Page 44 of Scandalous Heiress
“Lovely people, lovely manor, really quite nice.”
Liv looked skeptical.“And Ezzie?She’s not with you?Did Ridgemont ask for her hand?”
Ada shook her head.“Her parents didn’t arrive.Made weak excuses.It was not right.Ezzie was embarrassed.”
“Of course she would be.”Liv did not care for Ezzie’s mother who publicly ridiculed the very English society she wished to become part of.The result was that the English critiqued Mrs.Moore as an aggressive American mother.“Dear girl.She deserves better.”
“She does indeed,” added Marianne.Ada’s cousin lived in Paris and the Loire Valley with her husband but they visited back and forth many times a year.They were an open family, sharing news, friends and aspirations.Marianne liked Ezzie best of all Ada’s American friends and former schoolmates.“Ezzie’s mother needs a good dose of her own medicine.Sour pills.”
“Is that why Ridgemont didn’t step up?”Lily’s face grew pink.Her sister had harsh words for those who didn’t do right by others in manners, word or deed.As one of the first American heiresses to marry into the aristocracy, Lily had suffered many snubs.Including from her own mother-in-law.But Lily remembered the pain.“Because her parents did not arrive?”
“Perhaps.I’m not certain.”Ada sagged in her chair.She could allow her family to let the blame lay at the feet of Ezzie’s parents, but that would be unfair to everyone.Sighing, she recounted the whole bloody story of the weekend.Richard’s betrayal of Ezzie, Sir John Edgecombe’s attentiveness.“But other things happened.It was not pretty.”
Lily sniffed.“Ah, I detect a tall tale here.Tell us who Richard takes up with instead.”Lily had met Ridgemont on numerous occasions and did not care for him.Ada could bet Lily knew details about his recent dalliance with Dundalk’s wife.
When Ada only stared back, Lily rose from her chair and came to put her arms around her shoulders and kiss her on the crown of her head.“Oh, sweetheart.He liked you, didn’t he?”
Before Ada knew it, Liv had stuffed a handkerchief in her fingers and told her to “go ahead and cry, if you like.You’re home now.”
Both women retuned to their chairs while Ada stifled her tears.
But Marianne reached across to touch her arm and said, “Look at me.Tell us how you managed this Ridgemont.”
“I was discreet.I promise you I was.”Marianne and Lily could recall a few wild times when she’d not been and she had learned her lessons in bitter, frightening fashion.
“We believe you,” Marianne said.
“It could have been worse,” she began, hating to admit what occurred.
“Go on,” Liv said.
Ada took a steadying breath.“Richard has a younger brother who arrived home from Shanghai with his two daughters and…and he was helpful to me.”
Silence filled the room.
“Lord Victor Cole,” Liv said and resumed her chair.She drummed her fingers on the tabletop.“I met him many years ago.His wife too.Passed away a few years ago in China of cholera, I think it was.A lovely man.Did you like him?”
“I did.”
“And he…did what?”Liv asked.
She met her step-mother’s level gaze and told her what a gentleman he’d been.“Standing between me and the possibility that…well, that his brother might go beyond the bounds of propriety.”She folded the handkerchief into tiny pleats.“He was wonderful.Really.”
“So,” a booming bass voice inquired from the doorway, “I needn’t fill my rifle and shoot either man?”
“No, sir,” she told her father and rushed from her chair to his open arms.“Please don’t, Papa.”
The relief that she enjoyed that afternoon was as refreshing as swimming in a cool, clear lake.Her father, assured that no man had physically hurt her or sullied her reputation, warned her never to tolerate the presence of Richard Cole again.“He may inherit a dukedom but he needs to acquire the nobility of character to accompany the name.”
He joined the ladies for the next few minutes, then disappeared to his office.
Ada gave herself over to the latest news of babies, children, estates and Remy’s new exhibit of his sculptures in a gallery near Hanover Square.The opening was to be day after next in the evening.Afterward, her father and Liv would host a small supper party at the house and Ada welcomed the opportunity to throw herself into the planning of the floral centerpieces.As ever, this was her specialty, what she contributed as solely her expertise.It wasn’t much.Her skills at planning landscapes of roses were much better.After all, she’d planned Liv’s rose garden at her parents’ new Brighton house as well as their kitchen garden.Lily had seen the bountiful results and asked Ada to design her own rose garden at Broadmore, the ducal seat of the Setons in Sussex.
The next morning, Ada rose early to select flowers at the local market.A merchant in Half Moon Street was one of her favorites.He always had the tightest young rosebuds, bushy chrysanthemums and healthy ferns too.Hurrying along, she didn’t stop as she made her purchases.But as she turned for her carriage, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.Bewildered, she froze.Then glanced around.She saw no one who seemed to observe her with any singular interest and she brushed away the odd sensation as just that.
At seven, the following evening, the family gathered in the foyer.A fine assembly of all the adult members of the extended Hanniford clan.Her father, robust black-haired Killian Hanniford surveyed them like a king counting his minions.“Handsome and beyond price,” he announced and had Foster open the door so that they could climb into the various carriages to take them over to the gallery.
She rode with her brother Pierce and their step-sister, Camille Bereston.Pierce, at thirty-one-years-old, was the spitting image of their father in younger, more athletic form.In his black cutaway and starched-to-a-fare-thee-well shirt, Pierce was a thrilling specimen for any young lady to savor.He sat backward facing her and Camille, exclaiming how he was quite fortunate to escort them both.
