There was a startled silence.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Beth said faintly.
Kit gave her a glimmer of a smile. ‘I know you think I can never apologise…’
‘No, I know it…’
‘Whatever the case…’ Kit grimaced. ‘I had no notion of any of this.’ He looked away. ‘I do not understand. How could Eleanor have been reviled when I was the one who deserted her?’
Beth raised her eyes to heaven.
Charlotte tutted. ‘For all your supposed experience of the world, Kit, I sometimes think you the veriest babe in arms! Do you not know that it is always the woman’s reputation that suffers? If you left her there must have been a reason—so goes the reckoning. In this case the favourite explanation is that you found her not to be virtuous…Which is where the rumours started!’
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