“Papa,” Charlotte urged, tugging his hand. She snapped him from his reverie. “I’m cold.”
He bent and scooped Charlotte up one more time. “Off we go then.”
Regardless, Lady Patrina was a stranger and would remain one to him. After all, he had little intention of reentering polite Society. Not after Cordelia’s deceit, and he certainly had sense enough to not be intrigued by a tart-mouthed miss who’d hurl snowballs at his children.
The memory of her standing there pulled at him. He shot a final look over his shoulder taking in the side of her, and then jerked his gaze forward.
Yes, he’d little interest in the spirited Lady Patrina Tidemore.
Except…why did it feel as though he lied to himself?
CHAPTER 3
“Where were you?”
Patrina handed her snow-dampened cloak over to the butler, Smith, and glanced up to where her youngest sister stood at the top of the stairs. “I was out, Poppy.”
Her sister pointed her gaze to the ceiling and skipped her way down the stairs. “Obviously. Mother doesn’t like you to go out alone.”
Patrina wrinkled her nose. No, Mother did not entirely trust her after the whole scandal with Albert Marshville. “I’m a grown woman,” she said instead.
Poppy skidded to a halt in front of her. She passed her gaze over Patrina’s face and frowned.
“What is it?” Patrina asked before she could call the words back. She should have learned long ago to not feed her sister’s curiosity.
“You look different,” Poppy said.
Patrina managed a smile. “Oh, and how is that?”
Poppy tilted her head at a funny angle and proceeded to walk a small circle around Patrina. She stopped when they were face to face. “You don’t have the look of one whose pup got tossed under a carriage wheels.”
A startled laugh burst from her lips. She shook her head. “That’s a completely awful thing to say.”
Her sister snorted. “What would you have me say? That you look like one who’s happy her pup got tossed under a carriage’s wheels?”
A desperate laugh bubbled up her throat. “Oh, Poppy.” God love their mother for having survived raising four hopelessly incorrigible daughters. Well, thus far. Patrina had certainly tested the poor woman more than any of the siblings combined with that dreadful mistake last spring.
“Well, you do.” Poppy folded her arms across her chest. “You usually walk around with that hopelessly sad look on your face.” She frowned, her lower lip quivered, and she slapped her hands over her cheeks in what Patrina gathered was her best attempt at ‘wounded-sister-with-a-broken-heart-expression’.
“I do not look like that,” she said tersely. She started down the hall.
“You do look like that. And you still refuse to tell me where you’re off to. Every. Day.” Poppy, as tenacious as the day was long, trotted fast on her heels.
Patrina turned quickly down the corridor, and Poppy hastened her step to keep up. “It’s not your business.”
Her sister carried on as though she’d not even spoken. “At first I believed you merely went shopping. Except, you never returned with any packages.” She shook her head. “So, you most assuredly weren’t shopping.”
“Most assuredly,” she murmured.
“You’re not like Prudence.”
“Who is not like me?”
The sisters shrieked as Prudence stepped out of the Ivory Parlor, into the hall.
Poppy frowned at her. “Must you sneak up on a body like that?”
Patrina continued on, welcoming Prudence’s unexpected, and much timely, intervention. Alas, Prudence appeared as bored as Poppy for she hurried to keep pace with Patrina. Patrina stepped inside the music room and made to close the door behind her.
Prudence stuck the tip of her slipper in the doorway. “That’s not well-done of you,” she said on a huff and then shoved her way through. Poppy followed suit.
A sigh escaped Patrina, and she made her way over to her pianoforte. She settled onto her bench and proceeded to play in a desperate attempt to divert her sister’s attention.
“Ugh, must you insist on playing, Trina,” Prudence said on a wince. “You know you’re quite deplorable. Surely you know that.”
Patrina continued to play. A particularly discordant note echoed throughout the room. She frowned. “I like to play,” she said, a touch defensively. Her sister was quite right. There was not a single thing remarkable about her playing, other than how absolutely horrendous she was. Her pace too slow, her fingers too clumsy, she’d been mocked for playing at more than one musical recital.
Of course, salacious gossips would never mention anything so mundane as Patrina Tidemore’s poor pianoforte playing now, not when she’d gone and eloped with a shameless cad who’d had no intention of ever making her his wife.
She sighed and shoved thoughts of Albert from her mind. She forgot her sisters’ prattling on about some such nonsense, and lost herself in her playing. For everyone’s derision over her pianoforte skills, Patrina enjoyed it rather immensely. The instrument provided the singular pleasure she found in life, and the one pleasure not dictated by others, one that she was solely in control of. Her fingers stumbled over the keys.
“Oh dear, you have the look again. She has the look again,” Poppy said, this time to Prudence.
I will not engage them. I will not engage them.
Prudence sighed. “She does.”
“Nor will she tell me where she goes off to everyday.”
“Because it is not your business.” Three pairs of eyes swiveled to the door as Penelope, their second youngest sister sailed into the room.
Patrina played all the louder.
Poppy slapped her hands over her ears.
“Must you do that?” Penelope called out.
Patrina played louder still. “Yes.” As much as her sisters wore on her patience, in those dark days following Albert’s betrayal, they’d been steadfast, and loyal, and somber…and for that she could never repay them. If she were being truthful, she could admit she far preferred them to the loquacious bits of baggage before her now.
“We’re trying to determine where she’s been off to,” Poppy said over Patrina’s playing.
“But she’ll not tell us,” Prudence groused.
Patrina picked her gaze up from the keys long enough to detect the flash of hurt shot her direction by Prudence. She fought back a wave of guilt. In sacrificing her sisters’ own future marital prospects with her own foolish decision, her sisters had been far more forgiving than she deserved. In this, Prudence was indeed correct. She owed them truths and yet…could not bring herself to share her meeting with the marquess.
Penelope frowned. “Mother’s concerned this has something to do with that…him.”
That…him…had become the term used when referring to Albert Marshville.
Albert Marshville, cad, scoundrel, fiend, and every horrid word between happened to be the brother of their dearest sister-in-law, Juliet. As a result, the Tidemore sisters seemed hesitant to fully ascribe an appropriate charge for the man who’d ruined Patrina’s good reputation.