-24-

Eliza

There was such a thing as arriving in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught up in her thoughts and determined to demand the truth of Jem the moment an opportunity to do so arose, Eliza didn't notice the two figures in the antechamber to the dining room until she was already through the double doors to that room. Then, for a moment she wasn't sure what she was witnessing, a disagreement, a fight? Linfield had Jem pinned. Jem's utterances made it clear. She had heard him make similar sounds thrice now.

She ought never to have trusted him for a moment.

He was not the man she'd hoped and believed him to be, nay, but every bit the one she'd prayed he was not.

"Look lively, Whistler, the company's arrived." Linfield turned, a smirk on his aristocratic features, while Jem remained sunk low in the shadow behind him. "You've made a dire mess of me, Jamie."

Horrified, Eliza watched as Linfield raised his hand to his mouth and licked his palm and fingers clean.

What a goddamned fool she was.

What a preposterous, ridiculous fool.

"I'm afraid you caught us in the heat of an exchange," Linfield crowed. "But we're all done now." He held his hand out to her. "Shall we go into dinner?"

For a moment, she thought she might be sick. Another woman would surely have fainted, but Eliza was no delicate society flower. She was of hardy Yorkshire stock. A woman who'd helped birth babies and who'd dug a pistol ball from a marquis's leg. She could be disgusted and still maintain her poise. Though she barely managed to nod her head.

The Cluetts entered behind her at that moment, followed swiftly by Doctor Bell, then Jane. Her friend linked arms with her, and danced her forward a couple of paces, merry as a spring lamb who'd learned he wasn't for the dinner table.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

Dammit, even Jane had betrayed her. She'd agreed to Linfield's ridiculous proposition. Had barely even protested the inclusion of Jem in her bedding, even when she knew Eliza was soft on him.

All she cared for was her own security.

Never mind if her friend's heart got broken. It'd mend. After all, Eliza was hardy. Eliza never allowed her emotions to get in the way of sensibility.

But they'd been on the cusp of something. She'd started to let herself believe she could have something meaningful on her terms.

"Eliza, shall we go in?" Jane tugged gently on her arm.

"You know, I'm not actually hungry."

How could she possibly sit at a table and do something as ordinary as break bread with these people?

"Oh, but you must eat."

Jem shot her a glance that one might describe as pleading, but she was done with being played for a fool. He was as untrustworthy and unreliable as the rest. There was not a single man in the world who could be trusted to do the right thing. What an idiot she had been to have forgotten that?

She would not allow herself to be so blindsided again.

"Eliza?" Jane tugged on her sleeve. "Are you unwell?"

She shook herself. "No. I'm well, thank you. Do go ahead. I'll be there in a moment."