Before she was halfway across the room, the door burst open to reveal a scowling Charity Davenport, which wasn’t alarming at all as Charity was always scowling at something or someone.
“Your mother is marching this way, looking very disapproving, may I add!”Charity, Lady Woodmere, called as she rushed toward Florentia in a blur of red.
“My mother always looks disapproving.”Florentia gazed down at her appearance, ensuring that she was presentable.
“Her mother!”Montague shot up, looking terrified.
“Really, Montague, you’re not afraid of an old woman, are you?”Charity demanded, before she started fluffing Florentia’s skirts.“You look oddly perfected for a roll in the hay.”
“I did not have a roll in the hay.”Florentia batted her friend’s hand away, admiring her rich brown skin.
Charity’s thick, dark hair was pinned up in the front with an array of curls hanging down to brush against her upper back.
They’d been friends for a little over a year, meeting the previous season.Charity’s own elderly husband died a year earlier, but unlike Florentia, Charity had produced the coveted heir, which guaranteed she would be provided for comfortably until her son was of age.
Florentia, however, had to find a way to live off a meager two hundred pounds a year.She could always retreat to the dilapidated widow’s cottage in Norfolk and live the rest of her life there in isolation, away from all good society.
“What is going on in here?”Her mother swirled through the door, with her father rushing behind her as always.
On the outside, her parents looked like every other aristocratic couple.Yet they weren’t.Her mother controlled everything, and her father simply obeyed.
Martin Vaughn, Lord Allendale, had followed his wife’s every command and endured her outbursts for nearly twenty-two years.Often, Florentia wished her father would put an end to her mother’s temper, but how could he when he feared her as well?
“Please try to control your temper, dear,” her father whispered, placing his hand on her mother’s shoulder, his green eyes, identical to Florentia’s, wide with fear.
Lady Allendale snapped her head to her husband.“I will do no such thing.She is making a fool of us in our own home by disappearing to do God knows what with Montague.”A long slim finger pointed at Florentia; her cold gray eyes squinted in disgust.
It was a look Florentia had been accustomed to her entire life.The only difference was now she had an audience.Perhaps that would stop Lady Allendale from showing her true nature.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mother.I simply came in to clear my head, and Lady Woodmere and Mr.Montague were kind enough to check on me.”Florentia’s lips thinned in her meager attempt at a smile.“I believe Mr.Montague was just admiring your new drapes.”
“Indeed,” Charity said as she turned to look at the dull yellow drapes with feign interest, “I was just saying how I must convince the earl to purchase this exact same color for his study.”
Clenching her teeth together, Florentia tried to contain the laughter that wanted desperately to burst out of her.She knew perfectly well that there was no convincing needed for the current Earl of Woodmere.As a boy of three years, Harold Davenport gladly did whatever his mother wanted, if he was consulted at all.
Usually, he was not.
Her mother ignored Charity with a dismissive snort, turning her hawk-like attention to Montague, who was currently examining the drapes with great interest, as if he were considering purchasing the ghastly things.
“Where is your jacket, Mr.Montague?”The venom in her mother’s voice caused a swirl of fear to crawl up Florentia’s spine.
She knew that tone.Had always made it a habit to make herself disappear whenever her mother’s voice dipped down to a deadly baritone.
“M-my jacket, yes, well you see, it was becoming—that is…it felt…” Montague trailed off as if he couldn’t grasp his line of thought.
“Hot!”Charity’s voice carried through the library.“It was becoming exceedingly hot in here, so I suggested that Mr.Montague remove his jacket.After all, we can’t have a gentleman sweating.”
Her mother’s head slowly turned toward Charity in a snake-like fashion.“You suggested?Tell me Lady Woodmere, how is it that you found yourself in the library with my daughter when you were still having tea in my sitting room with the ladies a half-hour after the duchess excused herself to the retiring room?”
Well, bollocks!
Florentia inhaled deeply.She was tired of being treated like a child.Tired of being afraid.She’d lived her entire life hiding from her mother only to land in the clutches of Summerset.After surviving her mother, she’d thought anyone else would be a leisurely stroll in Hyde Park.
She was wrong.
“That’s enough, Mother.I’m not a child.I don’t have to report to you on my actions anymore.”Standing at her full height, Florentia looked down at her mother.
Lady Allendale had not aged gracefully, like other women of the ton.Her insistent love of wine had seen to that.Thin, pale skin littered with aged wrinkles, bloodshot eyes, and sunken cheekbones were all that was left of the beauty of her youth.
