Page 44 of Duke of Wickedness
The woman who was—instead of pretending they didn’t see each other now and had, in fact, never seen each other before and had maybe never even seen anyone before, notever—smiling and inclining her chin at Ariadne.
“Oh, hello,” she said brightly. “So good to see you!”
Ariadne blinked, then blinked again, and alas. The woman was still standing there. Still smiling.
“Um, hello,” she said. “So good to see you, too.”
The woman—who may or may not have been a bedlamite; it remained to be seen—offered Catherine a curtsey.
“Miss Phoebe Turner,” she introduced herself, and Ariadne had to hand it to her—it was a clever way to offer her name without arousing any curiosity about why Ariadne didn’t already know it.
Indeed, Catherine offered her own bob of a curtsey in return. “Catherine Egelton,” she said. “I’m Ariadne’s sister.”
“And the Duchess of Seaton,” Ariadne added dryly. “You aren’t quitesofamous that you can’t add that bit, Kitty.”
Miss Turner gave Catherine a friendly grin. “Never worry, Your Grace, you arepreciselyas famous as that.”
It was a touch risky, as far as teasing went. Catherine was one of the highest-ranked ladies in Society, and this Miss Turner person didn’t know Catherine from Eve. But there was a gleam about Miss Turner that made this touch of sauciness seem kindhearted, not malicious.
And Catherine seemed pleased enough. She shrugged her shoulders.
“What can I say?” she asked breezily. “I am too remarkable to ignore.”
Miss Turner laughed, a little too big and bright to be a Society twitter. It was nice, though, Ariadne thought. Infectious. She found herself smiling right along.
“Where did you two meet?” Catherine asked. It was an innocent enough question, but Ariadne stiffened.
“Oh, your sister was kind enough to help me with a torn hem at a ball,” Miss Turner lied effortlessly. “I didn’t even know it wasthere. She mentioned something before I turned an ankle—or, given my luck, broke my neck. We commiserated over the perils of slippery dance floors.”
This was… an astonishingly plausible lie, especially given how quickly it had been summoned. Ariadne struggled for a nonchalant nod.
“Imagine what womankind could achieve if we were only given slippers that don’t threaten us with every step across a ballroom floor,” Catherine sighed.
Miss Turner smiled. “Dangerous things, most likely. That’s why we haven’t been granted them.”
It was another risky comment—and it gained another laugh.
“I’ll leave you to chat with your friend for a moment,” Catherine said to Ariadne. “I’ll go talk to—” She glanced around the park, and her smile grew a little more strained. “Oh, I’ll go talk to Lady Fitzhugh. Her husband is one of Percy’s political allies, so I’ll look like a very good political wife and all that.”
“I’m sure he appreciates it enormously,” Ariadne encouraged—a touch selfishly, as she was absolutely trying to get rid of her sister so that she could talk to this Miss Turner character alone.
As Catherine walked away, she muttered something that sounded suspiciously likehe had better.
When her sister was out of earshot, Ariadne turned back to Miss Turner, trying to hide her suspicion.
Either she wasn’t doing a very good job of it, or else that was simply a predictable reaction to the situation at hand, because Miss Turner said, “I am guessing that you are rather curious about what I am doing.”
She said this so guilelessly that Ariadne almost had a flicker of abashment that she was, in fact, rather curious. Then she remembered how smoothly Miss Turner had lied to Catherine. She conveniently disregarded, for a moment, that she wasgratefulthat Miss Turner had lied to Catherine, because Ariadne hadn’t been confident that she could have managed it herself.
“I am,” she agreed carefully.
“Right.” Miss Turnerseemedfriendly enough. “Well. If I were you—and I know I’m notyou, exactly, but we have some things in common, I gather—I would be worried that some strange little miss coming up out of nowhere was going to try to turn our first meeting into fodder for the gossip columns.”
“Well, yes, the thought did occur to me,” Ariadne said. She did not like that she keptagreeingwith this woman. It made it very hard to maintain an air of suspicious hostility, and she felt certain that she ought to be suspicious and hostile. “But then I figured that you’d have a hard time explaining why you were there, too, so I decided it was only a moderate concern.”
Miss Turner beamed as though Ariadne had said something simply brilliant.
“Precisely! Suffice to say, I am not going to go prattling to the gossip rags. Nor did I really suspect that you would do the same. So, I thought this put us in a wonderfully unique position,” Miss Turner said brightly.
