Perhaps for the first time, Lizzy realized what had been going on for two months behind her back, and she was amazed. She’d never seen how her lover had been courting her sister; never walked in on the pair in a passionate clench, or been privy to their private conversations. At most, during dinner, she might have seen Jonathan give the younger Barton girl a playful wink, and Julia communicating her starry-eyed crush with a pair of dreamy eyes or her sweet smile. But just as she’d witnessed the intimacies between Mrs. Peacock and Lady Antonia Casals, Lizzy now saw a tender relationship that in no way paralleled her own debauched one with Jonathan Pierce. What a despicable, conniving man! How depraved! How sly! How insidious!
One would have thought that Julia would have spilled out somethi
