The breathy shock of pretty newlywed Mrs Rupert Browne sliced through the buzz of conversation, lancing its unsuspecting target three feet away and causing a deaf colonel to solicitously ask the Duchess if she required a glass of water. Still choking on her champagne, Cressida, Lady Lovett, strained to hear the response of her cousin, Catherine, who had obviously disseminated this latest shocking on dit, smilingly assuring deaf Colonel Horvitt she was quite all right, as if her happiness were not suddenly hanging by a gossamer thread. She strained to hear more. “Surely not?” gasped the generally well-intentioned but oblivious Mrs Browne to Cousin Catherine’s whispered reply. “But the Earl made a love match. Mama told me he scandalised society by marrying a nobody.” Cressida had to use two hands to keep her champagne coupe steady. The indignity of being described as a ‘nobody’ was nothing compared with the pain of hearing her husband’s amours—real or otherwise—discussed in the middle of a ballroom.
