Page 29 of If a Lady Lingers

Then he turned back toward the beautiful woman at his side and smiled at her. But the woman’s cat-like green gaze landed curiously on Daisy before sliding sideways to Whitby to silently ask why he was staring at Daisy like that.

He leaned down to speak into her ear.

A startled expression gripped the woman’s face, and her gaze darted back to Daisy, then swept over her from head to toe. Her red lips formed a roundOof recognition, but not at all the kind of appreciative recognition that the other guests had lavished on Daisy tonight.

No. This woman knew what had happened between them.

Daisy couldn’t bear to know that he’d talked about her, couldn’t tolerate the expression of grief that darkened his face as he continued to stare at her across the room. Or the way her broken heart pounded a painful reminder against her ribs of how he’d broken her trust.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled breathlessly as she fled the room, weaving around the guests as she rushed toward the hall. “Excuse me!”

She pushed her way through the house and hurried upstairs to the retiring room. There, she would be safe. She would have space and quiet to tamp down the fierce headache that throbbed behind her stinging eyes, to catch her breath and calm her heart. To find a place where she could gather her resolve and plaster on a smile to somehow take her through the rest of the evening. And when it was over, when she was safely home in her own room, then she could finally weep.

She paused outside the door and pulled in a deep breath to gain the appearance of calm. Then she put a smile on her face and stepped inside.

The first bedroom on the second floor had been transformed into a retiring room. The bed had been removed, along with the dresser and armoire, and in their places, half a dozen vanity tables with large oval mirrors hugged the side walls. Their tops were cluttered with pots of rouge and powders, puffs, brushes, hair pins…anything a female guest would need to freshen up during the evening, right down to a small sewing kit conveniently placed on a side table for torn hems. For privacy, four screens blocked off the corners and the chamber pots behind, while thickly padded benches filled the center of the room and gave the ladies a comfortable place to rest.

Three young ladies sat there now, lounging casually across the benches and gossiping with delight. They looked up when she entered, blinked at her without recognition, and ignored her to continue their self-titillating conversation.

Daisy slid onto a seat at one of the vanities. Heavens, she was shaking! The pale woman who stared back at her in the mirror was clearly just as miserable. It took her a long moment to recognize that the woman was her.

With resolve to endure the evening, she reached for a small rouge pot, although there wasn’t enough rouge in all of England to bring color back to her cheeks now.

“Can you believe what he’s wearing?” one of the women gushed in a voice meant to be secretive yet was loud enough for Daisy to overhear.

“His tailor must be blind,” piped up another.

The third lady interjected, “What tailor shop? A theatre, more likely.”

“A circus!”

They all laughed and waved their fans rapidly for air, as if that had been the funniest thing they’d heard all night.

Daisy’s eyes slid to the women’s reflection in the lower corner of her mirror as she removed her glove, laid it across the vanity top, and dabbed the color onto her bottom lip with her ring finger. They were exactly like the mean girls she remembered from school who’d teased her for excelling at math and mechanical drawings rather than music and watercolors. She’d never been happier than when she finished school and returned to London, when she began her real education in her father’s studio. Just like any other apprentice, except that she wore skirts.

“And that jacket!”

“That poor sheep was shorn for no good reason if that’s what became of its wool.”

“Who wears something like that—sky blue in the evening?”

Daisy froze, her fingertip resting against her bottom lip. They were talking about Whitby.

“Oh, but that red waistcoat beneath and dark blue cravat! That’s all that anyone can see when they look at him.”

“Because it makes his hair so much more garish—”

“And his face so white—

“He looks like a powdered French courtesan!”

Giggles bubbled out of them as they practically fell backward onto each other from laughter. One of them rudely imitated Whitby’s laugh until she sounded like a braying donkey.

Daisy straightened her back. “I think it’s wonderful for a man to want to brighten up the world instead of leaving it to those boring blacks and dark blues that the rest of the unimaginative dandies wear.” She slid a gaze over their dresses and sniffed disdainfully. “Or those weak pastels favored by misses who are just as bland and colorless as their clothes.”

All three of their mouths fell open, insulted but speechless.

Daisy fought to keep the trembling from her voice, both from anger and the confrontation she was delivering. She pinned their reflections beneath her gaze in the mirror. “You’re laughing at Mr. Hugh Whitby, correct? Baron Whitby’s son?”