Alice turned her head at last.
Her mother was at her elbow, beaming as though her face had been frozen into that expression. Behind her mother, her father was approaching with the slow, terrible deliberateness of a man who had not yet decided whether to be furious or magnanimous.Behind her father was the Marquess of Dowton, who had gone a strange grayish color. And behind the Marquess, like the bright knot at the center of a storm, was Daphne.
Daphne’s face was pale.
Alice’s heart cracked open in her chest.
Oh… Oh, Sister. Oh no.
“Lord Westbury.” The Duke’s voice cut across the gathering air, smooth and low and offensively calm. “Lady Westbury. I must beg your pardon for the spectacle. There is a matter that we had better discuss in a more private setting.”
“Your Grace.” Her father was breathing hard. “That was the most appalling?—”
“I am aware. The fault is entirely mine. Lady Alice has done nothing for which I am not prepared to answer.”
“Your Grace, I?—”
“If I might call on you tomorrow morning at, say, ten, My Lord, I believe a great many of these difficulties will resolve themselves.”
It was beautifully done.
Alice watched it happen. Her father’s mouth, half open to bellow, closed and tightened. He nodded once, sharply.
Suddenly, the whole circle of them was standing on the Worthington floor like a small private negotiation behind a glass that the rest of the room was pretending not to look through, and the Duke was managing them. He had the matter in hand within a count of ten.
The Marquess of Dowton was the one who broke.
“Lord Westbury…” he muttered under his breath. He had gone the color of a wax candle. “My Lord, I think the betrothal?—”
“Lord Dowton,” her father snapped.
“My Lord, with respect. I do not believe under the circumstances?—”
“Isaac, this is not?—”
“Father…” Daphne’s voice, small and hoarse, interrupted.
Everybody turned.
Alice looked at her sister and felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. Daphne had stepped between Isaac and their father with her chin lifted in a way Alice had never seen before. Her handswere shaking, and she was looking at Alice as though she were a stranger.
“Alice,” she said, “what have you done?”
All Alice could do now was hope it had looked real. Hope the room saw nothing but a foolish woman ruining herself for no reason anyone would ever guess at and that her sister saw the same. Because if Daphne suspected, even for a moment, that the kiss had been for her, that Alice had spent herself to buy her sister free, then the whole of it had been for nothing. Alice opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Daphne…” she managed at last. “Daphne, please, it is not?—”
“Are you all right?” Daphne’s voice was still too quiet. “Alice, are you all right?”
“I—”
“I do not understand.”
At her side, the Duke had gone very still. Alice saw him out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her sister with an expression she could not quite read, and she could feel his attention, sharp and waiting.
She understood, with a flash of something very like gratitude, that he had not let go of the situation. He was holding it. Loosely, but he was holding it. He would catch whatever fell.
She found her voice.