The Gilded Web by Mary Balogh

name.
    Madeline was still part of the same group, though standing beside Sir Derek Peignton and in semiprivate conversation with him, when Maisie Baines joined them.
    â€œGood evening, Lady Madeline, Lady Pamela,” she said. She fluttered her fan at the three gentlemen. “You really would not think she would have the nerve, would you?”
    Mr. Sheldon looked across the room, over Madeline’s shoulder, and raised his quizzing glass to his eye. “One would not expect her to have the
courage,
” he said in tones that set the color rising in Miss Baines’s cheeks.
    â€œGrandmama is in the card room,” she said. “But I know she will wish me to remove to the music room now. One cannot be too careful of the company one keeps, Grandmama says.”
    Madeline turned her head to see the new arrivals.
    â€œI cannot help feeling sorry for Miss Purnell,” Lady Pamela said. “It is most unfortunate that she went walking alone.”
    â€œGrandmama says that she has come by her just deserts,” Miss Baines said.
    Miss Purnell was tall, Madeline saw, and almost exaggeratedly upright in bearing. Her chin was held high. Her face and manner were quite calm and self-possessed. She had very dark hair. She was not pretty. “Handsome” was perhaps a word that would describe her if everything about her did not look quite so severe. Her green gown was simple and unadorned. She wore no jewelry. And her hair, absent of all plumes or ribbons, was dressed in a plain chignon.
    She had a hand resting on the arm of a man who resembled her to no small degree. He was taller than she, though not of immense height. He looked strong and agile. Indeed, he did not look as if he belonged in a London drawing room at all. His complexion was sun-darkened. His hair, dark, straight, and thick, was cut unfashionably long. One lock was fallen across his forehead. His face was as severe as his sister’s—he must surely be the brother who had gone to fetch her from Edmund’s—his jaw set in a hard line, his eyes watching the occupants of the room intently. Madeline did not remember to have seen either one before.
    She disliked Miss Purnell on sight. She was proud and haughty. Madeline was very glad she had refused Edmund and Dominic. Madeline would not have enjoyed having such a woman as a sister-in-law.
    â€œWould you like me to conduct you to the music room, Lady Madeline?” Sir Derek asked solicitously.
    â€œNo, thank you.” She smiled up at him and felt a certain breathlessness. His gray eyes seemed very close to hers. His shoulders were very broad.
    â€œMay I take you to Lady Amberley, then?” he asked.
    Madeline looked at him in surprise. “Mama is playing cards with Sir Cedric Harvey,” she said. “I do not think she would enjoy being disturbed by me quite this early, sir.”
    He bowed and said no more.
    Mr. and Miss Purnell had crossed the room to join that toad Albert Harding-Smythe, Madeline observed. The man had an air of enormous consequence, even though he apparently had very little else to recommend him. She had waltzed with him once the previous year and three times had had to endure his obsequious apologies and his secret leers as his coat front came into contact with her breasts. Since then, the sight of him had been enough to make her shudder.
    â€œPoor Mr. Harding-Smythe is her cousin,” Miss Baines was saying. “How dreadfully embarrassing for him. How can he cut his own kin? She ought not to put him in such a dilemma.”
    But if Mr. Harding-Smythe felt the dilemma, he showed no sign of doing so. Madeline watched incredulously as the man waited for brother and sister to come close, and quite deliberately turned his back on them and laughed heartily at something a near neighbor had said or not said. Miss Purnell’s chin rose an inch. Mr. Purnell looked dangerous. His dark eyes burned from beneath the shock of fallen hair. He took