Hale may already have found their new location.
Fear squeezed her chest, shortening her breath.
How was she going to manage this?
Seventeen
It was a lovely party held in a large conservatory that stretched along the back of the Lovell mansion. The room was long and narrow with musicians set up on one end of the room to provide music for dancing, a buffet table loaded with extravagant refreshments on the opposite end, and various furniture groupings interspersed throughout to accommodate those who preferred conversation.
Lily and Portia were both on the dance floor and were likely to remain occupied until the musicians took a break.
The dowager countess was settled into a comfortable corner with Lady Greenly and Lady Winterdale, and for the last fifteen minutes at least, the three contemporaries had been debating the marriageable qualities of several of the bachelors in attendance.
Emma stood stiffly behind Angelique’s chair.
She was barely cognizant of the conversation going on between the elderly ladies. Her thoughts were twisted up on a path rife with anxiety. But when she happened to catch the name of one of Lily’s suitors, she forced herself to alter her focus. Though most of their talk was likely to be conjecture or gossip rather than true fact, it paid to know what types of whispers followed a gentleman through society.
At present, they were discussing poor Mr. Lockton, the gentleman with five motherless children, who had shown a certain amount of interest in Lily.
“A good catch all around, I would say,” Lady Greenly declared. “In possession of a good fortune, several lovely estates, and a well-appointed carriage. He is not too old, nor is he too young, and he carries himself as a gentleman should. Respectful and proper—”
“And dull.” This from Angelique, who had her opera glasses raised conspicuously as she studied the gentleman in question.
“Not to mention those five brats of his.” And this, of course, was from Lady Winterdale, who seemed to find a delightful negative to every man who came under scrutiny.
“The children do not necessarily need to be considered a deficit,” Lady Greenly argued, and Emma agreed, knowing Lily adored children and would make a kind and compassionate stepmother.
“Lockton certainly sees them as such,” Lady Winterdale added, lowering her voice. “I understand he keeps them at an estate in Scotland and hasn’t visited them but once since their mother passed more than four years ago.”
“That is heartbreaking,” Angelique exclaimed, turning away from her perusal.
“But is it true?” Lady Greenly queried skeptically.
Lady Winterdale shrugged and gave her friends a haughty glance. “My Thomas says Lockton has had no less than six mistresses in succession since coming to London upon Mrs. Lockton’s death. I doubt such…activities have left him with much time to travel back and forth to Scotland.”
Emma glanced toward Lockton herself.
Six mistresses? She could hardly imagine it of the staid and mannerly gentleman.
Angelique harrumphed. “A man who cannot keep a mistress is not likely to keep a wife any better.”
The other ladies made low sounds of agreement.
“Lord Fallbrook, on the other hand, appears to know just how to get a lady all atwitter,” Lady Winterdale suggested with a sly look, turning their attention to another of Lily’s potential suitors, who was bent toward a young lady in a private corner.
Whatever he was saying, it was bringing an attractive blush to the girl’s cheeks.
“That man is quite charming,” Angelique said, but her tone was less than complimentary.
“Perhaps too charming?” Lady Greenly asked.
Every man the ladies analyzed came up short in some fashion or another. So presentable at a glance, when one began picking away at the facade, there appeared little to recommend these noble examples of manhood. Emma was beginning to want none of them for her sisters.
Perhaps Portia had had the right of it all along.
The subtle thread of panic that had been with her all evening wound tighter through her chest. She could not start thinking that way.
Needing respite from the doubts inspired by the ladies’ conversation, Emma quietly excused herself and made her way, as inconspicuously as she could, toward a set of French doors. They had been thrown open to the night air, where a terrace overlooked the Lovells’ extensive gardens.
Emma claimed a spot near enough to view her sisters on the dance floor, yet not so far from Angelique she couldn’t rejoin her in a few moments. The room was not overly warm, but her thoughts had been in a riot for the last several hours. She hoped the cool night air wafting in through the open door might help her collect herself and formulate a plan, but the tension riding her shoulders refused to ease. The breeze, as lovely as it was, was not nearly strong enough to clear her mind of the threatening words she had received earlier that day from Mr. Mason Hale.