The crowd grew restless, murmurs swelling, and the serving woman playing Rosamund waved at Thea.
“Miss?” she called. “What happens to me, then?”
“Your parents cast you out,” Thea replied dully. “Your presence in their home jeopardizes your younger siblings’ futures.”
“But when I tell them.”
“They do not believe you. They demand that you leave. You find a position in an isolated country house. You make no friends there, and you never quite belong.”
“What about us?” demanded one of the knaves. “How do we get our comeuppance?”
Thea said nothing. The crowd muttered and shifted angrily.
“Miss?” the other knave persisted. “We do get our comeuppance, don’t we?”
Thea shrugged. “No. Why should you? You are the sons of wealthy noblemen. There is a small scandal, but it soon blows over. Your life continues the same.”
Then the man playing the merchant said, “What about me?”
“You have another daughter. Perhaps she will fare better in helping the family.”
“That’s a rotten story,” said the first man, the man named Joe. He leaped to his feet and paced about. “It was a good story and then it turned rotten. Whoever heard of the heroine not triumphing? Whoever heard of the villains not getting their comeuppance?”
Thea said nothing.
The grumbling grew. The crowd stirred angrily. Some stood. Others banged the tables. A riot was brewing.
Rafe lurched to his feet. The angry faces swiveled toward him and quieted at his glare.
“She jests,” he said. “Of course that’s not how the story ends.”
“So how does the story end?” demanded the man named Joe. “What does she do next?”
“Next she…she…” Bloody hell. How did he end this story? “She gives them both a kick in the bollocks.”
The crowd erupted into cheers and applause. Shrieking with delight, Rosamund threw herself into her task with glee, while the knaves sought to evade her. Some audience members decided to take part, and then the innkeeper was in the fray, yelling at them to stop, because broken furniture wasn’t good for his economics, so Rafe paid for more drinks, and helped settle everyone down, and when he looked up, Thea was gone.
Thea breathed in the cool night air. The beech trees beside the inn were silhouettes against the sky, lit by a valiant half moon. She wandered onto the road, and when she looked back at the inn, with its noise and yellow pools of light, it seemed eerily removed, as if she viewed it through a glass. Lord Luxborough would like this; he would have preferred to stand out here, yet he had entered the crowded tavern for her sake. A small sacrifice on his part. Another unexpected kindness.
Wandering on, she sucked in more country air, filling her lungs but not the hollow in her stomach. What on earth was wrong with her? Finally, she had told her story. Strangers agreed she had been wronged. Surely she should feel some satisfaction or vindication? Yet all she felt was an aching sorrow for some other girl.
Around her, the fields were silent and still, the darkness thick and endless. An owl hooted. A gust of wind tugged at her skirts. She turned and, for a panicky, disoriented moment, feared she had lost sight of the inn. But there it was, a distant glow. Thea headed back, her regrets dancing at her side.
If only she had trusted herself. A little voice inside her had whispered that Percy Russell was rotten, but she had allowed her parents to tell her she was wrong. Thea had never been averse to the idea of marrying into the upper class, for the sake of her whole family, but until Percy Russell it had only been an idea, and then she faced the reality of marrying a man she disliked. Everything had changed with Percy, especially Ma and Pa; the thought of Thea marrying a viscount’s son had gripped them like a fever and they’d stopped listening to reason. And Thea, hating to disappoint them, hating to let down the whole family, had tried to suppress her dislike and accepted his attentions, but not without arguing first.
Would that crowd still have cheered if she had confessed to the next part—the part where she began saying foolish things? “Why should I stop with charming Mr. Percy Russell to induce him to marry me?” she had snapped, as Ma, seeking to “improve Thea’s charms,” pinched color into her cheeks. “Maybe I’ll expedite matters and simply seduce him instead. Maybe I’ll seduce the whole jolly lot of them.” But she never dreamed Percy and his friends would hit on a similar idea, as punishment for her good deed. Never dreamed her bitter jokes would come back to haunt her, and prevent Ma and Pa from believing a word she said.