“Yes. Jack found me in time. But—”
“Which way did they go?” Alton raked the darkness beyond them.
Jack pointed. “But they’ll be away by now. I couldn’t leave Clarice to follow them.”
“Of course not!”
“Alton—”
“My heavens! What is going on?” Lady Camleigh came bustling up, giving the crowd, who were starting to edge away, a severe look. She glanced at Jack and Clarice. Her eyes opened wide. “What…?”
Alton explained before Jack could.
Within a minute, Lady Cowper, Lady Davenport, and ultimately Lady Holland herself had joined them, along with Roger and Nigel and their fiancées, and Sarah, too.
Jack could feel the effort it was costing Clarice, still within his arm, to remain upright, head high, her spine poker-straight. Everyone was exclaiming, asking how it had happened, whether she was all right—
“Quiet, please!” Clarice didn’t shout, but her tone effectively cut through the chatter.
Everyone fell silent. Everyone looked at her.
She made no attempt to step away from Jack’s side, but, clasping her hands at her waist, she lifted her chin and quietly stated, “There’s something you all need to know.”
Jack could feel her quivering with shock and agitation, but nothing showed in her cool demeanor or her steady gaze.
“Before you appeared, a crowd had gathered—they came, rather late, in response to my scream. But after Jack had rescued me and the men who attacked me had vanished, I kissed him, and he kissed me. Then he helped me straighten my torn gown.” With one hand, she waved at her shoulder, where the bodice gaped from the seam. “That, unfortunately, is what the interested saw.” She paused, and looked around the circle of their supporters. “I think you can imagine what they think they saw.”
“Damn!” It was Nigel who uttered their thoughts aloud.
Regally, Clarice inclined her head. “Precisely. However…I’m afraid I really do not feel up to circulating among the guests for the next hour and more to quash the inevitable rumors.”
Concern in his face, Alton stepped toward her. “You aren’t all right.”
Clarice raised a restraining hand. “I’m just feeling a trifle shaky, that’s all. Jack will take me back to Benedict’s. I’ll be fully recovered by tomorrow. But”—she drew in a tight breath, looked around the circle once again—“I wanted you all to realize…what will come.”
Somewhat to Jack’s surprise, the ladies, both young and old, gathered closer, assuring Clarice that she could leave it to them, that they’d ensure no ill-informed nonsense was credited. Everyone accompanied them back to the house in a blatant show of solidarity.
The one who surprised Jack most was Lady Holland, their venerable hostess. She had the reputation of being an excellent friend, and a god-awful enemy; until she stood beside them while the carriage was brought around, Jack hadn’t been sure which she would prove to be.
But then she patted Clarice’s hand. “Don’t worry, my dear. I think you underestimate your standing, and ours, too, if you think we can’t scotch this, or at least nip it in the bud. It’s transparent to any who’ve spoken with you both that the incident happened exactly as you described. In such circumstances, the rest”—with a wave Lady Holland dismissed their too-revealing embrace—“is merely to be expected.”
Her ladyship turned her slightly protruberant eyes on him, and smiled. “Indeed, a gentleman such as Lord Warnefleet would have greatly disappointed us had he not reacted as he did.”
Outwardly, Jack smiled; inwardly he groaned. The last thing he needed was to be cast as a romantic hero to the entire ton.
At last they were in the carriage, rolling briskly back to Benedict’s. They didn’t talk along the way; Clarice held his hand tightly, her head against his shoulder, and stared out into the night.
He did the same. Reliving that scene, imaging what the crowd had seen. The difficulty with Lady Holland’s and the others’ assurances was simple; they hadn’t seen that too-revealing embrace. That kiss that had cut far too close to his bone, the inevitable reaction to a situation that had shaken him so badly his customary chameleon’s mask had been nowhere in sight.
That moment, that kiss, had been far too raw, their emotions, both his and hers, far too close to the surface for anyone watching to have misunderstood.
To not have seen that they were lovers.
They might not have, as the crowd doubtless thought, made love in the gardens of Holland House, but that one fact was now unarguable.
And it was now public property.
Chapter 20