or failed to notice her altogether. He’d remembered her and greeted her with a familiarity that cast no doubt they shared a friendly acquaintance.
Her. Chloe Wynchester!
She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she’d doubted he would go through with it. That today would be one more embarrassing disappointment in a lifetime of going unnoticed.
“Philippa.” Mrs. York tapped her daughter’s lace-encircled wrist. “His Grace is on speaking terms with Miss Wynchester. You must invite her to your next event. Until you’re wed, you cannot be rude to anyone he’s friendly with, no matter how distasteful. At least, not in front of him.”
There was the douse of water Chloe needed. She was useful to a point, but once the betrothal was announced, she was to be cut forevermore.
Oh, she could return if she wished to. She could be Anne Smith one day and Mary Jones the next, and Mrs. York would be too busy preening at Faircliffe to know the difference.
This time, however, the thought of doing so felt less like revenge and more…dreary.
“Lady Quarrington is hosting a soirée on Friday,” Philippa said to Chloe. “You must attend.”
Mrs. York swatted at her daughter, aghast. “You cannot invite a Wynchester to other people’s soirées! Besides, I thought you refused to attend your cousin’s fêtes.”
Philippa’s porcelain face was hard as marble. “I’ll go if Miss Wynchester goes.”
Mrs. York flashed Chloe a furious smile. “Then we’ll make certain she receives an invitation.”
Somehow Chloe kept her mouth from falling open. Easy as that? Oh, well, I suppose we shall grant her entrée because two people failed to cut her as expected. A word from Faircliffe and another from Philippa, and suddenly Chloe Wynchester had worth?
Fingers of doubt crept up her spine. Perhaps she’d underestimated how much influence a man like Faircliffe wielded. After all, she hadn’t selected him because he was likely to be an easy mark. She hadn’t selected him at all.
“Come along, everyone.” Mrs. York urged her guests down a corridor. “Off we go to the dining room, where we’ll have room to display our blankets…and enjoy tea!”
Chloe let the river of excited, chattering guests pass her by. Maybe Philippa wasn’t as narrow-minded as her peers. Chloe hadn’t been able to send an apology for the Tiglet catastrophe because she’d been operating under an assumed name. Now that that tiny detail had been cleared up, maybe she and Philippa could even be…friends.
“Are you coming?” asked a familiar velvet voice.
Startled, she glanced up to see Faircliffe’s handsome face lined with concern.
Why was he doing this? The magic of his attention had already borne fruit. He needn’t keep talking to her. It wasn’t part of their agreement.
He stepped far too close beside her. “I’ll walk with you.”
The other unmarried ladies were almost as vexed by this turn of events as Chloe was. The only thing she wanted from Faircliffe was the location of her family’s painting.
She tried to make meaningful eyes at Philippa to come and enchant her soon-to-be betrothed.
Philippa stared back at her blankly, then disappeared down the hall as if the most pressing matter was sampling the tea cakes.
How could she be so sanguine? Did Philippa not care who Faircliffe escorted because she had already won? Or after five years on the marriage mart, was she tired of playing the game? Why, oh, why couldn’t she be a possessive, screeching harpy?
Faircliffe showed no signs of abandoning Chloe’s side.
She tried not to find his solicitousness charming. It was an act, just like everything else the beau monde did or said in front of each other. He wasn’t kind to her by choice.
Philippa could have him. The last thing Chloe needed was the insincere attentions of some titled nob. She’d rather go back to being invisible.
“Take any seat you wish.” Mrs. York clapped her hands. “There are more cakes coming.”
Faircliffe touched his hand to the back of a gracefully curved bergère facing a decorative looking glass and two candelabra. “How about this one?”
“No.” Chloe’s revulsion was too visceral to hide.
His surprise was obvious. “Does it look uncomfortable?”
“It looks…” She was too rattled by his continued solicitousness to invent a lie. “I know artfully placed mirrors are customary to increase a room’s light, but I cannot spend the next hour and a half dodging my reflection in the looking glass.”
She hated her reflection. Not always; sometimes she was almost pretty. But only in the privacy of her bedchamber. If she sat across from a mirror in this house, she would be forced to acknowledge how ill-matched