No, it wasn't as bad as he could imagine, Ford thought distantly. He had not been arrested. He was not going to be arrested. That was the worst he could imagine, and he had avoided that. He had avoided it at the expense of Miss Farley's reputation, but there was nothing to be done about that now. And it wasn't as though he held all of the blame on that point, either — Mrs. Dempsey hadn't had to tell everyone what she had seen, and he'd had nothing to do with actually getting Miss Farley undressed in the coat room in the first place. But neither of those were defenses he could use when speaking to Verity. He dug his hands a little deeper in his pockets.

"Did she leave already?" Ford asked. He hoped so. He could not imagine any reason she would have wanted to stay, when the glances and the whispers would have been far worse for her than they were for him, and they had been bad enough to chase him out of the ballroom already. He'd been purposefully avoiding looking for her, though — looking anywhere that might see him accidentally making eye contact with anyone, in fact — so he couldn't say for sure.

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