Page 4 of The Duchess and the Beast
She tried to stare at the page. She tried to forget why it was that her mood was this morose. But there would be no forgetting. And not because of Lucy, but because it seemed that fate had decided as such.
“You were not there,” Virtue broke, dropping the book in her lap and looking pleadingly at Lucy. “You did not see the whole… debacle!”
“Oh, surely it wasn’t all that dreadful.” Lucy fell in beside Virtue and wrapped an arm around her in comfort. She was a touch taller than Virtue and made a perfect shoulder to weep on.
“It was far worse.” Virtue curled up in her best friend's arm. “Everyone saw it. And those who might have been unlucky to miss it, certainly heard it. I have never been so embarrassed.”
“They will forget. If I have learned anything living here this past decade, it is that London's collective memory is as fleeting as a spring shower,” Lucy reassured her.
“I am not convinced of that anymore,” she murmured.
“A stroll would do you the world of good,” Lucy suggested gently.
“I cannot even bear to show my face.”
“Just through the garden then. A bit of fresh air might lift your spirits.”
“I doubt that very much.”
"Perhaps just some natural light, at least?” Lucy moved as if to draw back the drapes.
“Don’t!” Virtue shot up, blocking the maid’s path to the windows. “Please, Lucy. Can you not just let me wallow? If anyone has earned that right, surely it is I?”
Lucy could not have looked more worried. The way her round face scrunched together. The way her lips pouted. Like a mother besotted with the ailing sickness of her daughter, it was clear that all she wanted was to help. “You deserve the world, V,” she whispered as she wrapped her thick arms back around Virtue. “Not this. Never this.”
“It is funny,” Virtue chuckled bitterly. She picked up the book she was reading, only to regard its cover with disdain before tossing it across the room. “I once fancied my life to be akin to the tales I cherish—imagined meeting my Prince Charming, falling in love, and our story being celebrated through the ages. Now, I see these tales for what they truly are—mere tales. At best, I am the wicked witch, doomed to watch others fall in love around her while she spends her days alone and miserable. Perhaps the wicked witch was never the villain, after all, only misunderstood.”
To that, Lucy did not say a word, simply because there was not much she could say. For three months now, it had been much the same as this, and where finally it looked as if Virtue was on the mend and turning a leaf toward a new tomorrow, the ball two nights ago had dashed those plans thoroughly and irrevocably.
And it hadn’t always been so.
Just three months prior, Virtue's life had seemed poised for a fairy tale culmination, the kind she had whimsically envisioned as a child but scarcely dared to believe might actually unfold for herself. She was in love with a viscount. He was in love with her. They were engaged to be married. Children would follow. A lifespent in one another’s arms because their love was such that she couldn’t fathom any other outcome but that. A touch idealistic, perhaps. But that just spoke to how perfect everything was...
But then, without warning, her idyllic world shattered around her. Lord Prescott, her betrothed, a man whom she had surrendered her heart to fully after a year of courting, tore it from her chest, crushed it in the palm of his hand, and callously announced an end to their betrothal. With a mere letter, he terminated their engagement, offering no explanation, denying her any appeal, and leaving her without a semblance of closure.
To say it caught Virtue by surprise would be an understatement. Yet her astonishment paled in comparison to the collective gasp of the ton. And with no reason given for why he had acted so rashly, it was only natural that rumor and conjecture would follow. Those whom Virtue had once considered friends now gossiped in shadowed corners, theorizing why the viscount had ended things so suddenly. What grievous misstep could Virtue have possibly committed to warrant such a harsh rejection?
She didn’t do anything. She was the perfect lady. But to ask anyone’s opinion of the matter today, it was agreed that she had slighted him in some way, likely by seducing another or being caught in a heinous act of amorous desire. She was a destined spinster, it was claimed. She was a woman of loose morals! The rumors swirled and gathered like a raging storm, and although her family vehemently denied them, Virtue soon learned there was little more she could do to placate the torrents but hide and wait for them to go away.
Which was precisely what she had done until the fateful ball two nights prior. Finally, sensing her moment, convinced that the ton might have moved past the scandal, she braved the outside world in a way that seemed unimaginably impossible mere months earlier.
As to the result? The less said, the better—though Prudence could furnish the most lurid of details.
“Here is what we are going to do,” Lucy murmured, her soft voice breaking the silence.
“What?” Virtue sniffed, feeling herself come undone.
“We shall do precisely… nothing.”
“Pardon?” Virtue pulled back. “Pray, what sort of counsel is that?”
“The wisest,” Lucy declared with quiet confidence. “You are correct, last evening was a travesty.”
“Most kind of you to note,” she replied drily.
“Yet, it was not the end of all things,” Lucy spoke over Virtue. “Do you remember where you were three months ago? For I remember it well. Very well. We were here, having this precise conversation.”
“And I am still here!”