“Mama,” she said in a strained voice, “I can scarcely breathe.”
Yet Margaret continued to squeeze her tightly.
“What is this?” Ernest’s voice came coolly. “What has happened?”
As Margaret released Frederica, fussing over her hair and clothes, Frederica caught sight of the way Ernest was looking at Lord Padleigh.
“Where did you get this gown?” Margaret asked. “This is not one of yours. It’s not fashionable enough.”
Frederica chose not to answer her mother. She was too busy staring at the way Ernest and Lord Padleigh were exchanging glowers.
“Have you been keeping my daughter hidden from me?” Ernest asked in a dangerously low voice. “Have you been keeping her this last year?”
“Do not be absurd.” Lord Padleigh pulled up his own frock coat. “Like I would do that.”
Frederica looked away, shocked by what was happening in her gut. The idea that Lord Padleigh might be repulsed by the idea of being her lover was somewhat grating. It made the fact she had always been attracted to him harder to stomach.
“I came across her this evening. We have been seen together. People… misunderstood.”
“Misunderstood!?” Ernest abruptly raged, going completely beetroot in the face.
“Might I suggest you take your daughter home at once?” Lord Padleigh thrust a hand into his dark brown hair and pulled on the tendrils once again, the stress and frustration emanating off him. He took control of the situation and marched her to her parents’ carriage, giving the driver instructions to head home at once. He even opened the door in place of their footman. “Take her home, and I will do what I can to control the gossip here.”
“Gossip?” Margaret said in sudden panic, reaching for Frederica’s arm. “What have you done now, child?”
“I haven’t done anything.” Frederica couldn’t say any more. Between her parents, she was pushed and dragged into the carriage.
Any thought she’d had of escape, of fleeing and running back to the lodging house, was now all taken from her. She could go nowhere with her parents sitting on either side of her, pinning her in. Trapped — scared of the future, her hands shaking in her lap — she looked for Lord Padleigh.
He closed the carriage door. To her surprise, he said nothing though his eyes met hers through the open window.
She had no idea what that look meant, but for the briefest of seconds, there was something other than anger or panic in there.
What did that look mean?
Then it was over. He stepped back, and the carriage lurched forward, taking her away from Almack’s Assembly Rooms and to the very place she had been avoiding this last year.
She was going home.
* * *
Frederica’s hand shook over the letter she kept trying to write to Dorothy. Maybe if she could sneak out to see the butler alone, he would have this letter delivered for her though such a feat seemed impossible.
Ever since they had returned to the house, she and her parents had occupied the drawing room. It was now the early hours of the morning. The fire was raging beside them, and neither of her parents had stopped speaking for hours. They also showed no intention of letting her go to her bed anytime soon.
Perhaps they fear I will run away again.
“What is this? Enough of this.” Ernest looked at the letter she was writing. He clearly didn’t stare long enough to actually see the words, for he tipped over the ink bottle and ruined it.
“Father!” Frederica cried in panic as angry at herself as she was him. Had she had full control of her senses when she and Lord Padleigh had parted, she would have begged him to warn Dorothy for her, but that was the problem. She hadn’t been in her right mind. She had been taken over by fear.
“Do you not understand the gravity of the situation you are now in, child?” He barked at her, moving her away from her seat at the writing bureau. “You have been missing for a year, and on the night of your first return to London, you are seen locked in the embrace of Lord Padleigh?”
At these words, Margaret wailed. She had not stopped crying for the last hour. In her position next to the fire, Frederica didn’t know if it was the heat of the flames or those tears which made Margaret’s cheeks so pink. Her mother continued to bury her face in an embroidered handkerchief then shake out her slowly greying hair before wailing like a child once again.
“How could this happen?” she cried between her gasping wails. “We must have been such poor parents to have raised a child of such reckless abandon when it comes to propriety and her own… virtue.” She waved the frilly handkerchief in Frederica’s direction.
“How dare you!” Frederica barked in defiance and stood to her feet.
