The tea arrived. Her aunt poured out, but Elinor let her cup cool on the table. Deep down, she knew she deserved this. Mama hadn’t caused her to sabotage her means to return. But oh, to have all of her innocence ripped from her within hours! First Grantham and now this.
“Elinor, have a care for your face. Wrinkles form around the most unbecoming expressions. Now, sit down and tell me what happened to your carriage. I’m sure your mother wouldn’t have forced you to ride a day and a half in the dead of winter, and besides,” her aunt’s husky voice almost laughed, “I’ve heard a most intriguing rumor.”
Elinor spun around. “You have? But how—?”
Aunt Millie shrugged and sipped her tea. “Why, I’m sure it’s all over the county by now. Shabby carriages don’t plow into the sides of grand houses every day, even in the country.”
If Elinor hadn’t felt like the biggest fool in the midst of Grantham and his ghastly friends, she could have claimed this as the most embarrassing moment of her life. Just remembering the lengths she’d gone to and the danger she’d risked for an introduction to that blackguard, that lying, whoremongering rapscallion—
“Your face, darling,” her aunt reminded her with one raised, fiery eyebrow, “I’m deathly serious about it. Now, if I know Lord Chelford well, you took a toss right into the middle of his annual Twelfth Night party. No wonder you appear so shaken.”
Did everyone know what a shameless libertine he was? Everyone except her?
Vitriol bubbled to her surface. She didn’t attempt to hide her disgust. “I had no idea a man could be so monstrous. Prostitutes!” she fairly spat. “At Christmas!”
Her aunt laughed. The graceful clink of her teacup against its saucer was at odds with the sultry noise that hummed from her throat. “Where would those poor women spend the holiday, if not for his party? One might think him generous, rather than repulsive. He allows them the run of his house for almost an entire month. It must cost him a small fortune but he never complains.”
“It’s clear what he receives in return,” Elinor said bitterly. “I’ve never been so disgusted.”
Her aunt leaned forward, causing a curl to tumble from her messy coiffure and land across a liberal expanse of bosom most women her age would have concealed. “And how well do you know men? Men under thirty years of age? Men with twenty thousand a year? Men with no wife? If he’s sowing his oats, then it’s nothing that isn’t expected of him. But is he?” When Elinor didn’t reply, her aunt lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “It’s said he can’t stand the silence of Chelford at night. Reminds him too much of his sister, God rest her soul, and the day she died.” Aunt Millie leaned back against the couch. “I’m not calling the man a saint. But perhaps what he trades those women is company. Can you fault a person for their loneliness?”
Elinor gasped. “Grantham is melancholy?”
Aunt Millie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s said he doesn’t talk about it. I suppose that’s proof enough.”
Setting one foot in front of the other, Elinor crept bravely toward her now-cold tea. It was occurring to her more and more that she’d been too naïve to know exactly how naïve she’d been. Goodness! The man kept jaded, experienced women around to chase his night terrors away. Not only had she not known the first thing about him, but she hadn’t even known it was possible for a man to be damaged, yet so handsomely good-humored.
The man kept lightskirts.
“It wasn’t in Debrett’s,” she muttered as she attempted to dissolve a lump of sugar in her cold tea. “Nor my Ladies’ Companion.”
“Madge lets you girls read that trash?” Aunt Millie’s lips curved. “Good for her.”
Elinor thought of the subscription she and her sisters were careful to smuggle through the village postmaster. “Not in so many words,” she said, in case the odd relationship between Aunt Millie and Mama suddenly blossomed into a bosom friendship. “But I would have thought Lord Chelford’s roguishness would deserve a passing mention, when so many good things about him are written into its pages.”
Her aunt gave her an arch look. “Do you recognize ‘Lady T.,’ or ‘the Frosty Duchess,’ or any of the other Cyprians whose aliases might be linked to him? Because the rest of us are quite well-versed in his accomplishments, and we read the same delicious rag.”
Aliases? Yet more duplicitousness. Elinor sipped her tea. She hoped the infusion would cure the sickening feeling in her stomach. Or was that hollow pain located just below her breast? It all felt the same, as if she needed to curl into a tight ball and hide beneath the covers forever.