Page 8 of Two Blessings For His Duchess
Suddenly, she heard the rapid, muffled thud of his boots on the carpet as he marched straight back to the room.
Euphemia peeked through the opening as he arrived.
“It is clear,” he murmured, his voice low and clipped. “Go now. Move quickly straight down the corridor, and do not look back.”
“Thank goodness,” she breathed.
Desperate to escape, she practically threw herself out of the room, stepping so close to him that her shoulder brushed the crisp linen of his shirt.
But she didn’t even make it two steps past his shoulder.
Right as she drew level with him, a door halfway down the very same corridor clicked and swung wide open. It wasn’t the staircase they had been watching, it was a guest chamber they hadn’t accounted for.
Out stepped Lady Jersey and Lady Cowper — two of the most formidable, sharp-tongued matrons of theton— flanked by two housemaids carrying fresh towels.
The entire group stopped dead in their tracks.
Euphemia gasped, her blood turning to pure ice. Lady Jersey’s gaze dropped instantly to Euphemia’s bare toes, traveled up her wrinkled dress, to her blonde, tangled hair, and then snapped directly to the man, who was standing a mere inch away from her. He was only half-dressed... no cravat, no coat, just a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
The silence in the hallway was loud enough to shatter glass.
Euphemia slowly turned her head toward him, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and furious disbelief. “Did you not check the hallway?” she hissed under her breath.
“I checked the staircase,” he muttered back through teeth that didn’t move. “I did not anticipate guests occupying the storage suites.”
“And you asked if I was intoxicated?” she whispered frantically, her voice trembling. “Clearly, you are the one who is drunk! You cannot even clear a straight line.”
The two grand matrons didn’t say a word. They didn’t need to. Lady Cowper merely raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow,while Lady Jersey’s lips curved into a slow, terrifying smile. The maids were already whispering.
Euphemia felt the walls of the corridor closing in on her. The slippers in her hands felt heavier than lead, and her chest heaved as she stared at the witnesses to her doom. There was no explanation for this. There was no excuse in the world that could erase a ruined woman standing barefoot outside a man’s bedroom at dawn.
The world around her began to crumble, the last shreds of her family’s reputation dissolving right before her eyes. There was absolutely no coming back from this.
“Oh no,” she whispered to the empty air.
CHAPTER THREE
“Nathaniel Darington... the Duke of Greymoor?” Seraphina asked.
“Nathaniel Darington,” Seraphina said again, as though saying it a second time would make it make more sense than it had the first time. It did not. “The Duke of Greymoor.”
She stopped pacing for precisely the length of time it took to look at Euphemia, confirm that the situation was exactly as bad as it had sounded, and resume pacing. “You are telling me that you slept in his room. That you were found. In the corridor. With your slippers in your hands. By two women and two maids.”
Euphemia gazed blankly into space, wondering when exactly everything had gone so thoroughly wrong.
She sat completely frozen in her chair, tuning out her sister’s hysterics as she reviewed her own life choices. It was a mathematical marvel, really. Euphemia considered herself arational woman, someone who believed in logic, cause and effect, and the proper alignment of household ledgers. Yet, looking at the trajectory of her recent luck, she was forced to conclude that the universe had simply selected her as its personal source of entertainment.
First, Lord Finch had abandoned her at the altar. Now, a mere wrong turn in search for a warm bed had branded her a predatory huntress of dukes.
The sheer logistics of her ruin were completely devoid of grace. If a woman was going to be thoroughly ruined, it ought to involve a midnight elopement on horseback or a dramatic confession in a rain-soaked garden. It should look like the pages ofGlenarvon. It should not look like a woman tiptoeing past a guest suite looking like an untamed hedge-witch, arguing with a half-dressed Duke about who was more intoxicated.
“Oh, do stop drilling a hole into the floorboards, Seraphina,” Leonora chimed in from the chaise lounge. The youngest Byron sister was currently spreading marmalade onto a piece of toast, composed. “It is early yet. Surely we can find a way around it. Perhaps we can say Euphemia was simply sleepwalking? Or that she was looking for the library to study the architecture? People know she reads too much. They might believe she was confused by a particularly compelling shelf of history books.”
“They found her outside his bedroom door wearing the same dress she wore the night before, Leonora!” Seraphina shrieked, throwing her hands in the air. “Holding her slippers! There is no defense in the world that can save us!”
Euphemia wondered if the best decision she could make was to stop leaving the house. She could go back to the country, and sit in the drawing room, read improving literature and never attend another party as long as she lived. Thetoncould discuss that as enthusiastically as it liked because at least it couldn’t make things worse.
“Everyone needs to calm down,” Emily announced, her voice instantly cutting through the rising panic. She was sat by Euphemia’s side, having followed her back to Mayfair after the incident. “Seraphina, being agitated is not going to benefit anyone, least of all Effie. The best thing you can do right now, is for you to sit down, calm yourself, and allow us to work through this logically.”
