The Misfit Marquess by Teresa DesJardien Page A

sense.
    She knew she was not ugly—only a few days ago she had believed Radford when he had whispered in her ear that she was beautiful. Love had made her beautiful or so she had thought at the time. But even if she had not believed his words, her own looking glass told her that the face there was not the sort to make a man blanch. Men had never fallen at her feet in adoration, but neither had any male called her ugly since she had achieved the changing age of thirteen.
    What injury, other than repulsion, could she represent to Lord Greyleigh? What had made his cool demeanor crack for that brief moment and reveal pain, or upset, or some other emotion at which she could only guess?
    But there was no time for questions now, for a bevy of presumably keenly interested local ladies waited to meet with her.

    And what was she to tell them, the truth? Of course not, for the truth did no one any good, least of all Lorraine and Papa. Then the half truths she had told Lord Greyleigh? Or the truth as he so obviously believed it to be, the lie she had first allowed him to believe—that she had come from the asylum?
    Two footmen carried her down to the front parlor, insisting they could not put their hands about her person, and so she was made to ride upon a chair the two men carried between them. It made for an ignominious entry, and made the ladies of the local parish lift their eyebrows in mild disapproval that dissipated once they saw her bandaged heel.
    In the end, Elizabeth found it was easiest to remain largely mum, to gaze blankly when to answer was to jeopardize her anonymity.
    When they asked her name, she answered "Elizabeth," and at the insistence that she had a surname, she merely stared stoically.
    When they asked where she was from, she shook her head and allowed her gaze to wander from face to face. It was Lord Greyleigh, sitting in a chair in the corner, deliberately apart from the circle of chairs in which the ladies resided, who answered. "She says she spent her childhood in Nottingham."
    "I knew the inhabitants of the hospital came from all directions," Mrs. Fitzhamm declared, "but Nottingham? My word, such a distance!" The woman's daughter and niece nodded in agreement with her.
    "But, my dear girl," Lady Sees said down her nose, "surely you have of recent been to London? Or at least Bristol or Bath. I mean to say, why else would one arrive at Severn's Well, which is such a distance from Nottingham?"
    Elizabeth just gazed back, neither smiling nor frowning. Naturally, such a lack of response, such vagueness, could only play into the very farce that had first been put in place. Within ten minutes, certainty as to her want of wits bloomed across their faces as clearly as if they had pronounced it aloud.
    It was ironic that she had once hoped to convince her host of her unstable mind, and now she had no choice but to allow these ladies to underscore that impression. She glanced toward the chair where he reclined, one leg crossed over the other, his head half turned away as though he could scarcely be bothered to attend the conversation. Well, she had told him as much of the truth as she could, and she could not help the wrongful impression these ladies underscored. She could not think why it even mattered to her, other than it seemed churlish to repay his hospitality with lies.
    When more impossible-to-answer questions—all echoes of those already pressed upon her by Lord Greyleigh—drew only more silences or shrugs, Lady Sees rose, a signal that brought the other ladies to their feet as well.
    "Poor thing," Elizabeth heard one lady mutter to Lord Greyleigh as they made their adieux in the outer hall, and another said, "Tis a tragedy."
    Well, and what other judgment could my performance garner, Elizabeth thought to herself, although her pique was tinged with amusement. How easy it was to mislead people, to give the wrong impression, to let them think what they would. In their place, she had no doubt she would have