earl, perhaps.”

Priscilla tried to hide a smile. Miss Lymington had little acquaintance in the nobility, unlike herself, and seemed to consider them something one could just order.

Miss Worsley seemed to have the same thought. “One simply cannot summon them up like a footman!”

The three collapsed into giggles, and Priscilla laughed with them. Miss Sophia Worsley. They were distant relations, and she was not entirely sure how. She had grown far more rebellious in the last few years after that betrothal was called off. What had happened? She had never been told the full story.

“I think most duchesses and dukes are just normal people,” Miss Darby chimed in, a little nervously. “Aren’t they? I mean, other than the riches and the privilege, and perhaps the connections and the relations to royalty and all that –I