Juliana took in the words. Duty. Reputation. Security. She would never understand this world, this culture. She would never be one of them. And it was that which would always set her apart. Always make her worthy of their whispers.
Never make her worthy of him.
Not in the way this sturdy Englishwoman was.
The ache returned, and before she could make her excuses, Penelope offered a small, quiet smile. “We leave love to the Italians.”
“I’m not sure we want it.” The conversation was over. “My felicitations, Lady Penelope.”
She left Penelope to her washbasin and her future and passed through the main room, ignoring both the cluster of women gathered there, heads bent in the rapt pleasure of the purest essence of balls—gossip and fashion.
“I heard she’s back and swearing that she was never in Italy.” The words rose above covert whispers, meant to be heard. Meant to wound and incite.
And Juliana could not help herself.
She turned to see Lady Sparrow holding court over her minions. She smirked, an asp about to strike, meeting Juliana’s gaze, and saying, baldly, “Which means someone is not who she says she is.”
There was a collective gasp at the suggestion. To suggest someone’s illegitimacy was the highest form of insult. And to do it while the person in question was in the room . . .
No drama tonight. The family didn’t need it.
Sparrow should have been called Vulture. She was circling as though she had spied carrion. “Because it would not surprise me if she’d simply heard that there was money and station to be had here. I mean, we don’t know anything about her. She might not be Italian at all. She might be something else entirely?”
Juliana wanted to turn and prove just how Italian she was. In small, vicious words that would sear the skin from Sparrow’s ears.
But would it change anything?
It would not garner their acceptance. It would not make this night, or any to come, easier. It would not remove the scandal from their name, nor would it make her worthy in their eyes.
In his eyes.
She resisted the thought. This was not about him.
Or was it?
Wasn’t he one of them? Hadn’t he judged her just as they had? Didn’t he expect her to cause a scandal everywhere she went?
Hadn’t she proven him right?
“Something else?”
“A gypsy?”
“A Spaniard?”
If she weren’t so angry, Juliana would have laughed at the way the word had been said, as though it were synonymous with witch. What was wrong with Spaniards?
“We could ask her ourselves,” Lady Sparrow said, and the group of women turned to face her. Each face smirking a more wicked smile than the last.
This was how it would be now.
This was what it was to have scandal surround you—real scandal, not some cheap approximation of a black mark on your reputation because you were Italian, or outspoken, or clumsy, or because you resisted their silly rules.
This was what he was afraid of.
And as she stared at their wicked smiles, reading the viciousness in their eyes, she could not blame him.
She would marry the grape as well.
A flood of hot anger and embarrassment coursed through her, and Juliana wanted to scream and rant and throw things at the horrible women. Her muscles tensed with an unbearable desire to lash out. But she had been in London for eight months, and she had learned that there were more painful things than physical blows.
And she’d had enough.
Instead, she turned and checked her reflection in the mirror, making a show of tucking a curl back into her coiffure, before returning her attention to them, affecting as much boredom as she could.
“You know as well as I, Lady Sparrow, that I am whatever you and your”—she waved a lazy hand in the direction of the group—“harpies decide to make me. Italian, Spanish, gypsy, changeling. I welcome whichever mantle you choose . . . as long as you do not make me English.”
She watched as understanding dawned in their shocked faces.
“For surely there is nothing worse than being one of you.”
He had pretended not to see her arrive.
Just as he had pretended not to care when she’d laughed and danced in the arms of the Earl of Allendale.
Just as he’d pretended not to count the minutes she spent in the ladies’ salon.
Instead, he had feigned vast interest in the conversation around him—in the opinions of the men who were eager to share his thoughts on the military-spending bill, and to garner the respect and support of the Duke of Leighton.
But when she quietly exited the ballroom, heading down a long, dark corridor toward the back of the house, where God only knew who or what might be waiting for her, he could not pretend any longer.
And so he crossed the ballroom, politely dismissing those who thought to stop him in conversation, and followed Juliana into the recesses of the ancestral home of the woman to whom he was betrothed.
The second woman to whom he had proposed marriage in the past twenty-four hours.
The only one who had accepted his suit.
Juliana had refused him.
He was still unable to wrap his head around the ridiculous truth.
She hadn’t even considered the possibility of marrying him.
She’d simply turned to her brother and suggested in a tone that most people reserved for children and servants, that Simon Pearson, eleventh Duke of Leighton, knew not what he was saying.
As though he offered himself up in marriage to anyone who came along.
He should be thrilled with this turn of events . . . after all, everything was now going according to plan. He was marrying the impeccable Lady Penelope, and, within moments, would align their two families, officially shoring up his defenses in preparation for the attacks that would come when scandal hit.