Mrs. Dorrit blinked, unable to hide her shock.
I am not acting like myself. I know that very much.
“Thank you anyway,” Dorothy said and then reached for the tea.
“Well, if you need anything, do call for me, My Lady.”
“Thank you.”
Dorothy waited until the housekeeper was out of the room and then lowered the teacup to her lap, looking at her gown with dismay.
That morning, she had chosen a particularly fine gown to wear. She supposed most ladies who were sisters to marquesses would choose such gowns on a regular basis, but she felt uncomfortable in the dress. She kept itching and scratching her shoulders, trying to make the sleeves more comfortable.
I shall be an embarrassment to my brother regardless, once the news reaches the scandal sheets. I’ll have to try and be decent in some way, or he really will despair of me.
She even attempted to practice holding her teacup as she had seen Lady Charlotte and Lady Frederica doing, raising the cup to her lips with her pinkie held outwards. All she achieved was making the cup slip in her grasp, and tea sloshed over the rim and onto the skirt of her gown.
Grumbling at her own ineptitude to be proper, she mopped up the tea and huffed. Abandoning her rigid posture, she threw herself back onto the settee with a heavy flop.
“Why is it so difficult?” she murmured aloud, hoping that, somehow, the air would answer her and give her a reason.
She had barely slept the last night and had come to a decision in the early hours of the morning. One of the reasons Allan was so keen for her to marry must have been his embarrassment that she was not more ladylike. It was, after all, why all men despaired of her, was it not?
Stephen despairs of me and will not consider me for marriage because I am not ladylike enough to be a duchess. The only reason Lord Chilmond even considered marrying me in the first place was my dowry.
So, she could not doubt that, from now on, Allan would be even more frustrated to have her under his roof than before when the scandal broke. She would have to do everything she could to make herself more amenable in order to have a peaceful life with him. After all, she was looking at a long life of spinsterhood.
No one would marry a woman with a tarnished reputation, least of all one that was so improper.
There was a sound across the house of a door opening. Judging it to be Allan returning to the house, she sat up and straightened her spine again, doing her best to wipe the stain off her gown. She set her teacup on the table and turned it around so the handle was pointed out to the right-hand side at the correct angle. She even adjusted the cake fork on the tray so it lay alongside the plate she had left untouched.
There, that’s what a lady should do, is it not?
Then, another sound reached her. That was not just Allan’s voice across the house, but another.
“Where is she, Mrs. Dorrit?” she heard Allan ask.
Darting to her feet, Dorothy ran to the closed door of the drawing room and pressed her ear to the wood, straining to hear as much as she could from the other side.
“She is in the drawing room. I have just given her tea. My Lord, I must ask what is wrong with her.”
“Wrong?” the other voice asked.
It is Stephen! What is he doing here?
Dorothy felt sick as she spun on the spot, stepping back from the door. Never, not in the wildest dreams that had crossed her mind during her sleepless night had she expected Allan and Stephen to be back in one another’s company again so soon.
“She is not herself, not at all.” Mrs. Dorrit lowered her voice, but fortunately for Dorothy, she was aged, and her hearing was failing her, so her quiet voice was still loud enough for Dorothy to hear. “She will not go for a walk, but she does so every day. She sits still like a statue in that room and seems so… so…”
“Rigid?” Allan offered.
“Yes!” Mrs. Dorrit huffed in despair. “It is not the Lady Dorothy I know and love. The lady I know is picking flowers and bringing them into the house at this time. Forgive me for speaking out of turn, My Lord, but you and your parents always encouraged me to speak my mind, so I must ask. Did something happen to Lady Dorothy on your trip?”
“That is rather difficult to answer,” Allan spoke slowly. “Stephen, where are you going?”
“Did you say she was in the drawing room?” Stephen asked, his voice now much closer to the door than Dorothy would have liked it to be.
She panicked, backing up, hearing his footsteps nearing, too.
