‘Mr Gerald Whitely?’ She hated the way her voice sounded as she echoed the words back, but she needed to give herself a moment to think.
‘Your husband, Miss Cameron, or should I say Mrs Whitely. The man you married. Surely you remember him?’
‘Oh, you have it very wrong, Lady Hughes, for she is not spoken for. Miss Cameron is about to be married in the next few weeks to Lord Montcliffe and I think...’ Christine’s sentiments broke across the growing silence, petering out as she realised with amazement that the accusations could actually be true.
‘Gerald Whitely? The name is familiar.’ Lord Ross’s voice came through the fog. ‘Was he not the one who set up a company early last year to swindle wealthy investors out of their funds?’
‘Amethyst?’ Daniel spoke now, the timbre in his voice drawn, and when she looked up his pale eyes were icy.
‘It...is a...mistake.’ She could barely get the words out.
‘Then perhaps the ton would like to hear why a married woman should insist on using her maiden name when her true one might elicit howls of derision.’ Charlotte’s tone rang with victory though it hollowed as her brother bundled her up and pulled her away, his mouth grimly set.
‘You have said your piece, Charlotte. It is now time to leave.’
Christine had stepped back too, the distance between the Howards, Francis St Cartmail, Daniel and her widening by the second. Further away others began to take note of the emotion and the exchanges, a whisper of question circling the room.
‘Could I t-talk with you...alone?’ Amethyst needed to get away from here, to get outside. Her breathing was strange and the world was beginning to waver. Shock, she thought, and guilt. Every single part of her felt torn.
But Daniel did not move. Two seconds and then three. Both Lucien and Francis on either side of him looked at her strangely, an immobile trio of disbelief mixed with disdain.
‘I n-need to explain.’ The lies. The omissions. She swallowed and thought she might be sick, here in the grand ballroom of the ton, all over her golden foolish dress. ‘Please.’
Daniel finally stepped towards her, but he said nothing as he took her arm, a passage of empty space opening as they made their way to the staircase and then down it. Amethyst tried her best not to meet one single person’s glance as they went, though she could hear the undercurrents of disparagement all around.
‘Trade, of course.’ ‘Blood will always tell.’ ‘To think she imagined to hide a husband.’
It was over. Everything. She should have explained to him before now. Lies upon lies upon lies and this is where it got you. Here. The complete disintegration of her name and her character and the derision of the ton.
Taking their cloaks and hats from the butler, Daniel strode out to hail his carriage. Any contact had long since gone and he made no effort at all to meet her eyes or to talk.
‘There are th-things you need to...’
‘Wait until we are alone.’ The quiet cold indifference in his voice was far worse than any anger.
A minute later his horses were moving, much faster than she liked, racing towards Grosvenor Square, careening around the corners of the dark London streets.
‘Now perhaps you might tell me the truth. Were Lady Mackay’s accusations about your marriage to Whitely false or not?’
‘It was not as you think...and it was never...’ Her attention was caught by the speed the carriage was gaining, fast, much faster than she was comfortable with. The old fear came at her out of nowhere, robbing breath and sense as she lunged for the door handle, peeling her gloves off and keening.
‘God.’ The Earl’s voice came through a melted screen of light. ‘What the hell is wrong with you now?’
His discarded cane was in her hand without conscious thought, smooth and warm as she belted the roof as hard as she could, once and then twice before he snatched it away.
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Too...fast.’ Mouthed now as she could not even whisper the words. The carriage would turn over as it had before, she could feel the wheels leaving the ground and lurching sideways. Her heartbeat made her head ache and the old sweat of fear broke out all over her. Then all she knew was a spiralling fog, like snow at night and cold, tunnelling in. She did not try to fight the darkness.
They were at Dunstan House and the curtains across the French doors of her room were billowing wide. Like the sails of the Cameron ships on the wind as they raced for the Americas, cargos laden and a blue horizon seen in every direction.
Her father sat in a chair reading, his glasses perched on his nose and a bright floral cushion on his lap. Amethyst’s mind searched for an answer as to why they were here and why she was in bed at this time of the day, half a dozen vials of medicine lined up on the table beside her.
Of a sudden the room spun in small and rapid circles, making her blink. Squinting, she reached out, hoping to find balance. Something was not right just beyond thought, the time, the place or the company.
‘Papa.’ The word was thick in the dryness of her mouth, but her movements had alerted him and, dropping the book on the floor, he reached over to take her hand.
‘How do you feel?’
Daniel. He was gone. The ball. Gerald. The wild ride in the carriage home. Too fast.
‘How long...since the ball?’
‘Three days. This is the first time you have known me.’
‘Only...you...here?’ Her eyes perused the corners of her chamber, searching. When her father nodded Amethyst allowed the heaviness of her lids to close and she slept.
* * *
She knew she was calling his name in the dark and through the night. But Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, would not come because he no longer trusted her, no longer cared.
A cold compress was pressed to her forehead and she touched her father’s hand.
‘Tired.’ She could barely keep her eyes open. ‘I feel so tired.’
‘Then I will stay with you until you sleep and when you wake up again I shall still be beside you.’
His words were quietly spoken, yet were so very genuine. She could not remember a time when her father had let her down or failed her. ‘I love you, Papa. You have always been here.’
‘And I always will be, my jewel. Don’t worry. Everything will turn out just exactly as it should, I swear that it will.’
The dizziness was back, hovering at a distance, but closing in. She needed him to know something, but it was hard to think what it was now.
‘Daniel?’
‘Shush.’
‘He makes me...happy.’
The tears fell of their own accord, welling in her eyes and running warm across her cheeks.
‘And now...I have lost...him.’
‘No.’ All the reassurance in the world in that one simple word and as she fell back into sleep she smiled.
* * *
The next time she awoke it was dark and two candles on the mantelpiece laid a circle of light across the bed, the white of the counterpane so bright it hurt her eyes to look at. Holding up a hand to dim it, she was surprised by a small