She was nakedly stalling. “Get to the point, Constance.”
She pursed her lips into a precious little rosebud. “I am. If you knew anything about poetics, you would infer the gown shall feature later as a relevant detail.”
“Please, then, continue,” he gritted out.
“She observed it was your second dance with Miss Bastian and asked if I thought you had hopes for her. I said I thought good news might be imminent. She became very quiet. And then she whispered that she hoped Miss Bastian would not suffer regrets, given what she’d heard about your Wednesday nights.”
Wednesday nights. That was, indeed, a rather specific detail.
“She mentioned Wednesdays?”
“Yes. And she said it in such a mysterious, ominous way that I, of course, immediately asked her what she meant.”
“And what did she say?”
She glanced up at him from below her long, pale lashes and smirked. “But don’t you know?”
He fervently hoped he did not.
“Constance. What exactly did she say?”
“She said she hoped Miss Bastian had a taste for leather. And observed that it’s often the prettiest men who are the most perverse.”
Ah. Not nearly the whole of it, though the word perverse sent a flash of irritation through him. His practices were not perverse. “I see. And from this, you determined I enjoy a whipping and exposed me in your papers?”
At the word whipping, Constance blushed, which pleased him in a way he was not proud of. The petty wounded man in him liked knowing she was not as nonchalant about these matters as she acted. The petty wounded man in him wanted to leave her with the distinct impression that there were many, many things about which a person like himself might educate her.
“As you might understand,” she said primly, “I was taken aback. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the dance ended and she moved off into the crowd before I could gather my wits.”
He tapped his fingers on the window, no longer pleased at all. He should really inure himself to how little he had meant to her, but each time he learned a new detail, the extent of her indifference stung him fresh.
“Am I to understand,” he said, “that you destroyed my reputation over a rumor from a total stranger?”
She winced. “No. In fact, I intended to ignore the rumor entirely, because it was so laughable. I mean, imagine, Apthorp, you frisking about a bawdy house.”
He turned around, stepped forward, and looked directly in her eyes.
“Yes, Constance. Imagine.”
She blushed so deeply that, despite his barely checked fury, he had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling in a most unseemly way.
“In any case, I had no intention of pursuing the matter, until later that same evening when you asked me about betrothal gifts.”
What he would give to take that moment back. It had been pitiful. He’d found her alone in the Palmerstons’ library, for once not attended by Hilary or her motley of friends, and she’d asked him whether he thought his bill would pass, and he’d been so flattered by her interest, so thrilled to be alone with her, that the words had just slipped out.
What do you think a lady might like if a man who loved her were to declare himself?
He was determined not to color at the dreadful memory. “So you gathered from my question that I intended to propose to Miss Bastian.”
“Yes. And from thence decided I should make sure you were not, in fact, perverse, as Gillian is quite particular about men, and I had encouraged the match.”
“Particular about men? My God, she’s about to marry Harlan bloody Stoke. Do you have any idea what he’s—”
“Yes,” she shot back. “I do.”
Her face was now crimson. He thought back to that week in Devon—one he’d tried fervently to forget—and had the uneasy feeling that something even less savory had transpired there than he’d originally suspected.
“You must understand,” she said, before he could formulate that uneasy feeling into a question that possessed the degree of delicacy it merited, “that I had no idea Gillian was attached to him. She’d given me reason to think she was very fond of you. So for my own peace of mind, I decided to look into it.”
“Look into it how?” He was instantly awash in dread at the notion she’d done more probing. There was a reason he’d always been on his finest form in Constance’s presence; her chilling aptitude for discovering people’s most inconvenient secrets.
“Since the woman mentioned Wednesdays, it seemed easy enough to simply consult your diary.”
“You read my diary?”
“Well, you do tend to leave it on your desk, where anyone could find it.” She said this defiantly, like the fact that it had been possible to invade his privacy excused that it was childish and wrong. “And since you were living here at the time, I simply asked my maid to distract your valet while you were out, went inside your rooms, and consulted your notations.”
He thought back, with sickening panic, to what he might have written about his activities on Wednesdays. He exhaled. Nothing detailed enough to be incriminating. He rarely recorded his day in more than snippets.
Session at Charlotte Street with L. Naughty girl. Left bruises.
M. tonight. Purchased ropes for the occasion.
Saw F. Christ, the sounds she makes.
Snippets that were, nevertheless, just colorful enough for an inexperienced girl to form conclusions without understanding anything at all.
That she could somehow have such a detailed and yet incorrect picture of this most absolutely private aspect of his life was so offensive and intrusive that it made him want to gag.
Instead, he said only: “How dare you?”
She stuck out her chin. “I’m tired of being vilified for doing what I thought was right. I invite you to live as a woman and enjoy the choices we are blessed with, and then judge me for sharing information about what men do in private. I have kept such secrets before, out of discretion, and lived to very much wish that I had not. I didn’t mean to harm you; I only meant to protect Gillian. And however much I regret that my words were used against you, you cannot deny that they were true. Were they not?”
He was not going to answer that. If she was going to be so smugly righteous about her own moral superiority, she could account for why she had not told him the truth from the beginning.
And now he wondered how much she might be leaving out.
“Here’s a question, Constance. Why didn’t you tell me you know Henry Evesham?”
She sighed, like he was being tiresome. “I make it my business to know everyone. You know that. Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject. How did he come to receive your poem?”
She gasped. “You aren’t suggesting that I gave it to him?”
After today, there was little about her he would not believe.
“Did you?”
“Of course not!” she snapped. “If I had wanted to ruin you, I would not be subjecting myself to this public indignity of having to pretend to like you.”
They glared at each other, and he believed her, but not in such a way that made him less inclined to seethe.
“Finish your story. How do you know the woman is an actress if you don’t even know her name?”