"I recall you saying how annoying he was when we were shopping for your gown," Alexandra said dryly. "You had quite the long list of sins that you were holding against him."
"He is a deeply annoying man!" Louisa protested, her cheeks heating and tears springing to her eyes at the same time. It had been so much simpler when she had not known what her feelings meant, when she hadn't uncovered what love really felt like and had it denied to her. "Oh he is so irritating, and he is always teasing me or flirting with me to make me cross. I find him quite impossible!"
"Oh Louisa," Alexandra said softly, squeezing her arm.
"Is it so bad as that?" Penelope added. They looked at her with soft understanding in their eyes and Louisa knew in that moment that they already knew how she really felt, they could see through her to that truth.
"It is," she said, and sobbed a little at the admission. "It is even worse. I love him dearly, I love him more than I knew I could love but he does not love me at all."
"No! He must surely," Alexandra said, her face washing over with confused alarm. "No one could know you and not love you."
"Perhaps he does not know how you feel," Penelope added but Louisa shook her head.
"Alas, I am afraid he does," she said bitterly, her throat tightening even further. "I spoke to him about it. He had kissed me, you see. But the next morning when I went to tell him how I felt he told me there was nothing between us, that he had no interest in me and we are merely business partners. We have a marriage on paper and that is all."
There was a short silence, the grip on her arms from both sisters getting fiercer the longer the silence lasted.
"I shall kick him at the next ball I see him at," Penelope said. "I promise I shall. How dare he speak to you so!"
Alexandra nodded sharply, "You deserve love, Louisa, you do. And to kiss you and then tell you that you should not have it is more than cruelty!"
"It is a cruelty that I did not expect from him," Penelope said. "I know that Theodore is fond of him and I do not think he should feel so if his friend ,was the kind to trifle with a lady this way."
"Perhaps, but perhaps he does not know him well."
"I feel as though I can never face him again," Louisa confessed, a tightness in her chest easing a little at the immediate way her sisters had leaped to support her. "How can I return ho- to St Vincent knowing that is how he feels about me?"
"I cannot imagine how hard it would be," Alexandra said slowly. "But I must speak to you of something that will surely impact how swiftly you return."
"Is now the time?" Penelope said, frowning.
"Now is more the time than ever. If she stays with us too long it will only make things worse."
"But it is not her fault what people are saying," Penelope said. "I don't see why it should control her life!"
"That is the way that thingsare," Alexandra said, frustrated.
Louisa cleared her throat. "Can you tell me what you are talking about please?" she said, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. "I shall then be able to make my own decisions about how it will impact me."
Alexandra nodded seriously, leading the three of them to a garden bench so that they could sit down. It was an old friend, the bench. A place where Louisa had read many books aloud to her sisters, written letters to Evelina and Margaret, or satto talk with Alexandra in cool summer evenings. She felt so disconnected from it all now, like she belonged neither here nor at St Vincent either.
"I have heard things," Alexandra started carefully. "A lot of things about you. At parties or balls or from others repeating what they have heard in society."
"People don't say things to me," Penelope said. "They know I would have things to say right back to them if they did."
"What have they been saying?" Louisa asked, a coldness settling inside her. "What is it that has been happening?"
"It started with talk about the wedding," Alexandra said. She looked uncomfortable, unhappy, as though this was not something she liked to repeat. "About how when you stopped the wedding and said that Cedric was in love with you, you were lying. Perhaps how our family was trying to get you married to a nobleman when you didn't have particularly good prospects."
"That -"
"I know," Alexandra said, stopping Louisa from continuing. "But it has gotten worse. We could have guessed some people might say such things about such a scandal, even with protection from Evelina and Margaret. It has gotten worse, though. Some people say that you weren't looking for a husband at all, but for attention - from men."
"They're saying that you would gladly receive attention from any man who would give it to you," Penelope said bluntly. "That you are so promiscuous as to even look for it from a man about to get married."
"Oh my lord," Louisa gasped, feeling the blood drain from her face. "However could anyone say such a thing about me?"
"Someone said that they saw you slip into that rowdy masked ball six months ago, that you went out of your way to lose pieces of your costume to young gentlemen," Alexandra said. She was kind as ever and did not tell Louisa that she had told her so, and Louisa could hear it still as loud as a bell.
