Panic rushed through her, making her light-headed and off-balance. She felt startled and also a little angry that he was ruining the friendship they’d shared. No—he was ruining everything, because how would his family ever look on her the same way again, now that he’d chosen her? Already excitement was beginning to brighten the beloved faces around her. She felt as if the parson’s noose were already slipping over her neck—and everything within her revolted against it.
Which was how, unable to stop herself in that terrible, awkward, panicking moment, she did the one thing she should never have done.
She laughed.
In the stunned moment that followed, she heard Ruby gasp and saw a terrible dark look come over Tommy’s face, changing it so she felt suddenly that she hardly knew him. He was still holding her hand as though frozen. She struggled to find something to say, but she couldn’t say yes, and she couldn’t disappoint him, so she said nothing.
His eyes turned into shards of sharp green glass that cut her, like a knife paring a rotten part from an apple. He dropped her hand and stood up, but now he would no longer look at her, and she understood with a terrible finality that nothing would ever be the same.
Without a word to her or anyone else, he turned and left the ball.
She wrote him two different letters that night and tore them both up before crawling into bed, desperately unhappy and confused and wishing she’d never even gone to the ball.
The failed proposal was the talk of Town, but Lizzie supposed Tommy didn’t care or, more accurately, didn’t notice, because three days later he boarded a ship for India.
Order your copy of How to Handle a Scandal
Dukes In Disguise Page 35
