‘Spoken to me of what?’ Jemma implored whilst raising her expressive jade-green eyes heavenwards. She knew Lucy’s brother, Philip Duncan, of course, because the fellow had offered for her hand in marriage when she’d been a débutante. Jemma had always thought Philip had taken the rejection reasonably well at the time; she hadn’t imagined he’d brood on it for five years before retaliating and slandering her to his friends.
‘Philip Duncan has been boasting that you are trying to extract from him another marriage proposal.’
A hoot of genuine amusement escaped from Jemma and was swiftly smothered by a shapely, gloved hand. ‘I don’t for one minute believe that he would broadcast anything so utterly idiotic and false,’ she spluttered through muffling fingers.
‘I’m only repeating what Lucy said.’ Maura sounded quite miffed that her courage in divulging the grave news had been rewarded with hilarity.
‘I’m not disbelieving you,’ Jemma said gently as a few of her fingers lazily tested the quality of striped dimity. The other hand was busy wiping mirthful tears from her eyes. ‘Some misunderstanding has occurred. I haven’t clapped eyes on Philip in months, and last time I passed him in Pall Mall he was no more than polite. He was escorting Verity Smith and looking quite her lapdog too. Any hankering he had for me is very much in the past.’
‘Apparently that’s what he said to Graham Quick,’ Maura blurted. ‘Lucy heard Philip telling Mr Quick that you are the one hankering and chasing after him.’ Maura had noticed that a dangerous glint had replaced the humorous twinkle in Jemma’s eyes. Quickly she sought to defuse her cousin’s temper. ‘I don’t know what Lucy’s brother is thinking to invite such a fellow in to his lodgings. Mrs Duncan and Lucy often visit him there. Philip was furious when he discovered his landlady had let Lucy in alone and she’d been loitering in his hallway, listening to every word they’d said.’ Maura paused, added with an excited shiver, ‘Lucy nearly came face to face with Graham Quick! When she heard him coming she had to hide in a cloakroom till he’d gone. But Philip guessed she’d been eavesdropping all along.’
Jemma knew what had prompted such a thrill in her cousin. Graham Quick was an infamous reprobate and shunned in polite society. Most young women only knew of him by reputation and had never met him in the flesh. Their parents and brothers made sure of that. The fact that Philip Duncan had mentioned her name, let alone discussed her with such a blackguard, had stoked Jemma’s disgust to such a degree that she felt rather bilious.
‘Lucy said Philip mentioned having received a letter. It invited him to renew his proposal to you. By all accounts he thought it comical. He showed Mr Quick the letter and said he had no intention of rescuing you or any other…’ Maura’s fluid, whispered account came to a halt as her teeth sank in to her lower lip.
‘Or any other…?’ Jemma prompted, with a fierce frown, her eyes shining with suppressed temper. She was very aware of the group of women close by.
‘Or any other uppity chit destined to be an old maid abandoned on the shelf,’ Maura recited on a regretful sigh. She shot Jemma a sympathetic look. ‘As if you would be interested in Philip now! He’s going bald and he’s grown too fat to get his waistcoat buttons done up properly, whereas you are still as trim and lovely as ever you were at seventeen.’ Maura patted her cousin’s slender arm in a show of solidarity. ‘Why, you’re not yet twenty-three and could outshine any of the girls out this year.’
Her cousin’s extravagant compliment did nothing to ease Jemma’s sense of outrage. Her fingers had stiffened on the crisp fabric beneath them. The healthy bloom in her cheeks had reduced to two high spots of wrathful colour on a complexion that resembled parchment. ‘He said what? He did what? How dare he talk about me! How dare he even mention my name to a vile libertine such as Graham Quick!’
‘You might not like Mr Quick, but he seems to admire you,’ Lucy blurted thoughtlessly. ‘By all accounts Lucy heard him praising your figure and its…best points.’
‘Did he, indeed!’ Jemma’s soft mouth thrust in to a rosy knot. ‘I have to tell you I don’t regard that as a compliment.’
‘You didn’t send Philip Duncan a letter, did you?’
Such an audacious act was outside the role of any gently bred young lady, yet a shade of doubt had tinged Maura’s tone and drawn a wintry look from Jemma. Maura’s timid hazel eyes flinched away from her cousin’s stormy stare.
‘I did not,’ Jemma enunciated through perfect pearly teeth perilously set on edge. ‘Send him a letter?’ she scoffed. ‘Propose to him? The man must be addled in his wits.’
‘He had a letter. Lucy saw it being waved about. I don’t think he is lying about that. Someone is being very mean, aren’t they?’ Maura chewed anxiously at her lip. ‘Who would do such a vile thing?’
‘I don’t know, but unfortunately now I must find out.’
Maura knew that her cousin Jemma had a formidable temper once she was roused to action by a sense of injustice. She cast an anxious glance back at the ladies she’d recently been with. Thankfully, the older women had decamped, probably to regroup in the shop across the street where they might continue to savour this latest tale unobserved by its central character. Only Lucy Duncan and Deborah Cleveland remained and now seemed more interested in shopping than gossiping as they unravelled shimmering sapphire satin to cascade over the counter.
The two young ladies also drew Jemma’s ferocious feline gaze. As she frowned in their direction it was Deborah Cleveland who raised her flaxen head and met her stare. She could tell that the young woman was attempting to signal with her eyes that she was sorry for what had gone on.
Tension tightened Jemma’s stomach. She had always thought Deborah very pretty and had no reason not to like her. In fact, on the rare occasions they’d met in the past they’d exchanged a few cordial words that had hinted at a fledgling friendship, but Deborah was several years younger than she was. At eighteen, an heiress, and one of this season’s top débutantes, Deborah inhabited a different world to Jemma. Deborah had just become engaged to a handsome and most eligible bachelor. She was accordingly very popular and much fêted by the beau monde despite the fact that many of the young ladies striving to be her friend were envious that she’d netted such a catch. The most eligible bachelor, now spoken for, was another reason why Jemma and Deborah might elect to keep at a polite distance.
Jemma had received several proposals during the Season she’d made her come out. Philip Duncan had been just one of several gentlemen who’d offered for her and been rejected. Few of her suitors had made any lasting impression on her; in fact now, just five years later, Jemma struggled to recall all of their names.
But one had intrigued and very much attracted her. When a novice socialite of just seventeen, he had drawn her in to a glittering, sophisticated world now denied to her. He’d taught her to dance properly, given her the confidence to converse with his aristocratic friends and relatives. Her little inexperienced gaffes were never mocked, but gently corrected or smoothed over. When she’d nervously enquired if he’d heard the scandalous talk about her family, he’d mildly replied that her parents’ problems were not hers. Utterly relieved that he knew, but had elected to dismiss the Bailey stigma as irrelevant, she’d abandoned herself to enjoying being with him, aware that other débutantes watched, green-eyed, whilst he lavished on her his amusing, charismatic company. He’d made her laugh…and sigh when he’d taken her out to the garden during Lady Cranleigh’s ball. There had been other occasions too when he’d managed to manoeuvre her, quite willingly, into a seductive setting, but she’d remained faithful to Robert, her faithless sweetheart.
So she’d rejected Marcus Speer’s proposal too and gone home to Essex unattached with her father’s disapproval growling in her ears. Now Marcus was betrothed to Deborah Cleveland. No doubt later today he would be told by his fiancée of an amusing bit of gossip she’d heard whilst out shopping with her friends. Jemma swallowed the painful indignation that threatened to close her throat