“I suppose not,” she murmured. “Would it trouble you too much if I went to my room now?”
Her aunt’s expression was achingly sympathetic. “I, too, was a girl in the first blush of womanhood once. It does agonize to realize one’s calf love was directed at some entirely ill-suited young man. But aren’t I getting ahead of myself? You couldn’t have known Lord Chelford well, not from a few stray words printed in the pages of a magazine.”
Elinor felt the last of her girlish fancy slip away. “No, ma’am,” she whispered, “I can honestly say I didn’t know Lord Chelford at all.”
Chapter Eight
GRANTHAM STOPPED in the doorframe of his drawing room. The hedonism had resumed. Becky was showing the brunette how to roll off her stocking properly. They seemed to be engrossed in the lesson as if it were as important as maths. On the wingback chair across from their couch, Scotherby was stripped to his shirtsleeves with Fanny cuddled shamelessly in his lap. The pretty waif was kissing his collarbone and cooing unintelligible phrases against his skin.
Steepleton and Tewsey had gone off with a hookah into a corner; if the sickly stench was anything to go by, they were smoking opiate-laced tobacco. And the blonde lightskirt was sketching the entire, nauseating debacle into a thick leather sketchbook spread across Hannah’s cherished escritoire.
Grantham clenched his jaw. For years, he’d relied on his friends for distraction. He was beginning to realize he’d been hiding like a coward, shirking responsibility because it hurt too much to make mistakes. That had done nothing but prove darkness begat darkness. Now he knew brightness did exist in the world. It simply wasn’t in this room.
“Snow’s cleared.” He enjoyed watching them jump at the sound of his voice.
Lord Steepleton set his mouthpiece across his knee and looked at Grantham with glassy eyes. “But the chit’s gone.” With painstaking effort, he brought the silver draw back to his lips and inhaled deeply. His next words wheezed out as he attempted to talk and hold his breath at the same time. “We’ve twelve more days.”
Becky lounged against the armrest of the couch. She wiggled her ten fingers and one bare foot toward Grantham’s face. “Shall I count them for you?”
He grimaced. “She only left because we’re disgusting. Look at this mess. How did it all come to this?”
No one answered him. They didn’t even have the wherewithal to look bashful.
He spun to quit the room and came face to face with Mariah. He ought to have felt a cold breeze behind him.
Her lips curved upward. “Three berries left.”
He followed the direction of her finger to see the kissing ball looming over his head. “God’s teeth, woman. Have you no decency?”
She swayed closer to him until the red lace peeping from her bodice brushed against the topmost button of his waistcoat. “None at all.”
He tried to step around her, but she didn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t want to touch you.” He’d never liked her, but he disliked even more the thought of his coat brushing against her when Elinor might one day be pressed against that same swath of fabric. “Step aside.”
“Your little country girl must be a good screw.” Mariah placed a hand on his chest. “So am I.”
He removed her hand from his person with a flick of his wrist. She whipped her arm behind her back and glared at him. Good. She needed to learn not to paw at him like a dockside wench.
“I should slap my glove across your cheek for that insult,” he said. “She’s no lightskirt. I won’t have you spreading rumors to the contrary.”
Mariah’s dark eyes dared him to name his second. “Then slap me.”
As if he would truly challenge her to a duel. Grantham scowled. This was all a game to her. The less he desired her, the harder she tried to win his attention. With a guttural noise of disdain, he pivoted back into the room. Much as he wanted to cast her aside bodily, he wouldn’t treat a woman so poorly. He went to the sideboard instead.
De Winter materialized in the doorframe behind Mariah. He glanced from the kissing ball to Scotherby’s seething mistress beneath it, then caught Grantham’s eye. “You?” he mouthed, indicating the Cyprian.
Grantham grimaced and nodded.
De Winter shook his head as if he found the situation utterly incomprehensible. Then he murmured, “A kiss for me, Mariah?” to the back of her head.
She whirled around. Upon realizing the drawl belonged to the earl, she arched her spine toward him. “If tradition dictates it, my lord.”
De Winter shot Grantham a look of chagrined amusement. “For posterity, then,” he said, and wrapped his arms around the beautiful cow. Without raising his head, he reached overhead and tugged one berry from the mistletoe.