Page 109 of Duke of Diamonds
“Did you hear?” Hester leaned in, her gloved hand deftly balancing a glass of lemonade as she whispered to Fiona.
Fiona turned her head slightly, arching a brow. “Pray, what have I missed?”
They stood beside the refreshment table, where delicate glass pitchers glinted beneath the chandeliers, and Fiona poured herself another glass, though her hand paused mid-motion, curiosity now piqued more than thirst.
“Canterlack has, it seems, become the black sheep of the English aristocracy,” Hester said with a look that suggested she was most pleased to be the bearer of scandal.
Fiona’s brow knit. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Thrown out of a gentleman’s club on Bond Street,” Hester supplied, her voice dropping even lower. “Made quite the drunken exhibition of himself. Loud, disorderly—utterly disgraceful.”
“Indeed,” said Nancy, arriving with a practiced glide, her own cup in hand. “He has been all but exiled from society. They say he brings shame upon the peerage.”
Fiona blinked, the name sending a prickle across her skin.Canterlack?Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass.So that thread has unraveled at last.
“That gentleman’s character has always been rather suspect,” Hester continued, shaking her head. “I daresay he has received precisely what he was due.”
“Shall we declare it divine justice, then?” Anna interjected with a soft laugh, slipping into their circle like a breeze through a lace curtain.
“Someone is fashionably late,” Nancy observed, lifting her glass in a mock toast.
“When one is married with a child, punctuality is often more ambition than reality,” Anna said, her smile apologetic.
“Fiona was early,” Hester pointed out, shooting a look at her with a knowing gleam. “And she is married as well.”
“But the only child I have is a parrot,” Fiona said with a soft laugh, though it escaped her lips with a trace of self-consciousness.
The others laughed lightly in return, but Fiona’s smile lingered only briefly. At the mention of children, something pulled within her—an ache she had become too familiar with.
If only...
“Goodness, Hester. You make it sound as though arriving half an hour late is a criminal offense,” Anna said, shaking her head.
“It is, if it means you miss the first helping of scandal,” Hester replied, arching a brow. Laughter rippled through the group.
“Speaking of scandal... Colin was at the pub when Canterlack made his spectacle,” Anna continued, returning them neatly to the subject at hand. “He said it was appalling. Loud, crude. Quite beneath even Canterlack.”
“He’s grown quite pitiful,” Nancy added with a grimace.
“Perhaps now society shall finally know some peace,” Hester said.
Fiona listened to their voices, the cadence of them softening to background noise. Her gaze had drifted.I narrowly escaped that fate,she thought, watching the dance floor with anunfocused eye.Whatever I must live without now, at least I am not bound to him.
Even if it meant no children. Even if it meant yearning for something that might never be. At least she was safe—with Craton.With Isaac.
Later, after indulging in more lemonade than was strictly ladylike, Fiona excused herself to the retiring room. The cool hush of the corridor was a welcome balm to the din of the ballroom.
As she made her way back, the sound of her husband’s name caught her ear.
“Craton—”
The voice was muffled, and she slowed. A second voice followed, lower, yet familiar.
“You met with Craton then?”
Fiona stopped. That was her mother.
She turned her head toward the ajar door, her pulse skipping.
