“Dried-up old hag,” she shouted. “How dare she write about me in such a manner.” Her anger was punctuated by a thump as something wet flung against the window, rattling the panes. “Ingrates!” She tossed the paper away with one hand, hurling a candlestick at the wall with the other. The silver left a dent in the wallpaper. “Louts and filthy know-it-alls!”

She threw a porcelain figurine of a shepherdess next, followed by a shell-encrusted lampshade, a teacup, and then the entire teapot. Dark liquid rained over the settee, staining the cushions.

“Judge me, will they? Had every bloody thing handed to them, didn’t they? Never worked a bloody hour in their lives.”

Porcelain and glass glittered on the floor and over the tables. She shrieked and knocked an occasional table onto its side. Colin and I backed away quietly, me cradling my still-throbbing face, and a wide-eyed Marjorie huddled in the shadows under the stairs.

CHAPTER 17

I stayed out of her way for the rest of the morning. She stayed in the ruined parlor and drank sherry and threw every breakable she could find at the wall. My face still ached but the redness had faded.

When the knock sounded at the door, we all froze. It was the last sound we’d expected to hear. Surely no one would come calling now that we were social pariahs to be shunned and publicly ridiculed. It was unthinkable—and not to be trusted.

“Marjorie, answer the bloody door.” Mother weaved in the parlor doorway, her hair disheveled, her eyes bleary. Marjorie visibly swallowed before opening the door, clearly reaching the conclusion that the mob was preferable to further agitating my mother. I could hardly blame her. And though I knew Elizabeth must be angry, I was still half-hoping it was the delivery of a letter, sent post-haste and addressed to me.

It wasn’t.

Instead, it was Nigel St. Clair, Earl of Thornwood.

I smiled hopefully. He must have received my letter and he’d come to call, to meet his daughter. He held an impeccably white handkerchief to his aristocratic nose. Egg dripped slowly down the red paint of the door, behind his head.

“Charming,” he muttered repressively. Nothing else flew through the air though. It was clear he was a gentleman of quality and no one would have dared, enraged mob or not. The bulk of his muscled carriage driver helped.

“I’m here to see … Mrs. Willoughby, was it? Do let me in before the smell sets into the fabric.” He twitched the sleeve of his pressed coat and sailed passed Marjorie, who didn’t know what to do. She bobbed a hasty curtsy but he didn’t notice. I was sitting on the stairs, trying to decide if there was anything left to salvage in the parlor.

“Nigel,” Mother half laughed, half slurred.

“Mary,” he said, exasperated, when she stumbled and he had to steady her with a gloved hand on her elbow.

She drew herself up proudly. “It’s Celeste.”

“I see.”

She smiled like any polite hostess. “Would you care for some sherry?”

“No. Thank you.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“You’re intoxicated.”

“Fancy.” She snorted. “I’m not intoxicated, I’m drunk.” She was turning to wander back into the shattered parlor in search of her teacup of sherry when I stood up. She caught the movement and turned back, eyes narrowed calculatingly. “Oh, you’ve come about the girl, haven’t you?”

I felt myself flushing. Lord Thornwood cleared his throat.

“I suppose I have.” He looked me over carefully and I did the same to him. He was quite tall and rather thin, with those rare violet-blue eyes. His expression was bland, curious and distant all at once.

“Your name, child?”

“Violet, sir.”

“And how old are you?”

“Sixteen, sir.” I didn’t know what the etiquette was for your first conversation with the father who hadn’t known you existed and didn’t look as if he cared overmuch for the news. So I retreated to thick politeness. I’d wanted him to be pleased to see me. I forced my lower lip not to tremble pathetically. He sighed.

“There’s little point in denying the family resemblance, is there?”

“No, sir.”

He stared at me for another moment. “I hardly know what to think of this.”

And this was all the man who was my father could think to say to me. He didn’t seem malicious exactly, just indifferent. When I was little, I’d longed to believe my mother’s tales of a wealthy earl. I thought once he found us I would eat cake with pink icing, have my own pony and dolls dressed in French lace. When I got older, I’d assumed my mother made up the story of the titled son from Wiltshire to make herself feel better. I never imagined the man in question would show more interest in the crease in his sleeve than in his own newly discovered daughter.

“You never mentioned it,” he said to my mother as she smoothed her hair into some semblance of order.

“Would you have married me then?”

“Of course not.” He gaped at her. “You were a housemaid. I had a title to safeguard.”

“Yes, your mother thought so too.”

“Mother knew?” He blinked, taken aback.

“Of course.” She laughed but there was no humor in it, only dryness, like wood about to catch fire. “Women always know these things. She offered me a few hundred pounds to take myself off. Kind really. Most wouldn’t have bothered.” She shrugged. “So I came back to London. I’d hardly have made that much blunt polishing your family silverware, would I?”