Page 31 of A Delicate Deception
Usually, when Amelia entered a room in which she did not know everyone present, she made directly for an elderly lady or a clergyman. She wound balls of wool, asked about grandchildren, and untangled embroidery floss until it was time to go home. That was all she wanted to do this evening. She would happily sit by the vicar’s wife. She would even submit to a lecture about her need for a chaperone.
But the first person she saw upon entering Pelham Hall was Mr. Goddard, looking like a very large storm cloud. Much to her relief, her anxiety evaporated, replaced by searing hot anger.
She knew what it was to be stared at, suspected, and judged. Those stares had pierced her skin and reached as deep as her bones, until they formed part of who she was. She had always reacted by trying to deserve approval or at least escape censure and it never ever worked: there was always more judgment. This, however, was the worst yet. It was judgment from someone she thought had really known her.
She suppressed the urge to retreat to a dark corner of the room, unwilling to let him think he had won. Instead, she pretended not to notice him. She made a show of rummaging through her reticule for something, then smoothing the gray silk of her skirts.
Mr. Goddard appeared by her side. “Might I speak to you for a moment?” he asked, his voice little more than a rumble.
She steeled herself against anything like emotion. “I suppose,” she said, regarding him with bored expectation.
“Privately?” he asked.
She was about to oblige him, just for the sake of getting this over with, when she realized she didn’t have to. She could stay precisely where she was. Just because she was uncomfortable and out of her element didn’t mean she had to drift around at other people’s will. She owed nothing to this man, and his judgment did not matter in the least bit; it was a drop in the ocean.
“No,” she said.
“I beg your pardon.”
She straightened her spine and snapped her reticule shut. “No, you may not speak with me privately. Regardless of our previous acquaintance, there’s nothing you need to say to me that can’t be said publicly.”
To his credit, Mr. Goddard nodded, although his jaw was tight and his eyebrows especially antagonistic. “I’d like for you and your friend to visit once a week during the remainder of the duke’s stay in Derbyshire and talk to him about”—he made an expression that Amelia took to be a smile and which she resolutely did not respond to—“Richard III.”
“I don’t even want to be here tonight,” she said in a tone that indicated precisely how irrelevant his words were to her. She pointedly glanced around the room, as if willing something more interesting into existence. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d want to repeat the experience.”
“I suppose I deserve that.”
Amelia flicked some lint off her sleeve and pointedly said nothing.
“You need not come, if you choose not to,” he went on.
“How kind of you to clarify that this is an invitation, not a summons from a magistrate.” Now he was blushing. She determinedly did not care. She looked him straight in the eye and tried not to remember a time when those dark eyes had been warm and kind. “If you think I’m turning over my friend to a strange man in an isolated house you’re very much mistaken.”
“That’s not what—I didn’t mean anything untoward. Surely you know...” His cheekbones darkened above his beard. Amelia believed him. He didn’t have the imagination to orchestrate illicit liaisons, nor the cunning to do anything sly. He had all the subtlety of a puppy, all the capacity for guile of a newborn baby. How revolting. What kind of life did a person need to lead in order to be so transparent? Some people were raised without the constant need for secrecy and subterfuge and it showed.
Amelia was not having any of it. She had been putting on a performance since she was old enough to walk. Some of her earliest memories were her mother taking her around (“be silent Amelia, and don’t speak until you’re spoken to, then we’ll get you a Bath bun on the way home”) with the express purpose of making her father’s friends sit in the same room as his mistress and illegitimate daughter. That was when she had learned to be invisible, but it was also when she had learned the inverse: the power of making people look at you.
By God, she was making Sydney Goddard look at her tonight.
She knew exactly how a lady was supposed to behave to put people at their ease, or, alternatively, to do the opposite. Her mother had taught her how to use her manners to ingratiate herself and win favor. Well, if this man thought she was careless and rude, she’d give him careless and rude. Some people were born with the knack of making themselves likable, but Amelia had learned those skills the way she had acquired languages. All she had to do in order to be profoundly unlikable and difficult to be around was to drop her veneer of manners entirely—all she had to do was to be the worst version of herself. So that’s what she did now—she said exactly what she would say if she hadn’t had any upbringing whatsoever, but dressed up her rudeness in a cloak of satin suitable for a duke’s drawing room.
She imbued her voice with an acid politeness, replicating the exact tone with which grand ladies put her in her place. “I know nothing of the sort. I might have once thought that we knew one another, but I was wrong, was I not?” It was an insult masked as a question and he knew it. He blinked at her then slowly looked away.
“I was wrong about a good many things. I didn’t think you were the sort of man to deceive a friend about something as relevant as your name, and if I were not in a charitable frame of mind I might point out that a good deal of misunderstanding would have been avoided if you had been honest on that point.”
“It was indeed a lie of omission, and I’m ashamed of myself for it. But I—”
“I don’t care for your excuses, Mr. Goddard,” she said, idly folding her gloves, as if she couldn’t be bothered to give him her full attention.
“It’s not an excuse,” he said, his voice so insistent that she looked up at him. “I came into ownership of this house through means I prefer not to think of, and I found it a relief not to be reminded of those circumstances during our time together.” He spoke those last words quietly, almost intimately, and she had to fight back a blush.
“I see,” she said, even though she did not see at all.
“I did not treat you as a friend. I assumed the worst. And I am sorry for that. I try to do better by my friends.”
That was a better apology than she had yet gotten from him, and it was the closest he had yet come to resembling the man she knew from her walks.
“That’s what I should have said earlier,” he continued. “When I thought you were refusing to acknowledge me, it cut me to the quick. I thought I was being insulted by someone I—someone I esteemed. I should have spoken to you, but instead of doing that, I hurt you, and I regret it.” He set his jaw, as if waiting for her rebuke. She remembered kissing that jaw, she remembered the scratch of his beard against her mouth, the feel of his lips against her own. She tried to push those memories away. “The fault is entirely mine.”
