Val looked away from her shoulder, but his eye fell on her bosom, which was no better for his attitude.
“Here,” Caro said, touching his chest. Val almost leapt away in surprise, until he realized she’d been reaching for his cravat pin. “This should work.”
He stood stoically, staring at the wall behind her, trying his damndest not to think about how she was performing an act that was usually a prelude to undressing.
“There,” she said, having worked the jeweled stick free from its mooring. Handing it to him, she continued, “You’ll have to do the honors.”
Ignoring the brush of her hand as she gave him the pin, Val turned his attention to the torn sleeve. He bent his head to see, which meant inhaling the sweet floral scent of Caro’s warm skin as he tried to tamp down his inconvenient desire. Of course, the sleeve had ripped away from the bodice, which meant he also had to touch the soft curve of her collarbone. He was going to get roaring drunk tonight, he promised himself.
“What’s taking so long?” Caro asked impatiently. “Is it not working?”
“It’s working,” he said more harshly than he intended. His task finally completed, he stepped back.
He watched as she reached up to test the sleeve. “Well done,” she said with a shy smile, her cheeks flushed. Then, as if recalling their predicament, she squared her shoulders.
“Let’s go.”
But as they stepped through the door leading from the corridor into the main lobby, Caro gasped.
Not only were both sets of their parents before them, but a group of theatregoers Val didn’t recognize had also crowded into the wide chamber. No doubt they saw before them a damning picture: a young lady whose gown was much the worse for wear, and whose once-elegant coiffure had escaped more than a few of its pins, accompanied by a gentleman who was neither her betrothed nor her husband and in whose company she had been alone for far longer than propriety dictated.
“Hellfire and damnation,” Caro said in a low tone.
Val could not argue with the sentiment.
After a moment’s rally, however, she called out with a false brightness that set his teeth on edge. “Mama! Papa! There you are!”
* * *
Caro desperately hoped that her merry smile and calm demeanor could forestall the coming storm. Because one look at her mother’s shocked face was enough to tell her the situation was grave indeed. Anything less than her best performance and Mama would calculate how to turn this very scene into a marriage between Caro and Val.
The degree to which Mama’s usual inclination toward matchmaking had been replaced with alarm told Caro all she needed to know.
Still, she had to try to convince both their parents and the rest of the onlookers to reject what they saw before them with their own eyes.
“It was the most amusing thing,” she said cheerfully. “You know how clumsy I can be, of course. Well, I entirely misjudged my footing and if it hadn’t been for Lord Wrackham—”
Val squeezed her arm, no doubt in warning, but he was too late.
A tall older man with bushy white side-whiskers had stepped forward. He said, in a scandalized tone, “This is the daughter you were speaking of, Hardcastle? I don’t know if I can continue to do business with a man who isn’t even able to manage his own children.”
Though her father’s expression quickly turned from amusement to clear anger, Caro—who had spent her whole life learning this man’s moods—caught his fleeting look of disappointment just before he turned to his customer.
“Yes, this is my Caroline,” Charles Hardcastle said hotly, “and I’m sure she has a perfectly reasonable explanation for this commotion. Don’t you, my dear?”
His face was so full of trust and love that Caro felt her heart sink. She knew that no amount of explaining would make these people—for now everyone in the room had their eyes firmly fixed upon her and Val—believe that she’d torn her gown and mussed her hair simply by missing a step. No matter that they had not been engaging in the sort of activities these oh-so-respectable onlookers were themselves visualizing, it was the appearance of impropriety that mattered with polite society. No, there would be no talking her way out of this predicament.
Caro admired her father more than any person in the world. But it had never occurred to her that her behavior might make matters difficult for him with the more narrow-minded of his customers, unfair as that was. Her mother’s earlier confession only made her feel worse about how her lack of concern for her actions must have affected him.
If she’d been born a boy, she could have sown as many wild oats as she pleased, and no one would dare threaten to stop doing business with Hardcastle Fine Foods. But she hadn’t.
There was one step she could take now to make this right. She’d always faulted Val for his rigid adherence to his family’s expectations, but for the first time she recognized that perhaps his behavior had come not from a place of aristocratic snobbery, but family loyalty. His actions hadn’t always been right, but here and now, faced with a chance to protect her own family’s reputation, she understood him far better.
She only hoped that he still retained enough affection for her to forgive her when she sacrificed both of their future happiness with her next words.
Almost as if he sensed her hesitation, she felt Val slip his arm around her and pull her to his side. The gesture gave her the courage she needed to go through with her impulsive plan.
“If you’d only waited until I finished, sir,” she addressed the bewhiskered man in a playfully chiding tone. In hope of warning Val, she reached across her abdomen to cover his hand where it clasped her waist, squeezing it gently. Then, taking a deep breath, she likened herself to Lady Macbeth and made it “done quickly.”
“I did lose my footing,” she told her parents. “And Lord Wrackham did keep me from falling. But only because when we had a moment to talk alone, he asked me to be his wife and I accepted him.”
There was a beat of stunned silence before the room erupted in chaotic conversation.
Rather than denounce her for a lying jade, Val turned to his father, who’d just stepped forward. “I hope you’ll wish us happy.”
Caro wasn’t sure what it was that passed from father to son, but it wasn’t well wishes. The duke’s expression was stony, as was Val’s. Her heart swelled as she realized that, however silently, he was standing up for her.
Aloud, the duke said, “Caroline, may I be the first to welcome you to the family.” And rather than kissing her hand, the duke gave her a brief hug.
She didn’t hear his words to Val because next she was pulled into the arms of the duchess. To Caro’s surprise, Val’s mother had tears in her eyes when she stepped back. “My dear.” She took Caro’s hands in hers. “You must forgive an old woman her excess of emotions. But I lost one son not too long ago and it does my heart good to see my other child so soon to be settled.”
Caro wasn’t sure what to say since she wasn’t sure how settled Val would be when—or if—they did marry. But touched by the duchess’s words, she said truthfully, “I will try my best to make him happy. I can promise that, your grace.”
Caro then found herself facing her father, who enveloped her in one of his bearlike hugs. “What a sly minx you are, Caroline.” He smiled fondly, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “I should have known the two of you were up to mischief when you dragged me to the theatre with not so much as a by-your-leave.” In a quieter tone, he said, “I’m sorry for Gates. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow. A man shouldn’t make accusations like that in public. Especially before there’s been a chance to get a grasp on the truth of the situation. I reckon he feels like a clodpate, and don’t he deserve it?”