All eyes turned to Miss Stuart. For the life of him, Gabriel couldn’t tell what she was thinking, so still was she and so blank her expression. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out there was yet another rustle of skirts on the path.
Now what? he thought. How could this possibly get worse?
It did.
Here was his grandmother, not a silvery-white curl out of place, her back ramrod-straight. If she didn’t exactly skid to a stop, she certainly halted rather abruptly. On her still-handsome face was a look so fierce that it irresistibly summoned for Gabriel the image of Medusa turning her hapless victims to stone.
Appropriately enough, no one moved a muscle.
“Well!” Grandmama exclaimed, her patrician voice vibrating with fury. “I daresay someone will explain to me the meaning of this shocking tableau!”
There was dead silence.
Rapidly Gabriel pulled himself together and began framing in his mind a reply that was rational and soothing, one that would defuse this ghastly tinderbox of a situation and allow everyone to disperse with both civility and dignity. It could be done; he knew it. He’d gotten himself out of tight fixes before.
And then—
Then Miss Stuart giggled.
And all hell broke loose.
Livia had never been to a display of waxworks, but surely it would have resembled the scene of moments ago, with human forms stiffly displayed in a variety of attitudes ranging from arrogant imperturbability (Mr. Penhallow) to horror (Cecily) to outraged hostility (Uncle Charles, Lady Glanville, and the slim, imperious, beautifully dressed elderly lady who had frozen them all into immobility).
What, she wondered, was her own expression like? She probably looked exactly like a dazed little country bumpkin, thrust into the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, hopefully she was at least disguising what she was actually feeling. Mostly she was angry. No, she was furious that she’d allowed herself to be kissed by that awful Mr. Penhallow, and then wilted meekly into his embrace. And how could she have—even if only briefly—enjoyed it?
Obviously she was a dreadful person. And how mortifying to have all these people hanging about. Still, seeing them standing as if paralyzed struck her all at once as so comical that she managed to choke down a rush of hysterical laughter with only partial success.
Her giggle had, at least, the benefit of breaking free the curious impasse.
“That fellow—what’s his name? Pinbarrow?—has compromised my niece, that’s what has happened!” Uncle Charles said angrily, even as Lady Glanville overrode him with another icy demand to know the whereabouts of her son and Cecily said in a manner perilously close to a screech: “Mr. Penhallow!”
“Be quiet, all of you!” said the elderly lady acidly, and such was her commanding air that silence once again descended upon the group. She fixed her piercing blue eyes on Uncle Charles. “And who might you be?” she asked haughtily, as if forced to address a talking bug.
“Why, I’m that girl’s uncle and guardian,” he answered, with stubborn, uncouth bluster. “Charles Stuart, Esquire. And who might you be, I’d like to know?”
“I am Mrs. Penhallow. I am the grandmother of that fellow, as you so eloquently put it. Perhaps you might enlighten me as to why your niece looks as if she has been dragged backwards through the shrubbery.”
“Isn’t it obvious your nephew has been dallying with her? He’s compromised her—we’re all witnesses to it!—and he’ll have to pay the piper.”
Scornfully the old lady said: “If you are suggesting financial remuneration—”
“Dallying?” Cecily cried. “Oh, Mr. Penhallow!”
“Money, ma’am?” Uncle Charles’s face was a livid scarlet. “He’s got to do the honorable thing and marry her! I won’t have the family reputation besmirched!”
“Marry her?” Cecily grabbed at Uncle Charles’s sleeve as might a drowning person reach for ballast. “Oh, no, no, no!”
“Cecily, do stop repeating everything you hear,” said Lady Glanville. “And pray release Mr. Stuart’s sleeve; recall that you are the granddaughter of an earl.” She turned to Mrs. Penhallow with ponderous graciousness. “The situation is, to be sure, a trifle awkward, my dear ma’am, but I am confident that between us we can smooth over any rough edges—”
Mrs. Penhallow ignored her. “Well, Gabriel?” she said sharply to her grandson. “Is it true what this Mr. Stuart says?”
Not only had Livia had never seen a waxworks display, she’d never been to a play either, but it certainly felt like she was watching one now. She looked from one person to the next, fascinated. What would happen after this? Fisticuffs, fainting, someone running off, pursued by a bear?