away. I dare say I may walk it alone.’ Phillipa freed herself from her mother’s grasp. She collected her wrap from the footman attending the hall and was soon out in the cool evening air where no one could see.
Tears burst from her eyes.
How humiliating! To be made into Xavier Campion’s charity case. He’d danced with her purely out of pity. She was foolish in the extreme for thinking it could be anything else.
Phillipa set her trembling chin in resolve. She’d have no more of balls. No more of hopes to attract a suitor. She’d had enough. The truth of her situation was clear even if her mother refused to see it.
No gentleman would court a scar-faced lady.
Certainly not an Adonis.
Certainly not Xavier Campion.
Chapter One
London, August 1819
‘Enough!’ Phillipa slapped her hand flat on the mahogany side table.
The last time she’d felt such strength of resolve had been that night five years ago when she fled Lady Devine’s ball and removed herself out from the marriage mart for good.
To think she’d again wound up dancing with Xavier Campion just weeks ago at her mother’s ball. He’d once again taken pity on her.
No doubt her mother arranged those two dances as well as the first. More reason to be furious with her.
But never mind that. The matter at hand was her mother’s refusal to answer Phillipa’s questions, flouncing out the drawing room in a huff instead.
Phillipa had demanded her mother tell her where her brothers and father had gone. The three of them had been away for a week now. Her mother had forbidden the servants to speak of it with her and refused to say anything of it herself.
Ned and Hugh had a rather loud quarrel with their father, Phillipa knew. It occurred late at night and had been loud enough to wake her.
‘It is nothing for you to worry over,’ her mother insisted. She said no more.
If it were indeed nothing to worry over, then why not simply tell her?
Granted, in the past several days Phillipa had been closeted with her pianoforte, consumed by her latest composition, a sonatina. Pouring her passions into music had been Phillipa’s godsend. Music gave her a challenge. It gave her life meaning.
Like getting the phrasing exactly right in the sonatina. She’d been so preoccupied she’d not given her brothers or her father a thought. Sometimes she would work so diligently on her music that she would not see them for days at a time. It had finally become clear, though, that they were not at home. That in itself was not so unusual, but her mother’s refusal to explain where they had gone was very odd. Where were they? Why had her father left London when Parliament was still in session? Why had her brothers gone with him?
Her mother would only say, ‘They are away on business.’
Business, indeed. A strange business.
This whole Season had been strange. First her mother and brother Ned insisted she come to town when she’d much have preferred to remain in the country. Then the surprise of her mother’s ball—
And seeing Xavier again.
The purpose of that ball had been a further surprise. It was held for a person Phillipa had never known existed.
Perhaps that person would explain it all to her. His appearance, the ball, her brothers’ and father’s disappearance—all must be connected somehow.
She’d ask John Rhysdale.
No. She would demand Rhysdale tell her what was going on in her family and how he—her half-brother, her father’s illegitimate son—fit into it.
Rhysdale’s relationship to her had also been kept secret from her. Her brothers had known of him, apparently, but no one told her about him or why her mother gave the ball for him or why her parents introduced him to society as her father’s son.
A member of the Westleigh family.
Her mother had given her the task of writing the invitations to the ball, so she knew precisely where Rhysdale resided. Phillipa rushed out of the drawing room, collected her hat and gloves, and was out the door in seconds, walking with a determined step towards St James’s Street.
She’d met Rhysdale the night of the ball. He was very near to Ned’s age, she’d guess. In his thirties. He looked like her brothers, too, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Like her, as well, she supposed, minus the jagged scar on her face.
To Rhysdale’s credit, he’d only given her scar a fleeting glance and afterward looked her in the eye. He’d been gentlemanly and kind. There had been nothing to object in him, except for the circumstances of his birth.
And his choice of friends.
Why did Xavier Campion have to be his friend? Xavier, the one man Phillipa wished to avoid above all others.
Phillipa forced thoughts of Xavier Campion out of her mind and concentrated on being angry at her mother instead. How dared her mother refuse to confide in her?
Phillipa had a surfeit of her mother’s over-protection. She could endure a ball with no dance partners. She could handle whatever mysterious matters led to her family’s aberrant behaviour. Just because an ugly scar marred her face did not mean she was a child.
She was not weak. She refused to be weak.
Phillipa took notice of passers-by staring at her and pulled down a piece of netting on her hat. Her mother insisted she tack netting on to all her hats so she could obscure half her face and not receive stares.
She turned off St James’s Street on to the street where Rhysdale lived. When she found the house, she only hesitated a moment before sounding the knocker.
Several moments passed. She reached for the knocker again, but the door opened. A large man with expressionless eyes perused her quickly. His brows rose.
‘Lady Phillipa to see Mr Rhysdale,’ she said.
The man stepped aside and she entered the hall. He lifted a finger, which she took to mean she should wait, and he disappeared up the staircase.
The doors to rooms off the hall were closed, and the hall itself was so nearly devoid of all decoration that it appeared impersonal. Perhaps a single gentleman preferred no decoration. How would she know?
‘Phillipa.’ A man’s voice came from the top of the stairs.
She looked up.
But it was not Rhysdale who descended the stairs.
It was Xavier.
He quickly approached her. ‘What are you doing here, Phillipa? Is something amiss?’
She forced herself not to step back. ‘I—I came to speak with Rhysdale.’
