She’d experienced quite a few of them in her six-and-twenty years. There was the mild discomfort of wearing dated gowns in a room full of stylish ladies. There was the moderate embarrassment of never having learned the art of small talk and therefore never knowing quite what to say, and the more substantial humiliation of having a father who knew less and said more. There was the painful wounding of pride that came from living off the largesse of family friends, and the outright shame of lying about her circumstances. Where, she wondered, did the mortification of having been caught stuffing an entire slice of cake into her mouth by the man one had a desperate tendre for, fit in? “Miss Byerly, are you all right?” Somewhere after her father and before the lying, she decided. “Miss Byerly?” “Yes. Yes, I. . .” She swallowed hard and forced herself to meet his eyes. His beautiful dark eyes she’d previously thought of as kind, but that now danced with wicked merriment. “Are you going to tell?”
