Page 47 of My Lord Rogue
“Lady Amelia, you accuse her of invention. I say, thank God for it. If the world offers you only pain, why not create something finer? If only in your own mind.”
A few gasps—some affronted, some astonished, none more than the one that escaped Theo’s own lips.
He pivoted, then, so that every eye could see the sincerity in his face. “I do not care what stories are told about me. But if you question Lady Pattishall’s character, you must answer to me. Now, or at your convenience.”
The threat, unadorned, hung in the air. No one doubted its seriousness.
He let the silence ferment. “That is all I have to say,” he finished, and inclined his head with the practiced grace of a man who had once lived for such moments.
Then, quietly, he resumed his place at the edge of the room.
The company reeled, each guest recalculating their alliances, their alibis, the odds of being next. Lady Amelia, drained of all color, attempted to regroup—but the fan would not snap shut.
Verity, who had remained quietly by Theo throughout, now placed her hand atop Theo’s with a firmness that brooked no argument. The gesture was at once a shield and a summons.
Theo could barely move. Every inch of her skin registered the aftershock of Teddy’s words. The locket at her neck felt lighter, her grip on it loosened, then fell away entirely. She was aware, with alarming clarity, of the flush spreading across her chest, the tingling at the base of her spine, the singular point of heat at the center of her ribs.
She looked up, found Teddy’s gaze fixed on her. He did not smile. He only waited, as if her answer were the only one that mattered.
The room began to buzz again—whispers, shuffles, the hurried reconstitution of conversation. But beneath it, a current persisted, something deeper than gossip, more dangerous than scandal. The rules had shifted, the old world was gone, replaced by one in which Theo was no longer merely the object of scrutiny, but the axis around which the evening revolved.
Lady Amelia, her campaign in ruins, retreated to the window, her feathers a flag of defeat.
Verity squeezed Theo’s hand, once, hard enough to hurt. “You’re not ruined,” she whispered, and for the first time, the words felt like a benediction.
Theo found herself smiling—weak, unsteady, but real. She turned, then, to face the room. She met each gaze, not with the brittle defensiveness of before, but with something new, something almost like defiance.
She found Teddy again. This time, she did not look away.
Their eyes locked. In the moment, every scandal, every lie, every desperate fiction melted to nothing. There was only the truth of the thing, that in defending her, he had given her the only freedom she had ever wanted—the freedom to choose.
She did not yet know what she would choose.
But she knew, for the first time, that the choice was hers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The world had scoured itself clean by morning. It was the hour when only the desperate, the guilty, or the chronically disappointed found themselves awake, and yet the house already vibrated with the rumor of departure.
Theo stood at the base of the grand staircase, one gloved hand at her throat. She wore her traveling gown—the sober blue wool, fitted to the waist and buttoned up with military severity—and felt the eyes of the company upon her. She did not look at them, she looked only at the tall windows, where light splintered on the floor in stripes of bone-white, and at the door, which separated her from the world she had so recently decided to survive.
Outside, on the gravel sweep, her trunk had already been lashed to the top of the waiting carriage. The coachman—his face a geometry of windburn and boredom—clucked to the horses, who answered with the slow steam of their breath, clouding the air like the ghosts of forgotten guests.
Inside, the house was all noise and movement. The staff, eager for the resumption of order, whisked away the debris of last night’s excess. A pair of giggling debutantes, their hairstill lacquered into impossible sculptures, clung together and whispered about the “scandal.” The men, their faces shaved raw and pink, shook hands with varying degrees of sincerity, promising to correspond and not believing a word of it.
Theo’s gaze searched for a sign of him, for the angular cut of his profile, the dark corona of his hair, the burn of his eyes. But Teddy was nowhere—neither among the men at the doors, nor the footmen clustered like crows in the corners. Even the air, which so often seemed to bend itself toward him, gave no hint.
Verity found her at the threshold, moving with the swift, silent energy of a woman who would not be denied a scene.
“Theo,” she said, catching her arm. “You’ll write, of course.”
“Of course,” Theo managed. Her voice was thin, unfinished.
Verity drew her closer, wrapped her in a quick, fierce embrace. It smelled of bergamot and the sharp undertone of panic. “He’ll come,” she whispered, lips barely moving. “He always does, in the end.”
Theo smiled, but her teeth would not unclench. “That is not in the cards, I think.”
Verity pulled back, searching her face with an intensity that bordered on invasive. “Let him make the first move,” she advised, as if it were a game of chess and not the architecture of her future at stake. “It is the only way men know how to win.”