Suddenly Claire understood. Beatrice was waiting for them to pass judgement on her, against her, no doubt wondering right now which of her friends would move away first. They wouldn’t be the first to know. Beatrice had already been through this with her family. Apparently, she thought she knew what to expect: rejection of the very worst sort. Exile. The social death of anonymity. It certainly made Claire’s own problems pale by comparison. She’d been selfishly absorbed in her own concerns while Beatrice grappled with something much larger. Beatrice shouldn’t have to do it alone.
She would help, if only she knew how. She needed information and that gave her a voice again. The questions came out in a rush. ‘How? When? More importantly, who?’
Beatrice swallowed hard, the questions no doubt discomforting, but it was too late to take them back. Quiet Evie shot her a quelling look in scolding and leaned forward to take Beatrice’s hand. ‘Bea, you don’t have to tell us.’
Bea shook her dark head. ‘Yes, I do. You have a right to know. I owe you all this much. You will have decisions to make.’ She looked at each of them in turn and drew a fortifying breath. Claire’s heart broke for her friend. She wanted to tell Bea it would be all right, but she couldn’t. Things might never be ‘all right’ for Beatrice Penrose again.
Beatrice began to speak. ‘Over the winter, I became acquainted with the friend of a neighbour who had come for an extended visit. In hindsight, the term “repairing lease” might be more appropriate. There were likely “reasons” he was in the countryside of Sussex instead of London or somewhere far more interesting.
‘I did not look past his handsome face, his manners and the acceptance he’d been afforded by local gentry because of those attributes. Others easily accepted him without question and I did, too.’ Beatrice’s fingers pleated her skirt absently. ‘The country in winter is as dull as the weather and he was exciting, new. No one had ever been interested in me the way he was.’
Claire nodded in sympathy. She felt guilty for being absent. Her family had spent the holidays in the Lake District. She’d not been there to steer Beatrice away from danger. Neither had May, whose family had stayed in town, nor Evie, who had gone to one of her sisters’. Beatrice had been entirely on her own. Alone and lonely.
Claire had plenty of experience, they all did, when it came to being overlooked by gentlemen of society for one reason or another; She was too smart with her acumen for languages when most gentlemen could barely master one; Evie was too discreet as to become anonymous and May was just too well informed, too sharp tongued. May had a talent for eavesdropping. She knew everything about everyone and that made her positively frightening to men who preferred to hide their secrets.
‘He and I would take long walks and discuss everything: plant life, wildlife, the latest findings from the Royal Academy of Sciences. He listened to my opinions.’ Beatrice’s gaze grew misty with remembrance. Claire heard the wistfulness there even now with ruin facing Beatrice and it surprised her, knowing the perfidy this lover was capable of. Then she saw the dilemma in Beatrice’s eyes. Bea wanted to hate him but she couldn’t, didn’t. It was not a dilemma Claire could understand. The cad had left her pregnant. Ruined her. Destroyed her, in fact, and Beatrice could not bring herself to hate him, not quite, not yet.
‘Listening turned out to be far more seductive than I could ever have imagined, especially when that listening was accompanied by a pair of grey eyes the colour of a winter storm. I was convinced he valued me in the most important of ways.’
Claire put a hand over her mouth and suppressed a sad sigh. In return for that false respect, Beatrice had given him the most important thing she possessed: she’d trusted him with her reputation. To her detriment, it turned out.
Beatrice looked down at her lap, a wry half-smile on her mouth, her tone part self-reassurance, part self-deprecation. ‘The awful thing is, I tell myself surely it wasn’t all illusion. Surely he found me interesting to some extent. Even now, with disaster staring me hard in the face, I’m not convinced he’d felt nothing for me. Surely one can’t fake that depth of emotion. I guess I’ll never know.’ Instinctively, her hand moved to the flat of her stomach.
Claire’s eyes caught the motion. ‘How far gone are you, Bea?’
‘Eight weeks.’ Two months. Long enough to be sure. Long enough for the announcement not to be a mistake. Then again, Claire had never known Bea to make mistakes. Unlike her, Bea was always certain, always sure of her direction.
‘And the father? How far gone is he?’ May asked, characteristically honing in on the heart of the issue. Clare exchanged a nervous look with Evie. May might have gone too far. But May would not be deterred. ‘Well, we have to know,’ she said resolutely. ‘Will you be marrying him?’
Bea gave a pretty shrug. ‘The question is hypothetical only. Perhaps I would, if he was here, if our affaire hadn’t been a pretence to him.’
Claire’s heart swelled with admiration for her brave friend. Even with a baby on the way, Beatrice would not stoop to marry a man if it had all been a game and nothing more. As always, Beatrice’s ethical compass faced true north and would not be compromised. It was an enviable commodity, one that Claire had once possessed herself: to be herself even in the face of great social odds, but somewhere in the last three years she’d lost it, ironically perhaps in an attempt to protect it. It was hard to say when it had started to slide. Maybe it had begun with Rufus Sheriden and refusing his proposal on the principle that she was a unique individual and as such deserved his unique regard, or perhaps it had been the Cecilia Northam incident. It had certainly been a slippery slope since then. She was no longer sure who she was, or what she was capable of.
May’s cheeks were in high colour, her quick temper rising on behalf of their friend. ‘The gall of the man to leave you pregnant and alone, unwilling to do right by you!’
Beatrice shook her head, her tone a soft contrast to May’s outrage. ‘He doesn’t know, May. He left before...well, before I knew. Please do not despise him out of hand.’ She took in the whole group with her gaze, perhaps guessing the direction of their thoughts. It was easy to vilify the absent father. ‘It was the most delicious, exquisite week of my life. He brought me flowers, he smiled at me in a way that wiped away all reason. He did not seduce me, I went willingly into this folly. We had a winter of long walks in the cold and a week of illicit loving in abandoned cottages and warm haylofts. He told me he had business in a town a day’s ride away. He didn’t come back.’ But he would always be among them. With a baby on the way, he’d never truly leave them. Ever.
‘We have some time. That is good,’ Evie said encouragingly, still holding Bea’s hand. Thank goodness for Evie, always willing to put a cheerful outlook on things. ‘It will be a Christmas baby. You shouldn’t be showing until the very end of the Season. Fashions are fuller this year. I can start altering gowns right away.’ Evie was at her best when she had a needle in her hand and fabric to transform. But her words spoke for them all. They would not desert their friend. Claire glanced around the circle. They were all smiling at Beatrice now; smiling their support, their approval.
Tears prickled obviously in Beatrice’s eyes. She swiped helplessly at them. ‘Dash it all! I wasn’t going to cry. All I’ve done this past week is sob. Thank you, thank you, all of you. I didn’t expect this.’
‘What did you expect?’ Claire couldn’t keep the sense of betrayal out of her voice. ‘Did you think we’d desert you at the first sign of trouble? After all we’ve been through, certainly you know we’re made of sterner stuff.’
May took Claire’s lead and leaned forward, her hand joining Evie’s. ‘You were there for me when my family forgot my birthday. You made me a cake and stole a whole bottle of brandy out of your father’s liquor cabinet.’ Claire remembered that. May’s brother had got a prime government appointment and her parents had gone to London to celebrate with him, leaving May home. Alone. For her seventeenth birthday, the last birthday of her childhood.
‘We got rather drunk that evening, I recall.’ Beatrice managed a small