“Oh,” she gasped in relief. “Thank goodness! I thought maybe . . .” Her words trailed away awkwardly, and I suddenly realized why she had appeared so concerned. She worried our acquaintance had been made in London, during the inquiry into the charges my husband’s colleagues had leveled against me after his death. I had been acquitted and released, but that had not put a stop to the scandal surrounding my name or the rumors that still haunted me.
Laura blushed, and I felt an answering heat rush to my cheeks. “I forgot about Lady Cromarty’s party,” she rushed on to say. “I know Michael was sorry to miss it, as were we. Especially knowing as we do now that his lovely fiancée was also in attendance.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if looking for Caroline, but Philip’s cousin had not yet entered the room.
Her gaze alighted on her husband, and she beckoned him forward. “Oh, but allow me to introduce you to my husband.” She laced her arm through his. “This is my Lord Keswick.” She pronounced it in the same way as the name of the town in the Lake District of Cumberland—KEZ-ik.
“Lady Darby, my pleasure,” he murmured, bowing over my hand from his very great height like a sapling bending in the breeze. Keswick was quite possibly the tallest man I had ever met—taller even than Mr. Gage—and whippet-thin. At perhaps five and twenty, his wheat-blond hair had already begun to recede from his head, and I suspected by forty he would be bald.
“Dalmay tells me you grew up on the Northumberland side of the Tweed,” Keswick said. “Have you ever had occasion to visit Cumberland?”
“No,” I replied. “Though I hear the hills and lakes there are beautiful. That is where you are from, am I correct?”
His smile deepened. “It is. I believe it the loveliest place in all of England.”
“And deathly dull.”
Lord Keswick stepped back to reveal the deliverer of this pronouncement. A young lady in rose-colored satin sat flipping the pages of a periodical so rapidly it was doubtful she was reading. Her gaze lifted once from the paper to glance at me through the sweep of her lashes before dropping back to the pages before her, but not before I saw the twinkle in her eye.
“Perhaps compared to London or Edinburgh,” Keswick replied in obvious irritation. “But the Lake District is hardly dull.”
Her laughing gaze met mine again and she rolled her eyes as if I were in on some private joke. “Only to you,” she protested. She set aside her periodical and rose to her feet.
“Lady Darby,” Laura rushed to say before her husband could voice the displeasure tightening his lips. “Allow me to introduce my sister-in-law, Miss Elise Remmington.”
I could see the resemblance now—the pale blonde hair, the slim physique, the caramel-brown eyes.
She offered me her hand. “My pleasure.”
“Likewise.”
“Miss Remmington recently had her first season in London,” Michael supplied, possibly explaining her earlier expressed opinions.
“I take it you enjoyed it,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Although . . .” Her expression was all innocence, but I did not miss the spark of devilry in her eyes. “From what I’ve been told, it seems it would have been much more exciting had you joined us in town.”
I stiffened. “Indeed.”
Michael cleared his throat uncomfortably and stepped forward to slip his arm through mine. “Kiera, allow me to show you the tapestries you were so admiring.”
I allowed him to escort me away from Miss Remmington, whose face creased momentarily into a cheeky grin, flashing a pair of dimples, telling me she’d meant no real malice. Her brother did not witness this exchange, however, and I doubted it would have done much to ameliorate his temper in any case, for his face was red with fury at her impertinence. I suspected theirs was a very interesting sibling dynamic, and wondered whether I should pity Laura for getting caught in the middle of it.
Gage, for his part, seemed quite amused by the girl’s cheek, if the laugh lines crinkling at the sides of his eyes were any indication. I arched my brow at his merriment before turning back to Michael.
“I must apologize for Miss Remmington,” he was saying. “I’m sure she meant no insult.”
“No worries,” I assured him, laying my hand over his where it pressed against my arm. “I have met Miss Remmington’s like before.”
He sighed. “She is such a lively, pretty girl, but she can be a bit . . .” He struggled to find the right word.
“She is a hoyden.”
Michael smiled tightly in acknowledgment. “I fear Keswick despairs of reining her in. And this gathering is proving a bit trying for him. The stiffer the personage, the more shocking Miss Remmington seems determined to be.”
“And Lady Hollingsworth is certainly not . . . flexible.”
“Nor her son.”
“Lord Damien?” I asked in some surprise. I had never thought of Lady Hollingsworth’s younger son as being particularly stuffy, but perhaps Miss Remmington’s extreme impishness had proved too much for him.
“She particularly delights in tweaking his nose.”