The door closed behind them. In the tea shop there was a long silence.
Eventually Sylvia spoke. “I swear I didn’t know—”
“I don’t believe you.” Lily made a weary gesture. “Just go, Sylvia. Get out. You’ve shown me what you wanted me to see, so please, just go—and don’t bother trying to talk to me again.”
Sylvia stood. “You’re angry with me when you should be angry with him. I had to show you. He meets her here every week. So that’s what your precious husband is worth.” The vitriol and smug satisfaction in her voice were horribly blatant.
Lily said with quiet, hard-won dignity, “I don’t know why you hate me, Sylvia, but I can see now that you do. Rose was right about you. You don’t care about me or my marriage—you brought me here to see me hurt and humiliated. Leave, please. I don’t ever want to see or speak to you again.”
Sylvia flounced out. Lily called for another pot of tea and sat there, watching the hotel entrance opposite. Her brain was numb. The tea turned cold. Edward didn’t come out.
Lily paid the bill and summoned the carriage. What to do now?
Chapter Eighteen
Angry people are not always wise.
—JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Walton drove Lily around the park a few times while she thought about what to do. She needed to talk to someone—but who?
She couldn’t tell Rose and George about what had just happened. They’d been against her marrying Edward, and they’d be vigorous in their condemnation, both of Edward and of Lily’s choice in marrying him.
And Rose would say that she’d said all along that Sylvia was a nasty cow—and then George would remind them that cows were lovely creatures and then—Lily stopped on a hiccup. She was close to tears.
But she would not cry, she would not. She didn’t know for sure that Edward was keeping a mistress. The scene she’d observed was damning, to be sure, but she didn’t know.
The truth was she didn’t want to know. She wanted never to have gone to that horrid tea shop, never to have looked out that window. If she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, she wouldn’t be hurting so badly.
She wanted to go to her sister, to have Rose put her arms around her as she had when Lily was a little girl, and tell her everything would be all right. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, she was a married woman. A woman who’d married against everyone’s advice. And who was trying to stand on her own two feet.
Besides, Rose and George would be on her side no matter what. Lily didn’t need their partisan support, she needed to talk to someone more impartial, more experienced.
Emm? No, she didn’t want to distress Emm, especially now with the baby coming. Emm and Cal might have made a convenient marriage, but they were very much in love now. It was what Lily had hoped would happen to her and Edward.
She shivered. She’d tumbled so easily in love with him. She’d hoped he would do the same.
But he’d been forced into marriage with her, punished for rescuing her. And his pleasure in their marriage was all about bedsport.
If she was hurting now, it was her own fault. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned. He’d told her over and over that it wasn’t a love match and that she wasn’t to expect anything more than friendship.
She could love him with all her heart, but it would make no difference; you couldn’t make someone love you if they didn’t.
The question was how did an inconvenient convenient wife go on? How did she hold her head up in society, when it seemed half of society knew her husband of a few weeks had taken a mistress?
Who could advise her? She needed someone who’d be honest with her, someone who had experience with this kind of thing.
The answer jumped out at her. Aunt Agatha. She’d had three husbands, and married none of them for love. She’d know what Lily should do.
• • •
“So that’s the situation, Aunt Agatha. What I should do?” Lily was seated in Aunt Agatha’s private sitting room, a glass of sherry in her hand. She’d just finished explaining.
There was a long silence. Aunt Agatha gave her a thoughtful look, sipped her sherry then pursed her lips. “I’m disappointed, but I can’t say I’m surprised. If you had—”
“Please don’t tell me it’s my fault for being too plump or too stupid or too young—criticizing me for things I can’t change is not going to help!”
Aunt Agatha raised her brows. Lily eyed her defiantly and gulped her sherry. It was nasty stuff. “Besides, my being plump isn’t the problem. I’ve seen his mistress and she’s as plump as me.”
“As plump as I. Does your husband know about your little problem?” She tapped the book she’d been reading and set aside when Lily arrived.
“No, I’ve kept that a secret from him.” And she still felt torn in two about that.
“Good, so it’s not that, then.”
“No. And there’s no point in offering me advice about winning him back,” Lily said. You couldn’t win back what you’d never had. “I just want to know how to bear it. You’ve had three husbands. Did any of them have mistresses?”
“Yes, of course, all three of them.” She twirled her lorgnette thoughtfully. “In some ways it was a relief.”
A relief? Lily couldn’t imagine that, but then she recalled that Aunt Agatha hadn’t enjoyed the marriage bed.
That was the hardest thing of all to think about. Up to now the best part of her marriage had been what passed between them in bed, but if Edward had sought the services of a mistress, it meant Lily had failed in that area as well. It was very disheartening. She took another sip of sherry.
“But wasn’t it humiliating?” It was strange to be sitting here with her formidable aunt, talking like this, woman to woman, but also comforting. She felt closer to
