CHAPTER17
Susan could hardly believehow well her plan was working. The Count D’Asti truly was far more clever than she had given him credit for, and he seemed to know exactly which of Lady Henrietta’s insecurities to irritate because within moments, she was shrieking at him about how she thought she was making up a foreign-sounding name for someone who didn’t exist when she started the rumour about Susan. Some figures moved through the moonlight nearby, but Susan paid them no mind because Lady Henrietta’s words had set her on fire.
Edward stepped out onto the terrace just as Susan surged forward out of the shadows and stormed across the short distance to stand face-to-face with her enemy, shaking with barely-contained fury.
“Why would you start such a rumour about me?” Susan demanded, not bothering to keep her voice down. She was almost shouting, in fact.
“How dare you raise your voice to me?” Lady Henrietta drew back her hand, then, as if she was genuinely considering slapping Susan, but Lord D’Asti gave her a warning glance that said he’d make sure she regretted it if she laid a hand on Susan. Still, she gripped her skirts in her fists and took a step towards Susan which was obviously meant to intimidate her. “I have intended to be Lord Seabury’s bride for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that our paths have rarely crossed. He is my father’s neighbour, so marrying him would not take me too far from my dear Mama. It did not hurt that he is handsome and amiable, as well. Papa was supposed to introduce us at the beginning of the Season, at Mama’s behest, but he allowed himself to be distracted by another marriage prospect for me, one which I cannot, and will not, ever find acceptable. So, with Papa foolishly trying to marry me off to some disgusting old man, I had no choice but to find some other way to enact my plan to marry my wealthy, eligible, handsome neighbour. I planned to charm him at the Thistlewayte Yuletide Ball, but you got in my way.”
“I got in your way?”
Susan’s voice was deathly quiet, and she crossed her arms, all but daring Lady Henrietta to continue.
“Yes. You got in my way. It made me furious when I saw Lord Seabury dancing and flirting with you at the Yuletide Ball. I knew that I had to do something, or you were going to wreck all of my plans. So, I started a rumour that you were betrothed to a foreign Count to move you out of my path. Granted, that worked out even better than I had expected, since he turned out to be a real person and appeared here in London in search of his promised bride. I thought it would keep you away from Lord Seabury long enough for me to catch his eye, and his hand in marriage.”
Susan let out a hysterical laugh, shaking her head.
“You’re mad. You planned to marry Lord Seabury even though you hardly knew each other? And you started that dreadful rumour about me because I got in the way of your plans? I could understand, perhaps, if the two of you had been well acquainted, and if you’d been in love with him, but this marriage was nothing to you but an escape from an old man. How can you live with yourself, after trying to trap Lord Seabury like that?”
“I would have been doing Lord Seabury a favour by separating the two of you!” Lady Henrietta crowed, obviously wound up to the point where she was unable to stop herself from screeching out every enraged thought which came to her mind, because Susan and the Count had foiled her trap. “You are beneath him, Miss Wingfield. Lord Seabury should be marrying someone like me, rather than someone like you. I am an Earl’s daughter, and he is an Earl. Our stations are more equal. You, on the other hand, are only the daughter of a Viscount. I am better than you in every conceivable way!”
Susan was so shocked by this outburst that she could barely think, much less breathe. Lady Henrietta was a horribly entitled terror in an overly frilly gown, and Susan had no idea how to respond to what she’d just heard.
Edward appeared then, in her peripheral vision, presumably out here to act as a viable chaperone for Susan, but she couldn’t find the words to ask why he’d appeared. She was momentarily distracted by a couple passing behind Edward in the moonlight. They had been in the garden, and had most likely heard the entire exchange which had just passed. It was Theodore Hawkins, the Marquess of Rosebury, and his wife Lydia, who was the biggest gossip in all the ton.
Susan smiled, then, realising that everyone would soon know that she and Lord D’Asti had never really been betrothed at all, along with every other grisly little detail of Lady Henrietta’s wild, temperamental outburst.
When Susan turned her attention back to Lady Henrietta and the others, she noted that Lady Middlebrook was slinking off into the shadows, most likely pretending that she had never been lurking in the garden, waiting to help her daughter trap Lord Seabury into marriage.
She could hardly believe that the night had turned out as it had, and she couldn’t help wondering how Lord Seabury felt about all that had occurred.
* * *