Yasmin sucked in a breath, not sure what to say. Mrs. Turing seemed equally frozen. The matron definitely didn’t want Edwin to be forced to marry Lydia—which he would be if people realized they had been alone together.

Cleo frowned at Lydia. “My dear friend Yasmin is no liar. I must ask that you apologize, Lady Lydia. I am sure that you did not mean what you just said.”

Lydia’s mouth clamped shut, and her eyes showed bleak horror. She had realized, Yasmin thought dully, that she was the only one who would suffer if the righteous ladies of London society realized that Edwin Turing had played the voluptuary with her, and that even his own mother knew of it.

“You don’t understand,” Lydia said with a gasp.

“Lady Lydia has no reason to apologize,” Yasmin said, intervening. “The truth is that I entered a drawing room to find Mr. Turing proposing marriage to Lady Lydia on his knees, in the most romantic fashion, as one would expect from him. I hasten to add that they were properly chaperoned. The young lady refused him.”

Lydia swallowed hard. Her cheeks had turned purple.

“He wept,” Yasmin continued with a touch of disdain. “Cried with all the fervor of his poetic temperament. I did promise that I would never reveal the event, and I apologize for blurting out the truth. I am particularly sorry to mention your son’s disappointment in such a public setting,” Yasmin said, looking at Mrs. Turing. “I hope that he has recovered his former good spirits.”

“You know young men!” Mrs. Turing tittered. “He was saddened . . . but . . .” Her voice ran out.

“I’m sure he will find a bride in time,” Cleo put in.

From the corner of her eye, Yasmin could see two ladies whispering to each other. The story didn’t hang together, but no one had the temerity to interrupt and ask for clarification.

“A happy marriage is a gift,” Cleo continued. She was holding Yasmin’s hand tightly in her own. “I consider myself the luckiest woman on earth to have found Mr. Addison. You may not know this, but he disliked me intensely on our first meeting.”

Instantly, the room stopped thinking about the implications of Lydia’s angry comment and focused on Cleo.

“How did you meet?” Yasmin managed.

Cleo looked around the room, smiling, holding her audience. “You will all be terribly shocked. Horrified, even.”

As one, the ladies caught their breaths.

“I had purchased Quimby’s Emporium from under my dear Mr. Addison’s nose,” Cleo said merrily. “He bribed a footman to lend him a suit of livery and showed up at my door with a decanter of brandy. It was very good brandy.”

“I don’t understand,” one lady said. “Were you living with your grandfather?”

“Oh, no,” Cleo said cheerfully. “I had a suite at the Fauberg’s Hotel. Jake walked straight into my dining room. I scarcely noticed him at first. My maid was in another chamber . . .”